OUR FACE FROM FISH TO MAN 



the noble but grasping; round-tipped retrousse 

 noses to the luxurious, like barnyard fowl. This is 

 the kind of rubbish that passed under the name of 

 science for more than two thousand years. Other 

 self-appointed and equally successful teachers 

 classified men and faces as mercurial, saturnine, 

 jovial and so forth, according to the positions of 

 the stars that ruled their fates from birth, so that 

 physiognomy, like palmistry, was clearly linked 

 with astrology. 



The modern science of physiognomy, if it be a 

 science, began when artists and sculptors tried to 

 record the facial expressions of emotions and of 

 moral character and when actors tried to repro- 

 duce these expressions on the stage. Much valu- 

 able descriptive material was thus accumulated 

 and expressions intended to represent piety, devo- 

 tion, suffering, anger, malice, joy and the like, 

 may be seen in any collection of old masters or 

 any antique treatise on physiognomy. 



A great step in advance was taken in 1806 when 

 Sir Charles Bell in his Essay on the Anatomy of 

 Expression inferred the action of the mimetic or 

 facial muscles in producing the characteristic 



expressions of the emotions. 



222 



