Woods: What Is There in Physiognomy? 



303 



unsurveyed fields. 

 There is something in 

 all these attributes, but 

 the actual localization 

 and the analysis and 

 measurement of the 

 significant peculiarities 



remain for future re- 



Profiieofideaiiied-Aver- scarch to determine. 



age Man. " (Fig. 5.) 



Physiognomy of expressions is one 

 thing, and physiognomy drawn from 

 proportions of the features is another. 

 While no one doubts that expressions of 

 the countenance are usually of some sig- 

 nificance, there are many keen ob- 

 servers, more or less professionally 

 engaged in the study of faces, such as 

 portrait painters, sculptors, photogra- 

 phers, anthropologists and psycholo- 

 gists, who doubt if the proportions of 

 the face are of any real significance. 

 They believe the exceptions to any rules 

 are too frequent for generalizations. 



My own belief is that, by and large, 

 most people look their parts, and fur- 

 thermore if the method of scientific 

 induction be applied much can be 

 learned from a systematic study of 

 facial proportions. There are, doubt- 

 less, exceptions to any rules, but these, 

 if not too numerous, do not invalidate 

 the conclusions. The whole question 

 hinges on the numerousness of the 

 exceptions, or in other and more scien- 

 tific words, on the existence of correla- 

 tions. 



For about twenty years the present 

 writer has been in the habit of collect- 

 ing, from time to time, pictures of peo- 

 ple out of newspapers, magazines and 

 books, as well as engravings and photo- 

 graphs from painted portraits. Out of 

 all this collecting certain general im- 

 pressions have arisen, but only a few 

 of these have as yet been put through 

 systematic tests. Already the con- 

 clusion has been reached that there has 

 taken place a genuine evolutionary 

 change within the last four hundred 

 years in the proportions of the upper 



TWO PROFILE HEADS OF IDEALIZED 



"AVERAGE MEN" SHOWING AVERAGE 



PROPORTIONS 



What does the "average man" look like to 

 you? Has your conception been formed from 

 your ideals or from the men whom you actually 

 meet in everyday life? Most of us have 

 usually regarded the average man "as some- 

 thing very fine." (Fig. 6.) 



part of the face. Some discussion of 

 this question (with a few illustrative 

 portraits) is to be found in the Journal 

 OF Heredity for May, 1919. 



THE SIZE OF THE NOSE 



The present article will deal solely 

 with the nose, especially with the 

 question whether or not intellectual 

 superiority is usually associated with 

 a large or long nose. 



If the size of the nose is in any way 

 correlated with intellectual superiority 

 then the greatest men in history ought 

 to exhibit noses measurably larger or 

 longer than the average. The correla- 

 tion might be true all through the|[scale 

 of intellectuality, but it would be more 

 difficult to measure it and prove it when 

 close to the average, since the differ- 

 ences would be smaller. 



With an idea of making a beginning 

 on this problem, a large number of por- 

 traits of famous men in different fields 

 of activity, and in different eras, have 

 been put through some systematic tests. 

 The first group examined happened 

 to be a collection of portraits of 

 eminent astronomers published in 

 "Stars and Telescopes," a Hand-Book 

 of Popular Astronomy by Professor 

 David P. Todd (Boston, 1901). Judg- 

 ing from these pictures, I should say 

 that the following astronomers, mathe- 



