390 London Philosophical Society, 



and muscles, which are the media of internal action, be ma- 

 terial, they must be subject to all the effects of material ac- 

 tion, to tenuosity, to rigidity, to expansion, to contraction; 

 and the traces left upon them will be more or less strong 

 in proportion as the action is more or less vehement, more 

 or less reiterated. He next exhibited instances from paint- 

 ing, in which the milder passions and qualities might remain 

 stamped upon a face in quiescence, such as benevolence, 

 love, courage, and sorrow ; and observed, that if this 

 point was granted with regard to all the passions, more was 

 granted, generally speaking, than what physiognomy de- 

 mands ; because it was not to be supposed, that a man who 

 was struck with sudden i)anic6 repeatedly would by any re- 

 petition retain the haggard gaping look of Fear, or that a 

 being who expressed his pride or his contempt with the 

 most demoniacal extension of muscle, would retain that 

 expression in all its disfiguring dimensions in a state of qui- 

 escence. Physiognomy did not require such a concession; 

 she merely demanded assent to this simple proposition. 

 That if positive lineaments in a slate of rest approach the 

 form which they assume in action, the more or less will 

 the individual who possessed them be characteristically 

 stamped with a propensity to such feelings and to such 

 sensations. 



Mr. C. then proceeded to mark out the provinces of the 

 triple existence of man upon his face, agreeing with Lava- 

 ter in assigning the forehead to intellect ; the cheeks, the 

 nose, and the lips, to moral or sentimental; and the chin and 

 throat to anima! existence ; but differing with him in consi- 

 dering the harmony of this triple exii^tence, that is, its co- 

 equal diff"usion over every portion of the frame as the corner- 

 stone of Physiognomy. For what is gained, he asked, 

 when the fact is admitted, that the finger of one man will 

 not harmonize with the hand of another, or the nose of 

 one individual will not congenialize with his neighbour's 

 features? The old objection of the Antiphysiognomist 

 will immediately recur : ' I grant the indivickiality of all 

 human forms, but T doubt the connexion of internal orga- 

 nization with that individuality.' The argument, there- 

 fore, merely goes to prove, that there is as great a diffe- 

 rence between the mental as between the personal charac- 

 ters of mankind, and not that the mental is influenced of 

 necessity by the personal. Indeed, if it were necessary to 

 prove this harmony, the argument of Lavaterwas superero- 

 gatory ; because any one who frequents a theatre, or a 



•masquerade. 



