222 _ SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 
anatomical disfigurements were, until recently, the chief signs relied 
upon in the diagnosis of mental defect. They are best seen in the 
rarer clinical types of imbecility, in the mongol and the cretin, who, 
as already remarked, seem to suffer primarily from a deficiency of 
endocrine secretions.*° 
So far, it may be thought, bodily indications are of value only in 
cases of extreme pathological deviation—the obese, the emaciated, and 
the physically deformed; they are symptoms for the doctor, not signs 
for the plain man. Is there, then— 
«2» ») oart 
To find the mind’s construction in the face ’? 1 
And, if not, why do so many men and women of the world claim to 
divine character at a glance, and profess, on the basis of a first impres- 
sion and a short superficial inspection, to gauge intelligence and tem- 
perament, even among their normal fellow-creatures, with much the 
same exactitude which is conceded to the dog-fancier, the sheep-dealer, 
and the fellow with an eye for horseflesh in their somewhat lowlier 
spheres? That their intuitions (as they term them) often correlate 
highly with independent and trustworthy estimates has been shown 
statistically time after time. Upon what do they rely? Is there a 
sort of moral clairvoyance confined only to a gifted few? Or is the 
miracle of insight into another, a knack that each can achieve? In 
part these judges of men are aided, more than they themselves suspect, 
by semi-social criteria—accent, phraseology, manners, the elegance 
of handwriting, and the tidiness of clothes. Stevenson, you will 
remember, has declared that ‘an undoubted power of diagnosis rests 
with the practised Umbrella-philosopher; for, whereas a face is given 
us ready-made, each umbrella is selected from a shopful as being most 
consonant with the purchaser’s disposition.’ ’* And other interviewers, 
besides Sherlock Holmes, draw unpalatable inferences from our taste 
in hats, and socks, and coloured ties. For the rest, so far as their 
procedure is unprejudiced by pseudo-scientific reading, it seems to 
depend chiefly upon inferences, conscious or unconscious, not so much 
from bodily structure or build, as from bodily posture and movement, 
particularly the finer movements of the hand, of the eye, of the lips 
and mouth, and of the vocal organs in speech. And the principle is 
sound. If you are buying anything that works you ask first to see it 
working, be it only for a second, and only as a sample. So with the 
connoisseur of human creatures, it is function rather than framework 
that should count. In the face, it is not the hard, immutable gristle 
and bone, but the soft and mobile mask of muscle that the sound 
19 Many of the so-called stigmata, however, together with the mental dulness 
they are supposed to signify, are largely attributable to petty ailments of early 
childhood—vickets, chronic respiratory catarrh, and nasal obstruction from 
adenoid growths. 
1 Macbeth, I., iv., 12. 
12 College Papers, iv., ‘The Philosophy of Umbrellas.’ As to handwriting, 
those who smile at the claims of the graphologist may be reminded that Binet, 
and many experimentalists and pathologists since, have not scorned to look for 
indications of character and mental derangement in the size, and shape, and 
steadiness of the letters we trace with the pen. 
