Facial Expression. 67 



though I include permanent form to a qualified extent in this 

 definition, I am careful to distinguish between it and that much 

 more important element in the case, the capacity for postural 

 alterations of the various features. The element of original 

 form, however, could no more be absolutely omitted from the 

 study of man's face, than could that of original sin from the 

 contemplation of his spiritual activities. At the same time 

 there is a danger o( making of the former a more important 

 matter than the true nature of the case will admit. To illus- 

 trate this point I need only refer to the system of Lavater, 

 elaborated on the basis of supposed resemblances in form 

 between certain features of the human face, and corresponding 

 (though often not analogous) structures in the heads of the 

 lower animals. You will remember those ingenious series of 

 graduated sketches, commencing with a frog or a bull, and 

 ending in each case in a human face, by which the clever Swiss 

 proved to general satisfaction that there are canine and bovine 

 types of human intellect accompanied by a corresponding type 

 of features ; and how quite a new interest was taken in the 

 habits of animals involved in the comparison, since it was 

 important to know what to anticipate in matters of conduct 

 from those of one's fellow-men who are afflicted with a frog- 

 like or ox-like type of countenance. This pre-Darwinian 

 phantasy maintained itself for years in the popular mind, as a 

 fact, not as a quaint conceit of fancy, notwithstanding the 

 accumulated evidence that an amphibious life was not suited to 

 men however frog-like, and that the example of Nebuchad- 

 nezzar had remained almost without a parallel in the history of 

 our race. Lavater's system probaby caught hold of the popular 

 imagination because it adapted itself so deftly to the conception 

 of that reflected human nature with which we have endowed 

 the animal world in the early moral stories of the nursery : 

 and this idea clings to the mind to some extent even in later 

 years, although we come to recognise that the moral sense of 

 animals, and their feelings, differ vastly from our own, at least in 

 degree if not also in kind. You will notice that I am here 

 speaking only of the form of the face as an element of expression. 



