AND CRANIOGNOMY. 



439 



Academy; and in the separate writings of Lancisi, Haller, and Buffon; it 

 was not till the appearance of the elegant and popular work of M. Lavater, 

 the well-known dean of Zurich, that physiognomy was again able to establish 

 itself as a scientific pursuit in the good opinion of mankind. 



The two grand objects of M. Lavater were to clear physiognomy of its 

 mystical and other adventitious connexions, and to advance it to the rank of 

 an exact and demonstrable science. The first of these was as judicious as 

 the second was absurd : for he himself was at the time in possession of 

 nothing more than a certain number of detached facts or fragments, which he 

 did not venture to communicate to the world in any higher form than that 

 of essays. His work is chiefly distinguished by a spirit of analysis, and at 

 times of anatomy, to which no other work on the subject had hitherto pre- 

 tended. Instead of generalizing the human form, and taking the features by 

 the group, as was the case with Aristotle, and is the case with mankind at 

 large, he aimed at separating the features from each other, and endeavoured 

 to assign to each its peculiar bearing. And, fwlly believing that the general 

 character of the mental disposition runs with a uniform and uninterrupted 

 harmony through every feature and every organ, he frequently trusted to a 

 single feature or a single organ for its developement. In doing which he 

 usually selected such as were least flexible, and by the mass of mankind 

 least suspected ; as the form of the bones, particularly those of the head or 

 face ; the shape of the ears, hands, feet, or even of the nails ; and he hereby 

 endeavoured to baffle all dissimulation, and to avoid confounding the perma- 

 nent temper with those occasional flights of passion by which the flexible 

 features are disturbed and varied. 



We have not time to follow up M. Lavater's hypothesis into these points 

 of detail, nor would it be altogether worth our while if we had. The author 

 was a learned and most excellent man, but at the same time a man of a warm 

 and enthusiastic imagination ; and notwithstanding that his remarks are in 

 many respects precise, and his distinctions acute, and affbrd evident proof 

 of their being the result of actual observation ; and notwithstanding, more- 

 over, that they are richly illustrated, after the laudable example of Baptista 

 Porta, by expressive and elegant engravings, — the declamatory tenor of his 

 style, the singularity and extravagance of many of his opinions, his peremp- 

 tory and decisive tone upon the most vague and disputable topics, his 

 puffing up trifles into matters of magnitude, and the absurd extreme to which 

 he pushed his hypothesis, so as to make it embrace and exemplify the face 

 and features of all nature as well as those of man and the higiier ranks of 

 quadrupeds ; — these and various other sproutings of the warm and luxuriant 

 fancy I have just referred to, prevented his work from obtaining more than 

 a transient popularity ; and it sunk beneath the attacks of M. Formey and 

 other continental writers, who laboured, and some of them perhaps disinge- 

 nuously, to point out its defects and extravagances. 



Perhaps one of the most whimsical of M. Lavater's opinions is, that no 

 person can make a good physiognomist unless he is a well-proportioned and 

 handsome man ; a position which seems to be altogether at variance with his 

 own progress in the study, for the dean of Zurich had few pretensions to 

 such a figure. Another singularity of opinion was that of his extending his 

 physiognomic characters to the peculiarity of the handvvriting ; and in this 

 instance reviving the reveries of many of the ancient mystics, who pretended 

 to confide in the same mark; while by interweaving into the body of this 

 science a belief in apparitions, and this, too, upon very peculiar and fanciful 

 principles, he has indirectly connected it with the dark and exploded study 

 of divination, from which it was one of his first and most prominent objects 

 to separate it. 



I will only farther observe, that in the wide extent to which he carried this 

 favourite and fascinating science of his heart, he describes the whole mate- 

 rial world as subject to its dominion; amuses us with a developement of the 

 propensities, partialities, and ruling passions, not only of men and quadrupeds, 

 Dut of birds, fishes, reptiles, and insects, from the unequivocal language of 



