AND CRANIOGNOMY. 



497 



not give thei^selves the trouble to sift the wheat from the chafF. And 

 though occasionally started afresh in literary journals, and other publica- 

 tions of considerable merit and authority, as, for example, by Dr. Gwy- 

 ther and Dr. Parsons in our Philosophical Transactions ; by Pernetti and 

 Le Cat, in the Transactions of the Berlin 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 judi- 

 cious as the second was absurd : for he himself was at the time in posses- 

 sion 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 ana- 

 lysis, and at times of an-atomy, to which no other work on the subject 

 had hitherto pretended. Instead of generahzing 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, fully 

 "believing that the general character of the mental disposition runs with an 

 uniform and uninterrupted harmony through every feature and every or- 

 gan, 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 permanent 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 afford evident proof of their being the result of actual observations : 

 and notwithstanding, moreover, that they are richly illustrated, after the 

 laudable example of Baptista Porta, by expressive and elegant engravings — 

 the declamatory tenour of his style, the singularity and extravagance of 

 many of his opinions, his peremptory and decisive tone upon the most 

 vague and disputable topics, his puffing up trifles into matters of magni- 

 tude, and the absurd extremes 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 higher 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 disingenuously, to point out 

 its defects and extravagancies. 



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 

 ■mth his own progress in the study, for the Dean of Zurich had few pre- 



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