The Corvallis gazette. [volume] (Corvallis, Or.) 1862-1899, 1884-03-28
THE HUMAN FACE DIVINE.
The Windows from Which the Real
Man Peeps---Faces Which Resem-
BILE Animals.

The Windows from men tne AeAA
Man Peeps---Faces Which Resem-
BILE Animals.
ugnatius Donnelly in The Current
If this world-conquering creature,
man, this "quintessence of dust, this
paragon of animals,
s'Midway 'twixt nothing and the Deity"
is, and should be, the chief study of
man; then, surely, our attention should
be largely concentrated upon the face
of man. Behind it lies the masterful
brain, the dome, in which all that is of
God in us, dwells; the. shapely temple
to which the Everlasting Consciousness
has deigned to descend; amid whose
groined arches thoughts may move as
pure and bright as the angels, with
wings as light and tireless as those with
which they have winnowed the reaches
of the heavens.
Through this face the soul looks out.
Here are the windows from which, cur
tain them as we will, the real man
peeps forth: lodging back it may be,
like an evil thing, and hiding while it
looks, and yet revealing in glimpses the
features the tenant of the head would
hide from the passers-by.
Upon the few square inches of this
conference.-the patch little bigger
than your hand-there can be more
written than all your libraries will hold; !;
the infinitely varied, multitudinous
emotions, passions, hates, loves, eleva-
tions, degradations, greatnesses and
meannesses of this beast-god, man
this Assyrian idol, with the body of
bull and the wings of a cherub.
And what a lesson is preached to our
vanity in this oneness of design which
runs through the faces of all animals !!
How human are, oftentimes, the eyes of
dogs and horses! No wonder the an
cient world thought that the souls of
their ancestors contemplated them
through the countenances of the
dumb brutes AROUND them. 1 have
known a dog to look at me in
such a penetrating, reasoning, rea-
sonable way, that 1 felt uncomfortable
under his gaze. And the monkeys!
They have the most uncanny express
sions of all I remember one that
looked like an old lawyer, troubled
with dyspepsia, who had lived on
brown bread and precedents, until
he was all withered up; but the eyes
fixed me, as if he had me on the wit
ness-stand, and was about to ask me "a
leading question; "a sort of hairy,
shriveled Iulkinghorn, or Jaggers.
But God, to use a familiar expression,
"rubs it in" He not only plans the
face of Jupiter Tonans, or Venus
of Milo, on the same plan as an alliga-
tor or shark, bat he groups men by
their prevailing expressions into animal
groups; thus still farther shocking our
vanity by linking us with the world be-
low US.
Who does not know the sheep-faced
man? The words have passed into an
adjective. The mild, peaceful, herb
ivorous, gregarious nature, million
of them all alike; body of vast inter
est and use to those who prey on their
fellow men. On the other hand ,whohas
not seen the wolf-faced man? The head
inclined to droop; even the os coccyx,
if examined, would be found at a right
angle inward to the spine; the sneak
ing gait; the bag under the eyes; which
are melancholy, watchful, hungry, fur
tive, expectant-a natural beast of prey
He will usually be found lodging
around the thickets of courts and
sheritfS' offices.
Then there is the mastiff- faced man
heavy-jawed, set, resolute, generally
honest, with more or less of ponder
Gus, bank president dignity about the
joints.
Observe the pugilist and his bulldog.
They are both of the same type:-
coarse, pertinacious, grim, combative,
materialistic, animal the same kind
of soul looks out of both pairs of eyes i;
there is not a hair's-breadth of differ
ence between them. Who shall say
that when death comes they may not,
to use Mr.. Lincolns expression, "swap
overcoats, and the bulldog become
pugilist and the pugilist a bull-dog;
the ex-man totteriug along bow-legged
and belligerent, at the heels of the ex-
dog? And thus nature, which hath
both bran and meal" and never lets
anything go to loss, will keep up an
endless succession of bulldogs and
pugilists.