, 1888-10-25
WINDOWS OF THE SOUL.
THE EYES AS A FEATURE IN ~.
TIONAL PHYSIOGNOMY.

Some poctical gentleman has called the
-eye1Ihc window Of the soul - and at all
times and among nearly all peoples It Is
regarded as the great feature of express
sion; that is, persons who are neither anna
teurs in nor professors OF that quasi
science physIognomy. These gentlemen
devote their time and treatises as much to
the nose rs to the eyes, ~propoUnding rnles
of character as deduced from the wrinkles
of the forehead and warts on the check,
writing lcarnedly of the lineaments of the
cheek, the Specification of the chin, the
index Of the mouth and a score of other
Universities Of feature.
First, as to the eyes as n feature in ma
tional ~physiognomy. Lavater, when dis
cussing this question, gives the following
MS the result of his observations: That
the Italians have small eyes; the Ger
mans light colOred eyes, surrounded with
many wrinkles; the English, strong, open,
liberal and steadfast eyes, and the Swiss
duh eyes.
The Laplanders, according to Button,
ave narrow eyes, the pupils of a yellow
brown, inclining to n black, and the eye
lids retiring toward the temple. The
eyes of the Tartars, he says, are small and
sunken, the eyebrows large, covering the
eyes, and the eyelids thick. The eyes of
the Chinese are small, their eyebrows
large and the eyelids raised.
The New Hollander had n dull, black
eye, thick eyebrows n eyelids half shut
"a habit acquired in fancy to preserve the
eyes from the gnats. To the Spaniards
Button gives "good eyes, to the Goths,
blue eyes, and to the Finlanders, heavy
lids and the iris of n deep yellow.
Winckelmann holds the opinion that the
shape and color of the eyes are very
1araa1v tho insult Of plin,uta upI Dfbar at
rect conditions. Thus, he says, the small,
half closed, blinking eyes of the Esqui-
are due TO natures attempt to pre-
serve the sight from the dry, cold air
and the effusion of light from the snow
amidst which they live. The small eyes
of all the distant and northern nations,
he says in another place, are in conse-
quence of the imperfection Of their
growth. 1t is upon the authority of a
philosophic writer named De PAW that
the Peruvian has an eye the apple of
which is black and the white not very
clear.
This reminds one of the description by
Russell of a Senegambian's eye, which he
likens to a boiled prune set in a plover's
egg. Another authority states that the
eye of the Turks is devoid of passion or
great enterprise, but that it is eloquent in
all the penetration of benevolent cunning.
This writer also says that the "silent
eye of the Englishman seeks not to
please" that the eye of the Frenchman is
'.vivacious and unstable;n that the Ital-
JAMS is ardent and the Dutchman's
half open and without thought
Eyes nave always been regarded as
tribal indications. Iacitus, for example,
describes the Germans as ''herce, with
blue eyes and red hair" The Celts are
described as swarthy and dark eyed, the
Gauls are red haired and light eyed,
while the Nubians and Egyptians have
always been spoken of as dark eyed.
These characteristics have not apparently
changed, and it may be said roundly that
the people of the temperate zone have
generally light Colored eyes, while those
of the extreme zones are dark. OF the
races, the only one that can be said to be
light eyed is the Caucasian, and ever this
race is by no means uniform rs to color
in its eyes. The entire human history
goes to prove that the light haired, blue
eyed races are capable of the highest
degree Of civilization, but it does not by
any means prove that the highest degree
of civilization is confined to the blonde
races. There was n period when blue
eyed persons We're rarely seen, and today
seven-eighths of the worlds inhabitants
have dark eyes. Not only is the majority
on the side of the dark eyed, but statistics
would seem to indicate that that majority
is increasing. In n paper read some timS
ago before the Swedish Anthropologica!
society it was stated that brown eyes were
becoming more common in Switzerland,
North Germany, Belgium and Sweden,
and that out of every 100 sets of light eyed
parents 5G per cent. of the children had
dark eyes, In this calculation blue gray
and gray eyes were classified rs blue, and,
If there is any weight to be attached tc
the report, 1t would show that blue eyes,
even in n blue eyed country, are becoming
decidedly scarce, which ought to be good
news for the blondes.
1t will be sequential here to quote a
paragraph or two from Lavater concern
ing the color Of the eyes. "'The colors
most common to the eyes" he writes,
''are the orange, yellow, green, blue, gray
and gray mixed with white. The blue
and orange are most predominant and are
often ound in the same eye Ewes
supposed to be black, " says Button, ''are
only yellow, brown or n deep orange; to
convince ourselves of which we need but
look at them closely, for when seen at a
distance or turned toward the light, they
appear to be black, because the yellow
brown color is so contrasted to the white
of the eye that the opposition makes it
E'llNo'N 'ANNhs ny CO hloO U u lGSS uuTh
color pass for black, but are not esteemed
so fine as the other, because the contrast
is not so great. There also are yellow
n bright yellow eyes which do not APP
pear black because the colors are not deep
enough to be overpowered by the shade.
1t is not to perceive shades Of
orange, yellow, gray and blue in the
same eye, ind wherever blue ap-
pears, however small the tincture, it be
comes the predominant color and APP
pears in streaks over the whole iris. The
orange is in flakes round, and at some
little distance from the pupil, but is so
stronl ly effaced by the blue that the eye
appears wholly blue, and the mixture Of
orange is only perceived when closely in
spected. The finest eyes are those which
we imagine TO be black or blue. Vivacity
and fire, which are the principal charac-
t]eristics of the eyes, are the more emitted
when the colors are deep and contrasted
than when slightly shaded. Black eyes
have most strength of expression and