PHYSIOGNOMY is a word formed from the Greek φυ σις, nature, and γινασκω, I know, and it is the name of a science which occupied much of the attention of ancient philosophers, but since the revival of learning has in a great degree been disregarded.

It does not appear that the ancients extended the compass of physiognomy beyond man, or at least animated nature. But the study of that art was revived in the middle ages, when those who treated of the subject strained their speculations far beyond the ancient limits. The extension of the signification of the term was adopted universally by those naturalists who admitted the theory of signatures; and physiognomy came thus to mean the knowledge of the internal properties of any corporeal existence from the external appearances. Baptista Porta, for instance, a physiognomist and philosopher of considerable eminence, wrote a treatise on the physiognomy of plants, in which he employs physiognomy as the generic term; and there is likewise a treatise de Physiognomia Avium, written, we believe, by the same person. In the Magia Phy-siognomica of Gaspar Schottus, human physiognomy is described as merely a subdivision of the science.

Boyle, too, adopts the same extensive signification. At present, however, physiognomy seems to mean no more than a knowledge of the moral character and extent of intellectual powers of human beings, from their external appearance and manners. In the Berlin Transactions for 1769 and 1770, there appears a controversial discussion on the subject of the definition of physiognomy, between Pernetty and Le Cat, two authors of some note. The former contends, that all knowledge whatever is physiognomy; the latter confines the subject to the human face. Soon afterwards appeared the celebrated book of Lavater, who defines physiognomy to be the art of discovering the interior of man by means of his exterior; but in different passages of his work he evidently favours the more extended signification of Pernetty.

Physiognomy was much cultivated in Egypt and India; and from these countries Pythagoras probably introduced the rudiments of this science, as he did those of many others, more important, into Greece. Plato also mentions the subject; and it is formally treated of by Aristotle, in a book which he has allotted to the purpose.

Physiognomy, he conceives, had been treated of in three ways. Some philosophers classed animals into genera, and ascribed to each genus a certain mental disposition, corresponding to their corporeal appearance; whilst others made a further distinction by dividing the genera into species. Amongst men, for instance, they distinguished the Thracians, the Scythians, the Egyptians, and whatever nations were strikingly different in manners and habits, to whom accordingly they assigned the distinctive physiognomical characteristics. A third set of physiognomists judged of the actions and manners of the individual, and presumed that certain manners proceeded from certain dispositions. But according to the method of treating the subject adopted by Aristotle, a peculiar form of body is invariably accompanied by a peculiar disposition of mind, and a human intellect is never found in the corporeal form of a beast. The mind and body reciprocally affect each other. Thus [7:17:576]in intoxication and mania the mind exhibits the affections of the body; and in fear, joy, and other emotions, the body displays the affections of the mind.

From such facts he argues, that when in man there appears a particular bodily character, which by prior experience and observation has been found uniformly accompanied by a certain mental disposition, and with which therefore it must have been necessarily connected, we are in all such cases entitled to infer the disposition from the appearance. Such observations, he conceives, may be drawn from other animals as well as from men. For, as a lion possesses one bodily form and mental character, a hare another, the corporeal characteristics of the lion, such as strong hair, deep voice, large extremities, discernible in a human character, denote the strength and courage of that noble animal; whilst the slender extremities, soft down, and other features of the hare, visible in a man, betray the mental character of that pusillanimous creature. Upon this principle Aristotle treats of the corporeal features of man, and the corresponding dispositions, as far as these have been observed; he illustrates them by the analogy just mentioned, and in some instances attempts to account for them by physiological reasoning.

Aristotle was followed by Theophrastus, whose ethical characters form a distinct treatise on that branch of physiognomy which may be called the physiognomy of manners; and the latter was in his turn succeeded by others. There is indeed a considerable collection of Greek authors on physiognomy, entitled Physiognomiae Veteris Scriptores Graeci, Graeceet Latine i 1780, in 8vo. From these authors, it appears that the science was much cultivated in Greece; but the professors seem soon to have connected with it something of the marvellous. This we are led to suspect from the story told by Apion of Apelles. The noviciates of the Pythagorean school were subjected to physiognomical observation by their teachers, and it is probable the first physiognomists by profession amongst the Greeks were of this sect. They, too, to whom, from the nature of their doctrines and discipline, mystery was familiar, were probably the first who, in Greece, exposed the science of physiognomy to disgrace, by blending it with the art of divination. From the period of which we have been treating to the close of the Roman republic, nothing worthy of remark occurs in the literary history of physiognomy. About the last-mentioned era, however, and thence to the decline of the empire under the later emperors, the science appears to have been cultivated as an important branch of erudition.

In the works of Hippocrates and Galen there occur many physiognomical observations. Cicero appears to have been peculiarly attached to the science. In his oration against Piso, and in that in favour of Roscius, the reader will at the same time perceive in what manner the orator employs physiognomy to his purposes, and find a curious instance of the ancient manner of oratorical abuse. Many physiognomical remarks are likewise to be found in the writings of Sallust, Suetonius, Seneca, Pliny, Aulus Gellius, Petro nius, Plutarch, and others. That the science was practised as a profession in the Roman empire, ample evidence may be discovered in the writings of the authors just mentioned. Suetonius, for instance, in his Life of Titus, mentions that Narcissus employed a physiognomist to examine the features of Britannicus, and he predicted that the empire would devolve on Titus.

The science of physiognomy shared the fate of all others, when the Roman empire was overthrown by the northern barbarians. But about the beginning of the sixteenth century it began to attract notice; and from that time till the close of the seventeenth, it was one of the most fashionable studies. Within the space here mentioned appeared almost all the modern authors who have written upon this subject. 1

Soon after the controversy in the Berlin Transactions, the great work of Lavater attracted the attention of the literary world. The work itself is magnificent; and that circumstance, as well as the nature of the subject, has contributed to extend its fame. With the scholastic and systematic method adopted by the physiognomists of the last and preceding centuries, Lavater rejected their manner of writing, which was dry, concise, indeterminate, and general. His own remarks are. for the most part, precise, and frequently founded on distinctions extremely acute. His opinions on the physiognomy of the ears, hands, nails, and feet of the human species, on hand-writing, on the physiognomy of birds, insects, reptiles, and fishes, are obviously premature, as hitherto no sufficient number of accurate observations have been made, in Regard to these particulars, to authorize any conclusion. He has also erred in the opposite extreme, when treating of the important topic of national physiognomy, where he has by no means prosecuted the subject so far as facts might have warranted.

In the Berlin Transactions for the year 1775, there appears a formal attack upon Lavater’s work by Μ. Formey. After disputing the propriety of the extensive signification applied by Lavater and Pernetty to the term physiognomy, Formey adopts nearly the same definition which we have proposed near the beginning of this article. He allows that the mental character is intimately connected with, and sensibly influenced by, every fibre of the body; but his principal argument against physiognomy is, that the human frame is liable to innumerable accidents, by which it may be changed in its external appearance, without any correspondent change of the disposition; so that it surpasses the extent of the skill of mortals to distinguish the modifications of feature which are natural from those which may be accidental. Although, therefore, the science of physiognomy may be founded in truth, he infers that the Deity only can exercise it. Formey further contends, that education, diet, climate, and sudden emotions, nay, even the temperaments of our ancestors, affect the cast of human features; so that the influence of mental character on these features may be so involved with, or hidden by, accidental circumstances, that the study of physiognomy must ever be attended with hopeless uncertainty.

1 Such as Cocles, Baptista Porta, Honoratus Nuquetius, Jacobus de Indagine, Alstedius, Michael Schottus, Gaspar Schottus, Cardan, Taisnierus, Fludd, Behmen, Barclay, Claromontius, Conringius, the commentaries of Augustin Niphus and Camillus Balbus on the Physiognomica of Aristotle; Spontanus, Andreas Henricus, Joannes Digander, Goclenius, Alexander Achillinus, Praetorius, Belot, Gra-taiorus, and others, noticed in the Polyhistor of Morhoff (vol. i. lib. i. cap. 15, sect. 4, and vol. ii. lib. iii. cap. i. sect. 4).
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