PLACE the Cuts to front the pages as marked in the plates: I. EXTRACTS FROM AUTHORS, WITH REMARKS. A. SOME PHYSIOGNOMONICAL EXTRACTS FROM AN ESSAY INSERTED IN THE DEUTSCHEN MUSEUM (A GERMAN JOURNAL OR REVIEW.) I SHALL only extract some particular observations from this essay; and, in general, only those which I suppose to be importantly true, importantly false, or ill defined. 1. "We are told that men with arched and pointed noses are witty; and that the blunt nosed are not so." A more accurate definition is necessary, which, without drawing, is almost impossible. Is it meant, by arched noses, arched in length, or in breadth? How arched? This is almost as indeterminate as when we speak of arched foreheads. All foreheads are arched. Innumerable noses are arched; the most witty and the most stupid. Where is the highest point of arching? Where does it begin? What is its extent? What its strength? It is true that people with tender, thin, sharply defined, angular, noses, pointed below, and something inclined toward the lip, are witty, when no other features contradict these tokens; but that people with blunt noses are not so is not entirely true. It can only be said of certain blunt noses, for there are others of this kind extremely witty, though their wit is certainly of a very different kind to that of the pointed nose. 2. "It is asked" (supposing for a moment that the arched and the blunt nose denote the presence or absence of wit)" is the arched nose the mere sign that a man is witty, which supposes his wit to originate in some occult cause; or is the nose itself the cause of wit ?" I answer sign, cause, and effect combined. Sign; for it betokens the wit; is an involuntary expression of wit. Cause; at least cause that the wit is not greater, less, or of a different quality; boundary cause. Effect; produced by the quantity, mea |