CHAP. VI.

The universal Excellence of the Form of Man.

EACH creature is indispensable in the immensity of God's creation; but each creature does not know it is thus indispensable. Of all earth's creatures, man alone rejoices in his indispensability. No man can render any other man dispensable. The place of no man can be supplied by another.

This belief of the indispensability and individuality of all men, and in our own metaphysical indispensability and individuality, is one of the unacknowledged, the noble fruits of physiognomy; a fruit pregnant with most precious seed, whence shall spring lenity and love. Oh, may posterity behold them flourish! may future ages repose under their shade! The most deformed, the most corrupt of men, is still indispensable in this world of God, and is more or less capable of knowing his own individuality and unsuppliable indispensability. The wickedest, the most deformed of men, is still more noble than the most beauteous and perfect animal. Contemplate, O man! what thy nature is, not what it might be, not what is wanting. Humanity, amid all its distortions, will ever remain wonderous humanity!

Incessantly might I repeat doctrines like this:

Art thou better, more beauteous, nobler, than many others of thy fellow-creatures? If so, rejoice, and ascribe it not to thyself, but to Him who, from the same clay, formed one vessel for honour, another for dishonour; to Him who, without thy advice, without thy prayer, without any desert of thine, caused thee to be what thou

art.

Yea, to Him!" for what hast thou, O man! that thou didst not receive? Now, if thou didst receive, why dost thou glory as if thou hadst not received?"" Can the eye say to the hand, I have no need of thee?"-" He that oppresseth the poor, reproacheth his Maker."-"God hath made of one blood all nations of men."-Who more deeply, more internally, feels all these divine truths than the physiognomist? the true physiognomist, who is not merely a man of literature, a reader, a reviewer, an author, but -a man!

I am ready to acknowledge, that the most humane physiognomist, he who so eagerly searches whatever is good, beautiful, and noble in nature; who delights in the ideal; who duly exercises, nourishes, refines his taste, with humanity more improved, more perfect, more holy; even he is in frequent danger, at least is frequently tempted, to turn from the common herd of depraved men; from the deformed, the foolish, the apes, the hypocrites, the vulgar of mankind; in danger of forgetting that these misshapen forms, these apes, these hypocrites, also are men; and that

notwithstanding all his imagined or his real excellence, all his noble feelings, the purity of his views (and who has cause to boast of these?), all the firmness, the soundness of his reason, the feelings of his heart, the powers with which he is endowed, still he is, very probably, from his own moral defects, in the eyes of his superior beings, in the eyes of his much more righteous brother, as distorted as the most ridiculous, most depraved moral or physical monster appears to be in his eyes.

Liable as we are to forget this, reminding is necessary both to the writer and reader of this work. Forget not, that even the wisest of men are men. Forget not how much positive good may be found even in the worst, and that they are as necessary, as good in their place, as thou art. Are they not equally indispensable, equally unsuppliable? They possess not, either in mind or body, the smallest thing exactly as thou dost. Each is wholly, and in every part, as individual as thou art. Consider each as if he were single in the universe; then wilt thou discover powers and excellencies in him, which, abstractedly of comparison, deserve all attention and admiration. Compare him afterwards with others, his similarity, his dissimilarity to so many of his fellowcreatures. How must this incite thy amazement! How wilt thou value the individuality, the indispensability of his being! How wilt thou wonder at the harmony of his parts, each contributing to form one whole; at their rela

tion, the relation of his millionfold individuality, to such multitudes of other individuals! Yes, we wonder at and adore the so simple, yet so infinitely varied expression of Almighty power inconceivable, so especially and so gloriously revealed in the nature of man.

ture.

No man ceases to be a man, how low soever he may sink beneath the dignity of human naNot being beast, he still is capable of amendment, of approaching perfection. The worst of faces still is a human face. Humanity ever continues the honour and ornament of

man.

It is as impossible for a brute animal to become man, although he may in many actions approach, or almost surpass him, as for man to become a brute, although many men indulge themselves in actions which we cannot view in brutes without abhorrence.

But the very capacity of voluntarily debasing himself in appearance even below brutality, is the honour and privilege of man. This very capacity of imitating all things by an act of his will, and the powers of his understanding, this very capacity man only has, beasts have not. The countenances of beasts are not susceptible of any remarkable deterioration, nor are they capable of any remarkable amelioration or beautifying. The worst of the countenances of men may be still more debased; but they may also, to a certain degree, be improved and ennobled. The degree of perfection, or degradation, of

which man is capable, cannot be described. For this reason, the worst countenance has a wellfounded claim to the notice, esteem, and hope of all good men. Again, in every human countenance, however debased, humanity is still visible, that is, the image of the Deity.

I have seen the worst of men, in their worst of moments, yet could not all their vice, blasphemy, and oppression of guilt, extinguish the light of good that shone in their countenances, the spirit of humanity, the ineffaceable traits of internal, external perfectibility. The sinner we would exterminate, the man we must embrace. O physiognomy, what a pledge art thou of the everlasting clemency of God towards man! O man, rejoice with whatever rejoices in its existence, and contemn no being whom God doth not contemn!

CHAP. VII.

Of the Forehead.

I SHALL appropriate this and some of the following chapters to remarks on certain individual parts of the human body. The following are my own remarks on foreheads.

The form, height, arching, proportion, obliquity, and position of the scull, or bone of the forehead, shew the propensity, degree of power,