Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 7.djvu/165

 THE PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.

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��the other as having hght and thin hair, soft and silky to the touch, would you for one moment suppose that the two persons would think and act alike? Or if I were to describe to you the leaden, downcast eye, the gross, inex- pressive face and stupid look of the phlegmatic temperament, in contrast with the penetrating, fiery eye, the rigid, contracted muscles and deter- mined look of the choleric man, could you possibly confound the moral and iotellectual traits of the two persons portrayed? If the historian should represent the traitor, Catiline, with a fair complexion, a placid countenance, azure eyes and golden locks, you would at once cry out, "How strange I" I always imagined that he had a dark and scowling face, overshadowed with beetling brows and raven locks. Sal- lust remarks that the face of the trai- tor, when dead, still retained the feroc- ity which characterized his mind while living. If a painter were to represent Lady Macbeth as a little, plump, red- faced, bustling body, with blue eyes and light complexion, all the world would chide him for his folly ; and why? Simply because such features and looks are never associated with the bloody drama which Lady Mac- beth caused to be enacted. Such a woman might be as wicked, but her wickedness would hardly be displayed in the same way. The whole soul of Lady Macbeth is revealed in her ad- dress to her husband :

•' Yoiir face, my thane, is as a book, where men

Mav read stranc'e matters : — To beguile the time.

Look like the time ; bear welcome in your eye.

Your hand, your tongue : look like inno- cent flower

But be the serpent mider it."

We see, therefore, that looks are often counterfeited ; hence, they are not a true test of inward purposes and dispositions. There are remarkable exceptions, too, to the natural language of the face and features. An ugly face is no sure evidence of villainy,

��unless the habitual indulgence of evil passions has given a corresponding sinister expression to the countenance, thereby manifesting, by the fixed post- ure of the muscles, the favorite in- clinations of the mind. The sage Valesius, in his " Sacred Philosophy," proposed to introduce the science of physiognomy into courts of law. " When two persons, accused of crime," he says, "are brought before a judge, let him unhesitatingly select the most ill-favored of them and put him to the torture." This is the lan- guage of an enthusiast. It is like what we frequently hear from phrenol- ogists, who profess to determine accu- rately a person's character from the head. A man will often pay an itine- rant lecturer a dollar for a graduated chart of his intellectual and moral powers, and retire very much elated with the discovery of virtues and ca- pacities before hidden even to his inmost consciousness ; when his wife or child or nearest neighbor, could (if consulted) have given a far more accurate map of the same " unknown interior." Such sciences, if they may be dignified with that high-sounding title, are to be treated like Egyptian hieroglyphics — dark, obsure, and enig- matical ; and yet highly significant and instructive, if rightly interpreted. The laws of expression are not like those of gravitation, immutable ; they are modified by climate and habit, by health and disease, and by all those nameless social influences which make men to differ from each other. To know the language of expression we must first learn its alphabet by minute and careful study ; and we shall be- come convinced that every style of face and form may, like the Chinese signs (or letters), have a different meaning according as it is differently accented, intoned or expressed. An active mind sometimes becomes unac- countably associated with a sluggish body. David Hume looked more like a turtle- eating alderman than a philosopher. His face was broad and flat ; his mouth wide and inexpressive ;

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