PHYSIOGNOMONICS

PHYSIOGNOMONICS, among physicians, denote such signs as, being taken from the countenance, serve to indicate the state, disposition, &c. both of the

body and mind: and hence the art of reducing these signs to practice is termed physiognomy.

IS a word formed from the Greek physis nature, and gnome I know. It is the name of a science which occupied much of the attention of ancient philosophers, and which, since the revival of learning, has in a great degree been disregarded. Till of late it has seldom in modern times been mentioned, except in conjunction with the exploded arts of magic, alchemy, and judicial astrology. Within the two last centuries, no doubt, the bounds of human knowledge have been greatly extended by means of the patient pursuit of fact and experiment, instead of the hasty adoption of conjecture and hypothesis. We have certainly discovered many of the ancient systems to be merely creatures of imagination. Perhaps, however, in some instances, we have decided too rapidly, and rejected real knowledge, which we would have found it tedious and troublesome to acquire. Such has been the fate of the science of physiognomy; which certainly merits to be considered in a light very different from alchemy and those other fanciful studies with which it had accidentally been coupled. The work lately published by M. Lavater on the subject has indeed excited attention, and may perhaps tend to replace physiognomy in that rank in the circle of the sciences to which it seems to be intitled.

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, misled probably by the comprehensiveness of the etymological meaning of the word, or incited by the prevalent taste for the marvellous, those who treated of the subject stretched the range of their speculation 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 (see SIGNATURE); and physiognomy came thus to mean, the knowledge of the internal properties of any corporeal existence from the external appearances. Joannes Baptista Porta, for instance, who was a physiognomist and philosopher of considerable eminence, wrote a treatise on the physiognomy of plants (physiognomonica), in which he employs physiognomy as the generic term. There is a treatise likewise De Physiognomia Animarum, written we believe by the same person. In the Magia Physiognomonica of Gaipar Schottus, physiognomia humana is made a subdivision of the science.

Boyle too adopts the extensive signification mentioned, which indeed seems to have been at one time the usual acceptance of the word (A). At present physiognomy seems to mean no more than "a know-

ledge of the moral character and extent of intellectual powers of human beings, from their external appearance and manners." In the Berlin Transactions for the years 1769 and 1770 there appears a long controversial discussion on the subject of the definition of physiognomy between M. Pernetty and M. Le Cat, two modern authors of some note. Pernetty contends, that all knowledge whatever is physiognomy; Le Cat confines the subject to the human face. Neither seems to have hit the medium of truth. Soon after the celebrated book of Lavater appeared. He indeed 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 extended signification of Pernetty. This work gave occasion to M. Formey's attack upon the science itself in the same Berlin Transactions for 1775. Formey strenuously controverts the extent assigned by Lavater to his favourite science.

Before the era of Pythagoras the Greeks had little Pythagoras or no science, and of course could not be scientific probably brought physiognomists. Physiognomy, however, was much this science cultivated in Egypt and India; and from these countries the sage of Samos probably introduced the rudiments of this science, as he did those of many others, generally deemed more important, into Greece.

In the time of Socrates it appears even to have been adopted as a profession. Of this the well-known anecdote of the decision of Zopyrus, on the real character of Socrates himself judging from his countenance, is sufficient evidence. Plato mentions the subject; and by Aristotle it is formally treated of in a book allotted to the purpose.

It may be worth while to give a brief outline of Aristotle's sentiments on the subject.

Physiognomy, he in substance observes, 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. Others made a farther distinction of dividing the genera into species. Among 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 the method of treating the subject adopted by Aristotle himself was this: A peculiar form of body is invariably accompanied by a peculiar disposition.