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.

PHYSIOGNOMY

Is a word formed from the Greek φύσις, nature, and γνώσις, 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 last two 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 creations 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 entitled.

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 (philognomonica), in which he employs physiognomy as the generic term. There is a treatise likewise De Physiognomia Avium, written, we believe, by the same person. In the Magia Physiognomica of Galpar 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 acceptation of the word (a). At present 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 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 or no science, and of course could not be scientific physiognomists. Physiognomy, however, was much cultivated in Egypt and India; and from these countries brought to Greece.

(a) They'll find it the physiognomies Of th' planets all men's destinies. HUDIBRAS. 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 clasped 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 of mind; a human intellect is never found in the corporeal form of a beast. The mind and body reciprocally affect each other; thus in intoxication and mania the mind exhibits the affections of the body; and in fear, joy, &c., the body displays the affections of the mind.

From such facts he argues, that when in man a particular bodily character appears, which by prior experience and observation has been found uniformly accompanied by a certain mental disposition, with which therefore it must have been necessarily connected; we are intitled in all such cases to infer the disposition from the appearance. Our 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 creature, denote the strength and courage of that noble animal; while 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 correspondent dispositions, so far as observed; he illustrates them by the analogy just mentioned, and in some instances attempts to account for them by physiological reasoning.

At the early period in which Aristotle wrote, his theory, plausible certainly, and even probable, displays his usual penetration and a considerable degree of knowledge. He distinctly notices individual physiognomy, national physiognomy, and comparative physiognomy. The state of knowledge in his time did not admit of a complete elucidation of his general principles; on that account his enumeration of particular observations and precepts is by no means so well founded or so accurate as his method of study. Even his style, concise and energetic, was inimical to the subject; which, to be made clearly comprehensible, must require frequent paraphrases. Aristotle's performance, however, such as it is, has been taken as the groundwork and model of every physiognomical treatise that has since appeared.

The imitators of this great man in the 16th and 17th centuries have even copied his language and manner, which are sententious, indiscriminate, and obscure. His comparative physiognomy of men with beasts has been frequently though not universally adopted. Besides his treatise expressly on the subject, many incidental observations on physiognomy will be found interperled through his other works, particularly in his history of animals.

Next after Aristotle, his disciple and successor Theophrastus would deserve to be particularly mentioned as a writer on the subject in question. His ethical characters, a singular and entertaining performance, composed at the age of 99, form a distinct treatise on a most important branch of physiognomy, the physiognomy of manners; but the translations and imitations of Launy, Bruyere are so excellent, that by referring to them we do greater justice than would otherwise be in our power, both to Theophrastus and to our readers. We cannot, however, omit observing, that the accuracy of observation and liveliness of description displayed in the work of Theophrastus will preserve it high in classical rank, while the science of man and the prominent characteristics of human society continue to be objects of attention.

Polemon of Athens, Adamantius the sophist, and several others, wrote on the subject about the same period. Lately there was published a collection of all the authors on Greek authors on physiognomy; the book is entitled Physiognomiae veteris scriptores Graeci, Gr. et Lat. ed. Franzio Altenb. 1783, 8vo. From the number of 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 have for cause to suspect from the story told by Apion of Apelles: "Imaginem adeo similitudinis indistincte pinxit, ut (incredibile dictu) Apion Grammaticus Scriptum relinquisset quendam ex facie hominis ad divinationem (quos melapocopos vocant) ex illa divisa aut futura mortis annos, aut praeterita." The noviciates of the Pythagorean school were subjected to the physiognomic observation of their teachers, and it is probable the first physiognomists by profession among the Greeks were of this sect. They too, to whom, from the nature of their doctrines and discipline, mystery was familiar, were the first, it is likely, who exposed the science of physiognomy in Greece to disgrace, by blending with it 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 from thence to the decline of the empire under the later emperors, the science appears to have been cultivated as an important branch of erudition, and assumed as a profession by persons who had acquired a superior knowledge in it.

In the works of Hippocrates and Galen, many physiognomical observations occur. Cicero appears to have been peculiarly attached to the science. In his oration