THE PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
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��gle with the forehead ; those of men recede, till in the best modeled heads the organs of respiration and mastica- tion fall beneath the overhanging brow. The forehead, more than any other part, characterizes the human counte- nance as the seat of thought, the tab- let where intellect has set her seal. ^' F/ons hominis says Pliny, "■ trisii- iicE, hilaritaiis, clementice, severiiatis index est." The old painters and statuaries were acute observers of nature. In the best specimens of an- cient art, particularly in purely ideal representations, the cranium is elevated and brought forward so as to give pe- culiar fullness and capacity to the fore- head. The other features are suffi- ciently prominent to give dignity and manliness to the countenance. Some physiologists contend that the promi- nence of the central and lower organs of the face indicates no moral likeness to the brutes. "There is nothing in common," says Sir Charles Bell, " be- tween the human nose and the snout of a beast. The latter has reference only to the procuring and mastication of food ; while the mouth and nostrils. in man, have reference rather to the functions of respiration and speech." This is not confirmed by observation. As a general rule, large features indi- cate strength and force of character ; small and contracted features indicate acuteness and penetration, but in pro- portion as the central organs of the face approach the type of the brute, they reveal brutal propensities. The man to whom nature has given a low and depressed brow, with extended jaws, projecting teeth, and a capacious mouth, will not ordinarily make a very favorable impression upon strangers. These features are not, to be sure, cer- tain evidences of brutality, still they are associated in the popular belief with such qualities. The hooked nose and gray eyes peculiar to Jewish land- sharks, are selected by novelists to portray the miser. It is said that no great achievement was ever performed by a man with a nose ntrousst. The voluntary turning up of the nose is the
��index of pride and hauteur. In a word the nose is a very important and signif- icant feature of the face. I saw a man once who had lost his nose, and I mentally exclaimed, " Oh, how changed ! " No accurate observer of men will confide in a stranger, whose brain, like that of a cat, lies mostly behind his ears. Daring the last cen- tury. Prof. Camper, of Leydeii, an em- inent physician and naturalist, invented a method of determining the intellec- tual capacity of men by what he de- nominated the facial angle. This an- gle is formed by lines drawn as follows : the one through the external orifice of the ear to the base of the nose, hori- zontally ; the other, perpendicular to it, from the center of the forehead to the most prominent part of the upper jaw bone, the head being viewed in profile. By the opening of these two lines, the author thought he could measure, as by a sliding scale, the ca- pacities of inferior animals and men. The heads of birds display the smallest angle. The angle always increases in size as the animal approaches the hu- man type. In the lowest species of the ape, the facial angle is 42 degrees ; in those more nearly resembling man it is 50 degrees. Between the heads of Africans and Europeans there is an average difference of 10 degrees — the angle of the former being 70 degrees, that of the latter 80 degrees. On this difference " the superior beauty of the European certainly depends, while that high character which is so striking in some works of ancient statuary, as in the head of the Apollo Belvidere, and in the Medusa of Sisocles, is given by an angle of 100 degrees." This the- ory was supposed to afford a criterion for estimating the degree of intelligence and sagacity bestowed by nature on all those animals possessed of a skull and brain. Like all theories which at- tempt to read the complex characters of men or beasts from the development of any one portion of the vital ma- chinery which manifests the mind that governs it, this ingenious device claimed too much for itself; and, of
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