I. OF THE UNION BETWEEN THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE HEART AND PHILANTHROPY. MAY these two purposes be attained by the same means?-Does not a knowledge of the heart destroy, or weaken, philanthropy? -Does not our good opinion of any man diminish when he is perfectly known? And, if so, how may philanthropy be increased by this knowledge? What is here alleged is-truth-But it is partial truth. And how fruitful a source of error is partial truth! It is a certain truth that the majority of men are losers by being accurately known. -But it is no less true that the majority of men gain as much on one side as they lose on the other by being thus accurately known. I do not here speak of those who can only gain by being accurately known; I speak of those who would lose much were the knowledge of the heart to become more accurate, and more general. Who is so wise as never to act foolishly? Where is the virtue wholly unpolluted by vice; with thoughts, at all moments, simple, direct, and pure? I dare undertake to maintain that all men, with some very rare exceptions, lose by being known. But I will also prove, by the most irrefragable arguments, that all men gain by being known: consequently-that a knowledge of the heart is not detrimental to the love of mankind. "But does it promote the love of mankind?" Yes. A knowledge of the heart teaches us alike what man is not and cannot be; why he is not, cannot be; and what he is, or can be. Astonishment, that abundant fountain of censoriousness, diminishes in proportion as this knowledge increases. When you would enquire why any man thinks and acts thus, could you but suppose yourself in his station, that is, could you assume his form, body, countenance, senses, constitution, and feelings; how intelligible, how natural, then, would all his actions appear! And would not censoriousness, so active, at present, immediately disappear when an accurate knowledge of man should be obtained? Would not com OF THE HEART AND PHILANTHROPY. 3 passion succeed to condemnation, and fraternal lenity to hatred? But not in this alone (I here but slightly glance at my subject) would man be benefited by the promotion of physiognomonical knowledge: he gains another advantage. Physiognomy discovers actual and possible perfections, which, without its aid, must ever have remained hidden. The more man is studied the more power and positive goodness will he be discovered to possess. As the experienced eye of the painter perceives a thousand small shades and colours which are unremarked by common spectators, so the physiognomist views a multitude of actual or possible perfections which escape the general eye of the despiser, the slanderer, or even the more benevolent judge of mankind. I speak from experience: The good which I, as a physiognomist, have observed in people round me, has more than compensated that mass of evil which, though I appeared blind, I could not avoid seeing. The more I have studied man the more have I been convinced of the general influence of his faculties, the more have remarked that the origin of all evil is good, that those very powers which made him evil, those abilities, forces, irritability, elasticity, were all, in themselves, actual, positive, good. The absence of these, it is true, would have occasioned the absence of an infinity of evil; but so would they, likewise, of an infinity of good. The essence of good has given birth to much evil; but it contains in itself the possibility of a still infinite increase of good. The least failing of an individual incites a general outcry, and his character is at once darkened, trampled on, and destroyed.—The physiognomist views the man whom the whole world condemns, and -praises,- What? Vice?-No-Does he excuse the vicious?— No-He whispers, or loudly affirms, "Treat this man after such a manner, and you will be astonished at what he is able, what he may be made willing, to perform. He is not so wicked as he appears; his countenance is better than his actions. His actions, it is true, are legible in his countenance; but not more legible than his great powers, his sensibility, the pliability of that heart which has had an improper bent. Give but these powers, which have rendered him vicious, another direction, and other objects, and he will perform miracles of |