OF THE HEART AND PHILANTHROPY. 5 virtue.”—Yes, the physiognomist will pardon where the most benevolent philanthropist must condemn. For myself, since I

have become a physiognomist, I have gained knowledge, so much more accurate, of so many excellent men, and have had such frequent occasion to rejoice my heart in the discoveries I have made concerning such men, that this, as I may say, has reconciled me to the whole human race. What I here mention as having happened to myself, each physiognomist, being himself a man, must have, undoubtedly, felt.

Again, as pity is awakened, cherished, and heightened, at the sight of natural evil, so is the noblest and wisest compassion roused by an acute perception and sensibility of human degeneracy: And from whom is such compassion more to be expected than from a true physiognomist? I repeat, the noblest compassion-For it employs itself on the immediate, the precise, the present, man; and his secret, his profound misery, which is not without him, but within -The wisest -- For, while it knows the evil is internal, it thinks not of palliatives, but of internal efficient means, of laying the ax to the root, of means with the proper

application and certainty of which he is acquainted.

True souls of benevolence, you often shall weep tears of blood, to find men are so bad; but, often, also, shall you weep tears of joy, to find them better than the all-powerful, all-poisonous, tongue of slander would have made you believe.

7

II.

OF THE UNIVERSAL EXCELLENCE OF THE

FORM OF MAN.

THE title of this fragment is expressive of the contents, or rather of the very soul, of the whole work; therefore, what I may here say, in a separate section, may be accounted as nothing; yet how vast a subject of meditation may it afford to man!

Each creature is indispensable in the immensity of the creations of God; but each creature does not know it is thus indispensable. Man, alone, of all earth's creatures, rejoices in his indispensability.

No man can render any other man dispensable. The place of no man can be supplied by another.

This belief of the indispensability, and individuality, of all men, and in our own metaphysical indispensability and individuality, is, again, one of the unacknowledged, the noble fruits of physiognomy; a fruit pregnant with seed most precious, whence shall spring lenity and love. Oh! may posterity behold them flourish; may future ages repose under their shade! The

of men,

worst, the most deformed, the most corrupt is still indispensable in this world of God, and is more or less capable of knowing his own individuality, and unsuppliable indispensability. The wickedest, the most deformed of men, is still more noble than the most beauteous, most perfect animal.— Contemplate, oh man! what thy nature is, not what it might be, not what is wanting: Humanity, amid all its distortions, will ever remain wondrous humanity!

Incessantly might I repeat doctrines like this! Art thou better, more beauteous, nobler, than many others of thy fellow creatures? If so, rejoice, and ascribe it not to thyself but to him who, from the same clay, formed one vessel for honour, another for dishonour; to him who, without thy advice, without thy prayer, without any desert of thine, caused thee to be what thou art.

Yea, to Him!" For what hast thou, oh man, that thou didst not receive? Now if thou didst receive why dost thou glory as if thou hadst not received?"-" Can the eye say to the hand, I have no need of thee?" He that oppresseth the poor reproacheth his maker"-" God hath made of one blood all nations of men."

Who more deeply, more internally, feels all these divine truths than the physiogno

mist?—The true physiognomist, who is not merely a man of literature, a reader, a reviewer, an author, but-a man.—

Yes, I own, the most humane physiognomist, he who so eagerly searches for whatever is good, beautiful, and noble in nature, who delights in the Ideal, who duly exercises, nourishes, refines his taste, with humanity more improved, more perfect, more holy, even he is in frequent danger, at least, is frequently tempted to turn from the common herd of depraved men; from the deformed, the foolish, the apes, the hypocrites, the vulgar of mankind; in danger of forgetting that these misshapen forms, these apes, these hypocrites, also, are men; and that, notwithstanding all his imagined, or his real excellence, all his noble feelings, the purity of his views (and who has cause to boast of these?), all the firmness, the soundness, of his reason, the feelings of his heart, the powers with which he is endowed, although he may appear to have approached the sublime ideal of Grecian art, still he is, very probably, from his own moral defects, in the eyes of superior beings, in the eyes of his much more righteous brother, as distorted as the most ridiculous, most depraved, moral, or physical monster appears to be in his eyes.