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proofs; not at a distance, not among foreigners, but seek at home for the wisest and best of your own subjects. Wherever a wise and good prince governs, there are excellent subjects. Such a prince believes that he has such subjects, although at the moment he should be unacquainted with them; or at least, that he has subjects capable of wisdom and goodness. Wherever one good person is, there certainly are two, as certainly as where the female is, there will the male be.

Suffer me, princes, consecrated as you are among men, to entreat you, for the honour of humanity, principally to study, to seek for, and to seize on excellence. Judge not too suddenly, nor by mere appearances. That which a prince once approves, it may afterwards be difficult or dangerous to reject. Depend not on the testimony of others, which, to princes especially, is ever exaggerated either in praise or blame; but examine the countenance, which, though it may dissemble to a prince, or rather to the dignity of a prince, cannot deceive him as a man. Having once discovered wisdom and goodness in a subject, honour such a subject as the best blessing which heaven can, in this world, bestow upon its favourites. Seek features that are strong, but not forbidding; gentle, yet not effeminate; positive, without turbulence; natural, not arrogant; with open eyes, clear aspects, strong noses near the forehead, and with such let your thrones be surrounded.

Entrust your secrets to proportionate and parallel drawn countenances: to horizontal, firm, compressed eyebrows; channelled, not too rigorously closed, red, active, but not relaxed or withered lips. Yet I will forbear to delineate, and again only entreat, that the countenance may be sacred to you for the sake of goodness and wisdom.

As to you, judges, judge not indeed by appearances, but examine according to appearances. Justice blindfold without physiognomy, is as unnatural as blindfold love. There are countenances which cannot have committed a multitude of vices. Study the traits of each vice, and the forms in which vice naturally or unwillingly resides. There are capabilities and incapabilities in the countenance, things which it can will, others which it cannot. Each passion, open or concealed, has its peculiar language. The appearance of innocence is as determinate to the experienced eye as the appearance of health.

Bring guilt and innocence face to face, and examine them; in your presence, and when they suppose you do not observe them; in the presence and in the absence of witnesses; with justice see, with justice hear and obey, the determined voice of unprejudiced conviction. Remark their walk when they enter, and when they leave the judgment-hall. Let the light fall upon their countenances; be yourself in the

shade. Physiognomy will render the torture* unnecessary, will deliver innocence, will make the most obdurate vice turn pale, will teach us how we may act upon the most hardened. Every thing human must be imperfect, yet will it be evident that the torture, more disgraceful to man than the halter, the axe, and the wheel, is infinitely more uncertain and dangerous than physiognomy. The pain of torture is more horrible even than the succeeding death, yet it is only to prove, to discover truth. Physiognomy shall not execute, and yet it shall prove; and by its proof, vice alone, and not innocence, shall suffer. O ye judges of men, be men, and humanity shall teach you, with more open eyes, to see and abhor all that is inhuman!

CHAP. XLVI.

A Word to the Clergy.

You also, my brethren, need a certain degree of physiognomy, and perhaps, princes excepted, no

* A few years since one philosopher wrote to another, The torture will soon be abolished in Austria. It was asked, What shall be its substitute? The penetrating look of the judge, replied Sonnenfels. Physiognomy will, in twenty-five years, become a part of jurisprudence, instead of torture, and lectures will be read in the universities on the Physiognomice forense, instead of the Medicina forensis.

men more.

You ought to know whom you have before you, that you may discern spirits, and portion out the word of truth to each, according to his need and capacity. To whom can a knowledge of the degree of actual and possible virtue, in all who appear before you, be more advantageous than to you?

To me physiognomy is more indispensable than the liturgy. It is to me alike profitable for doctrine, exhortation, comfort, correction, examination; with the healthy, with the sick, the dying, the malefactor; in judicial examinations, and the education of youth. Without it, I should be as the blind leading the blind.

I might be robbed of my ardour, or inspired with enthusiasm, by a single countenance. Whenever I preach, I generally seek the most noble countenance, on which I endeavour to act, and the weakest when teaching children. It is generally our own fault if our hearers are inattentive; if they do not themselves give the key, in which it is necessary they should be addressed.

Every teacher possessed of physiognomonical sensation will easily discern and arrange the principal classes among his hearers, and what each class can and cannot receive. Let six or seven classes, of various capacities, be selected; let a chief, a representative, a characteristic countenance, of each class be chosen: let these countenances be fixed in the memory, and let the preacher accommodate himself to each;

speaking thus to one, and thus to another, and in such a manner to a third.

There cannot be a more natural, effective, or definite incitement to eloquence than supposing some characteristic countenance present, of the capacity of which almost mathematical certainty may be obtained. Having six or seven, I have nearly my whole audience before me. I do not then speak to the winds. God teaches us by physiognomy to act upon the best of men according to the best of means.

CHAP. XLVII.

Physiognomonical Elucidations of Countenances.

A REGULAR well-formed countenance is where all the parts are remarkable for their symmetry. The principal features, as the eyes, nose, and mouth, neither small nor bloated. In which the position of the parts, taken together, and viewed at a distance, appears nearly horizontal and parallel.

A beautiful countenance is that in which, besides the proportion and position of the parts, harmony, uniformity, and mind are visible; in which nothing is superfluous, nothing deficient, nothing disproportionate, nothing superadded, but all is conformity and concord.

A pleasant countenance does not necessarily require perfect symmetry and harmony, yet no

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