“After conspicuous single features, arrangement most influences expression, and it is surprising to note how irregular this is. Such correlation and symmetry as that of George Meredith is quite exceptional. There are disagreements in color even between eyes—one of Lamb’s was hazel, the other gray. The eyes and brows of Chatterton, Balzac, and Douglas Jerrold are on a different plane, back of the rest of their features. The right side of Thoreau’s face and of Whitman’s is lower than the other, while the left side of Poe’s face is smaller. Disproportion in mass is most frequent, the lower half of the face being often too large for the remainder. Alexander von Humboldt and Matthew Arnold are the only examples I have noted of disproportionally large brows and eyes. The chins of Hegel, Gray, and Pater, on the other hand, are at least one size too large; the nose and mouth of Tyndall and Emerson are certainly two sizes too large; Hans Christian Andersen displays an even greater lack of harmony. Dr. Johnson combined a fine head and eyes with a coarse nose and mouth; Landor’s mouth was as weak as his head was powerful. Goldsmith presented the extraordinary combination of a low, bulging forehead, with almost no head behind the ears, handsome eyes and nose, a swollen upper lip, and a receding chin—all much pitted with smallpox. Goldsmith is a striking example, for in spite of his singularly unfortunate appearance, his intrinsic charm is yet obvious.
“Thus, while the details of men’s faces are a source of curious interest, their greatest significance is the way in which a general expression transpires through them. We are not in the least repelled by the ugliness of Aesop and Socrates, the ‘dumb-ox’ look of Thomas Aquinas, or what Edward Lear called ‘Wordsworth’s desire for milk appearance.’ When Petrarch appears cheerful and Montaigne sad, Smollett mournful and Spinoza merry, we yet feel that there is more than meets the eye. I believe, Tennyson to the contrary notwithstanding, that a man’s character is usually clear in his countenance; here I take up at random Confucius and Calvin, Cicero and Franklin, Rabelais and Chaucer—who could misjudge them? It is as Hazlitt said—you get from a great number of details a general impression which is true and well founded, although you may not be able to analyze or explain it.”
“It is certainly most interesting,” I said, as Professor Maturin put his portraits into their cabinet. “I wonder why the subject has not been investigated more fully and scientifically.”
“It has been thought about a good deal,” replied Professor Maturin, “ever since the Greeks. Renaissance rulers thought it of use in selecting their courtiers. Goethe kept a painter busy recording faces that interested him. About a century ago Lavater devoted a score of handsome folios, with splendid plates, to the study of faces, but his treatment was very desultory—discussions of ‘deep, designing, envious villains as represented by Raphael,’ and so on. Some of his successors went to the opposite extreme of definiteness, concluding that long noses denote courage, high cheek-bones honesty, large lips sociability, and the like. There have been, however, various scientific studies, such as Darwin’s on the expression of the emotions, Galton’s composite photography, and Bertillon’s accurate system of measurement and classification. Yet for some reason the subject still remains one of those that bibliographers catalogue as merely ‘curious.’ I like to dip into it now and then because of its general human interest, and always find it a stimulus to freshness and directness of observation; a caution, as Sir Joshua Reynolds said, against distrusting imagination and feeling in favor of ‘narrow, partial, confined, argumentative theories.’”
I remained silent while Professor Maturin looked over his cases for a book, and then stood leafing through it, until he found his place, and said: “Hazlitt sums the matter up in his essay ‘On the Knowledge of Character’ with these words: ‘There are various ways of getting at a knowledge of character—by looks, words, actions. The first of these, which seems the most superficial, is perhaps the safest, and least liable to deceive:... A man’s look is the work of years; it is stamped on his countenance by the events of his whole life, nay more, by the hand of nature.... This sort of prima facie evidence shows what a man is, better than what he says or does.’”
X
Mental Hygiene
AS the Vicar, the Physician, and I entered Professor Maturin’s study, after dinner, the Vicar sank into his chair with a deep sigh. “Is it so bad as that?” queried Professor Maturin, as he passed the cigars. “I beg a general pardon,” replied the Vicar. “To-day has quite tired me out, although I am just back from a vacation.” The Physician gazed at him professionally for a moment, and then said: “A clear case for the Book of Mental Hygiene.” As we turned, expectant, Professor Maturin, after some hesitation, took a portfolio from his desk, saying: “The Physician refers to a collection of memoranda, drawn from my experience and reading, during a series of years, but recently put into something like order. They are semi-personal in substance, and quite staccato in form, but I am very willing to read them if you will agree to stop me when you have had enough.” Accepting our assent, he began:
“Now that science can cause the Ethiopian to change his skin and the leopard his spots,—that is, can modify the color of rabbits and multiply the toes of guinea-pigs, or graft new characteristics on cattle or on grain,—it is high time to take thought for the efficient and economic working of that intellectual machinery which is not only the means to all such progress, but the fundamental condition of our mental being. Even if we do not accept Professor Lankester’s view that man has produced such a special state for himself that he must either acquire firmer hold of the conditions, or perish, we must agree with Professor James that the problem of access to different kinds of power is a practical issue of supreme importance.
“Physical conditions, of course, are the basis of all mental hygiene. Whatever may be the relation between body and mind, no one can doubt its intimacy. Many persons, like Wordsworth and Lowell, suffer physical prostration after mental exertion; nor does Dr. Johnson need to tell us that ‘ill-health makes every one a scoundrel.’ Habits of confinement or exercise mean so much that we might almost know from their work that Balzac and Poe wrote in closed rooms; but that Wordsworth and Browning composed in the open air, Burns and Scott on horseback, Swinburne while swimming. It is true that, as Roger Ascham said, ‘walking alone into the field hath no token of courage in it,’ and that the horsemanship commended by Erasmus is expensive; but there are countless forms of physical exercise, some suitable to each. George Sand set a standard of wisdom in increasing her exercise when under especial strain. Food and sleep also influence mental life tremendously. Whether we eat one simple meal a day with Kant, or many varied ones with Goethe, we must remember the laws of nutrition and Carlyle’s warning that indigestion comprises all of the ills of life.
“The criteria for sleep likewise are wholly individual so long as we do not drowse on other people’s hearth-rugs like De Quincey; or, like Rossetti, entertain our callers by taking naps. Some think it impossible to get too much sleep. Kant limited his for the sake of soundness; he, moreover, carefully tranquillized his mind before going to bed, not by a total exclusion of ideas but by a selection. Some forms of analysis and combination appear to continue during sleep. Gray had a friend who made verses in his dreams, and Bancroft’s bedtime problems were often solved when he awoke. The time to sleep and the time to wake must be left to individual instinct and social sanction. The doctrine of deliberate rising—dear to Lamb and Hazlitt, Thackeray and Lowell—has recently been reinforced by a French savant’s declaration that getting up quickly leads to madness.