The true evolution, then, is that of spirit, taking on itself through successive ages many re-embodiments and adding to itself some new quality with each re-embodiment.
The survival of the fittest implies that the best qualities so gathered do survive. The lower, coarse and more savage are gradually sloughed off. The best qualities in all animal forms of life eventually are gathered in a man. He has so gained or absorbed into himself courage from the lion, cunning from the fox, rapaciousness from vulture and eagle. You often see the eagle or vulture beak on one person's face, the bulldog on that of another, the wolf, the fox, and so on. Faces hang out no false sign of the character of the spirit. Man, unconsciously recognising this, uses the terms "foxy," "wolfish," "snaky," and even "hoggish," in describing the character of certain individuals.[23]
Most people are able to find physical similarities between human beings and animals. The equine man who moves his ears is not rarely to be met with. The person who uncovers his canine teeth in a snarl is an even more common type. Short women who flap their arms and waddle in the style of penguins; tall ones who have the graceful sliding movement of the giraffe; persons of either sex who jerk along with hops like feathered creatures on a lawn are all to be met with any day.
Mrs. Heron stalks in with solemnity and stateliness, and cranes her neck to find something she has mislaid. She has a prying face, sharp nose, and small projecting chin.
Lion faces, tiger faces, cat faces, fox faces, fish faces, bird faces, sheep faces, and rat faces meet us at every turn.
Sheep men are mild in appearance, beaming with amiability, truthfulness, and freedom from cant. Ox faces are more robust, with wider and broader features, and a certain flatness of face. People of this appearance have good dispositions, good appetite, are stubborn in bargains perhaps, but reliable and trustworthy.
Hercules was depicted with a powerful neck, a small head, short and curly hair, which bore a striking resemblance to a vigorous and untamable bull, whilst Herod was like a fox, with thin face, cunning eye, restless head and neck, artful and deceptive with highly strung nerves.
The weasel man is thin, tall, sharp-eyed, always in a hurry, and the nose that augurs badly is that which is strikingly similar to the beak of a parrot. The parrot-man is filled with a sense of his own importance and is an endless prattler. Those who have a high and narrow forehead and a nose that terminates like the beak of a crow are sure to be subject to vile passions.
Beaumarchais said wittily, "Boire sans soif et faire l'amour en tout temps, c'est ce que distingue l'homme de la bête."