Angular, strong and sharply interrupted eyebrows close to the eyes always show fire and productive activity. No profound thinker has weakly marked eyebrows, or eyebrows placed very high on the forehead. Want of eyebrow almost always indicates a want of mental and bodily force. The nearer the eyebrows are to the eyes, the more earnest, deep and firm the character; the more remote from the eyes, the more volatile and less resolute the nature.
Eyebrows the same colour as the hair show firmness, resolution and constancy; but in judging of the eyebrows it must be remembered that if form and colour give different indications, the form (as this also means that of the brow) gives the most important indication, the colour and texture of the eyebrow being secondary to its position as regards the eyes and forehead.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE EYES AND EYELASHES
The eye has been called "the window of the soul," and not without reason, for it seems more than any other organ to be capable of expressing all its emotions. The most tumultuous passions, the most delicate feelings, the most acute sensations, the eye expresses in all their force and in all their purity, as they arise and transmits them by variations so rapid as to give to the lookers-on the very image of that with which it is itself inspired; for the eye receives and reflects the intelligence of the thoughts as well as the warmth of the feelings.
The colours most common to the eyes are brown, grey, blue, hazel and black, or what we call black—for those eyes which appear to be black will generally be found to be of a deep yellowish-brown when looked at very narrowly; it is the distance only which makes them seem to be black, because the deep yellow-brown colour is in such strong contrast to the white of the eye that it appears black. There are also eyes of so bright a hazel as to seem almost yellow; lastly, there are eyes that are positively green. Very beautiful, too, are some of the eyes of this colour when they are shaded—as is very often the case—with long, dark eyelashes; but, though beautiful, they are not indicative of a good disposition.
Green eyes, although their praises are often sung in Spanish ballads, show deceit and coquetry. We sometimes see eyes which appear to be a combination of yellow, orange, and blue, the latter colour generally appearing in streaks over the whole surface of the iris, while the orange and yellow are set in flakes of unequal size around and at some distance apart; these eyes are indicative of originality, amounting, at times, to eccentricity. No commonplace person has this sort of eye; they show intellectuality, and, in most cases, literary ability.
There are eyes which are remarkable for being of, what might be said to be, no colour. The iris has only some shades of blue or pale grey, so feeble as to be almost white in some parts, and the shades of orange which intervene are so small that they can scarcely be distinguished from grey or white, notwithstanding the contrast of colours. The black of the pupil is, in these eyes, too marked, because the colour of the iris around it is not deep enough, so that in looking at them we seem to see only the pupil. These eyes are expressionless, for their glance is fixed and dead; they invariably belong to persons of the lymphatic temperament, and they indicate a listless and feeble disposition, incapable of enterprise and a cold and indolently selfish nature.
Blue eyes are more significant of tenderness and of a yieldingness of purpose than either brown, black, or grey eyes. There are occasionally to be met strong characters with this tint of eye, but then they will be found to have other indications in the rest of their physiognomy which correct the delicacy and yieldingness of this coloured eye. Blue-eyed people are not inconstant, like those of the hazel and yellow eyes, but they yield from affection.
Angry, irritable persons have frequently eyes of a brownish tint, inclined to a greenish hue. Although the purely green eye of which I have spoken indicates deceit and coquetry, the propensity to greenish tints in the eyes is a sign of wisdom and courage. Very choleric persons, if they have blue eyes, have also certain tints of green in them and, when under the influence of anger, a sudden red light appears in them. Such eyes as these are generally found in connection with the sanguine, or, as it is sometimes called, choleric temperament; that is, in those persons who have been born under the double influence of Jupiter and Mars; but, when we see these red tints in the eyes, it would be a sign that, of the two planets presiding over this temperament, Mars was dominant.