Ω.
PHYSIOGNOMY AND EXPRESSION. By Paolo Mantegazza. New York: Scribner &
Welford, 1890.
This work of the versatile Italian Anthropologist is probably one of those which best represent his many-sided mind, and which will be the most extensively read. Although strictly scientific, both in its end and method, it is popular in style and contains matter which must recommend it to the ordinary as well as the scientific reader. As the author informs us, he has taken up the study of expression at the point where Darwin left it. But he has made a further step. He has set himself the task "of separating, once for all, positive observations from the number of bad guesses, ingenious conjectures," which have hitherto encumbered the path of the study of the human countenance and human expression. His book is a "page of psychology," and he has endeavored to supply the psychologist, and also the artist, with new facts, as well as old facts interpreted by new theories, and to bring into view "some of the laws to which human expression is subject."
A glance at the table of contents shows that the author has fully carried out the promise thus made. The first chapter of the work after giving an historical sketch of the science of Physiognomy and of Human Expression—which in its infancy was "seasoned with the magic which is one of the original sins of the human family"—and tracing it from Dalla Porta to Darwin, through Niquetius, Ghiradelli, and Lavater, proceeds to treat of the human countenance in general, and of each of its features in particular. The possible judgments on the human face are reduced in number to five: the physiological, the ethnological, the æsthetic, the moral, and the intellectual. Of these verdicts, the ethnological and æsthetic are based almost exclusively on anatomical characters, while the physiological, moral, and intellectual verdicts depend chiefly on expression. The coloration of the human skin is an important ethnological feature, and M. Mantegazza thinks that it may be reduced to three tints, white, black, and "dried bean" (fave seche), which last he explains by saying that it results from the superposition of two colors, "most frequently from a sort of black or very dark brown dust deposited on a ground of dried bean" (p. 31). Among other interesting ethnological generalisations, is the remark that the Aryans, Semites, and many negroes have large eyes, while Mongols and many Malays have small eyes. In determining the color of the eyes, hair, and skin, the author found the table of tints prepared by M. Broca for the Anthropological Society of Paris insufficient, as the colors there used are opaque, while transmitted as well as reflected rays are combined to give the natural coloration. In the iris of the Lapps fourteen different and graduated shades are distinguishable, from dark chestnut brown to green. M. Mantegazza confirms the observation that a certain hue of the eyes is nearly always associated with a particular hair-color, and he states that this union is one of the most unvarying ethnical characters by which to judge of the purity of race. The nose is nearly as important as the eye as an ethnical and æsthetic feature. The author reproduces M. Topinard's curious table of its morphological characteristics observing that it omits only one, which nevertheless is somewhat important, that is, the angle made by the root of the nose with the forehead. In relation to the mouth we have the suggestive remark, "the eye is the centre of the expression of thought; the mouth is the expressive centre of feeling and of sensuality." As to the color of the hair, M. Mantegazza has brought together many important facts. Among the higher races, the hair may be of almost any of the ordinary tints. The Jews do not differ from the Europeans in this respect, as they exhibit fair hair as well as dark hair, and light and dark eyes. Although in Germany the Jewish population generally is much darker than the rest of the people, many of them have blonde hair, blue eyes, and fair complexion. For some reason not yet ascertained, there is a tendency in Europe and especially in England for the blonde type to disappear. We would suggest that it is a case of reversion to the type of the primitive inhabitants. M. Mantegazza remarks that the beard does not correspond to any intellectual type, as it is strongly developed as well among the Australian aborigines as among the Aryans and Semites. Nevertheless, the beard is worthy of further study as an ethnological feature. It may be noted that the Australian aborigines have been connected with the primitive inhabitants of Western Europe by other characters.
In treating of the expression of the emotions, we are told that physical expression has two different functions—to replace a complete language, and "to defend the nerve-centres and other parts of the body against dangers of different kinds." Much more might have been said on the first subject, as gesture language has within the last few years become an important ethnological study, and, indeed, a supplementary chapter has been written for the English edition of this work on the physiognomy of gesture. There is great truth in the remarks, that "every religion and many philosophical schools have been founded by word and by expression more than by books"; and that "the more feeling a nation has, the more rich and eloquent are its methods of physical expression." M. Mantegazza does full justice to the great wealth of details and the discoveries on which the Darwinian laws of expression are based, while supplementing them with original observations and results. It is in the classification of expressions we have probably the most important feature of the present work. Full synoptical tables are given of the expressions of Sense, Passion, and Intellect, and of the various expressions of Pleasure and Pain, Love and Hatred. These are illustrated by ingenious remarks, as an example of which we may quote the somewhat cynical statement that "many ladies laugh little lest they should have precocious wrinkles, while others laugh too much and on every pretext that they may show their beautiful teeth." The author well says that in love and pleasure, hatred and pain, "we have two binary compounds, two such energetic psycho-expressive combinations that the formidable and the destructive voltaic pile of our analytic methods is needed to separate the elements." He has some curious remarks on the fact that laughter and smiling are very frequent phenomena in the expression of hatred, for which we refer our readers to the work itself.
To pleasure and pain, love and hatred, M. Mantegazza adds pride and humiliation, as "the fundamental psychical movements of human nature, as ancient as man, and common to all the inhabitants of the globe." Thus, he is of opinion that aristocracy is one of the most natural features of humanity, and that democrats "make history recede instead of advancing when they deny the most elementary laws of heredity and of human nature." We must pass over the expressions of personal feelings, and those of thought, to reach the chapter on racial and professional expression. Here races are classified, according to their expression, into ferocious, gentle, apathetic, grotesque or simian, stupid, and intelligent, but the classification, like all others from single characters, is imperfect. Probably as good a classification could be made on the basis of modes of salutation, beginning with nose-kissing, or the still more primitive smelling. Raden-Saleh, an artist of Java preferred nose-breathing, as by it we put our soul into contact with that of the beloved one! It is undoubtedly true, as M. Mantegazza remarks, that the expression of different peoples is replete with their most prominent psychical characters. The beautiful impassioned expression of the Italians is yet defiant and not always frank, owing to their having been so long subjected to tyrants. Speaking generally, the European peoples have an expansive or a concentric expression, of which "the first is found in the Italians, the French, the Slaves, the Russian: the second in the Germans, the Scandinavians, the Spanish." The author adds that there is also "a beautiful expression full of grace, that of the people of Græco-Latin origin; and another hard, quite angular, without roundness, that of the Germans, the English, and the Scandinavians."
M. Mantegazza gives a very skilful analysis of the "moderators and disturbers of expression," referring to his earlier work the "Physiology of Pain" for further details. In the next chapter he treats of the criteria for the determination of the strength of an emotion with reference to the accompanying expression. In addition to the force and the persistency of the contraction of the expressing muscles, there is a diffusion of expression in gradually increasing circles from the face downwards to the legs, and lastly, alternate contractions and relaxations of the muscles according to the intensity of the central movement which accompanies the emotion. The expression of pleasure is always centrifugal, that of pain being centripetal, tending to bring the arms and lower limbs towards the median line of the body. In dealing with the criteria for judging the moral work of a physiognomy, we are told that the two most certain signs of a good face, are the permanent expression of benevolence, and the absolute absence of all hypocrisy. Let us add the remark, accredited to Charles Dickens, that it is advisable to see how a person looks when silent and apparently unobserved. There are two sources of error in forming that judgment, one arising from the fact that beautiful things give pleasure, the chances of error increasing when a man has to judge a woman, or vice versa; the other is due to a false induction, from the observed association in one individual of a particular physical feature with a special moral character. The anatomical characters of the intelligent face and of the stupid face are given in a tabulated form, but M. Mantegazza states that the most important characters are those drawn from the expression, the two great centres of which are the eye and the mouth. Probably the non-observation of the expression accounts for the mistake made by Goethe, who, when dining at the house of an Englishman, was struck with the intellectual appearance of one of the guests and thought he must be a man of genius. Goethe anticipated pleasure in hearing him speak, but great was his horror, when apple dumplings were placed on the table, to hear the guest shout out "them's the jockies for me"!
In an appendix the author treats of the eyes, hair, and beard among the Italian races, which gives numerous statistics collected by the Italian Anthropological Society. It appears that the men of Tuscany as well as of Piedmont are noted for scantiness of beard. Probably this fact is due to the existence of a special race element, rather than a difference of climate as would seem to be suggested. The presence of red hair in all parts of Italy, although only in small quantities, is also difficult of explanation. Strange to say it is the most common in regions which are poorest in fair hair. From this we must suppose it to have some relation to dark hair, an opinion which agrees with the observation that in England dark hair in young children is sometimes interspersed with red hairs, which either change or disappear with age. The hair is known to darken considerably after puberty is reached, and possibly red hair may be due to the persistence, through special conditions of which we are not aware, of an infantile character.
We must not leave M. Mantegazza's excellent and entertaining work without referring to the plates given in the Appendix, among which are morphological, æsthetic, and intellectual trees of the human race, and figures of ethnic types illustrative of remarks made in the text. It also has a good index.