Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. THE FEATURES OF THE HUMAN FACE. THE FOREHEAD—THE EYES, EYEBROWS, AND EYELASHES—THE NOSE—THE MOUTH—THE CHIN—THE CHEEKS—THE EARS— THE TEETH. Having studied the human face in its general form and character, we have now to proceed to the analysis of its features, and examine them singly. If we consult ancient and modern authors we shall find plenty of physiognomical guesses, mingled with a very scanty observation of facts—a singular contrast, which well attests the poverty of science and the fertility of human invention. The most obscure physiognomist offers us a hundred formulae, each more uncertain than the other, for estimating character and intelligence from the features of the face; while serious anthropologists have scarcely touched on the subject, occupied as they have been with the skull, which seemed to them to contain the most profound secrets of human nature. Between the physiognomists and the anthropologists are ranged the artists who have studied the face from the aesthetic point of view, and have formulated their opinions according to personal taste or the tendency of the school to which they belonged. The Forehead.—After the eye the forehead is the most faithful interpreter of the intelligence. Many centuries before there was any study of morphological rank according to the evolutionist scale, the wide and lofty brow was universally considered beautiful, the low and receding brow, ugly. This appreciation absolutely conformed tonature, since the former was peculiar to the more intelligent races; while the latter characterised the inferior races, and an intelligence of a low order. -In addition to its proportions relatively to the other features of the face, the forehead gives us other secondary characters which vary with racial rank in the hum...