Nature's revelations of character; or, physiognomy illustratedA description of the mental, moral and volitive dispositions of mankind, as manifested in the human form and countenance . e atten-tion of preachers is so exclusively centred upon one classof ideas that they are blind to other considerations, which,to laymen, are the patent facts of human experience. Intheir violent attacks upon the sins of the Jews, and thevices of the Corinthians (while the sinners of their owncongregations sit unreproved and uninstructed beneaththem) they often remind me of the boy who stood throw-ing stones at a
Nature's revelations of character; or, physiognomy illustratedA description of the mental, moral and volitive dispositions of mankind, as manifested in the human form and countenance . e atten-tion of preachers is so exclusively centred upon one classof ideas that they are blind to other considerations, which,to laymen, are the patent facts of human experience. Intheir violent attacks upon the sins of the Jews, and thevices of the Corinthians (while the sinners of their owncongregations sit unreproved and uninstructed beneaththem) they often remind me of the boy who stood throw-ing stones at a barn swallow that was building its nesfcbeneath the eaves of a lofty edifice. When asked whyhe attempted to strike this far-off bird, while hundredsof the same species were standing near him, he replied,that if he could succeed in killing the one in the eaves,he would then feel sure that he could hit all the parsons, to whom I have referred, seem possessedof a similar idea which prompts them to the inspiringthought that if they can only make the dead Jews andCorinthians feel the point of their darts, they can after-wards impale every living sinner at their THE THINKER. Theee are few abstract things so generally recognized andadmitted as the influence exercised on the Physiognomyby a protracted continuance in any particular calling oroccupation. Even in occupations, the successful prosecu-tion of which does not draw very largely upon the resourcesof the mind, we find the principle very appreciably atM^ork; and few men endowed with any powers of obser-vation, even although these powers may be developed onlyin a very rudimentary degree, can have failed to be struckwith the approximate correctness which attends his specu-lations as to the probable calling of a chance acquaintance,even although he may have no other ground-work ofhypothesis than the Physiognomy alone. Thus, on aSunday or fete day, when, for the time being, the morematerial indications are oblit
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1870, booksubjectphysiognomy, bookyear
