Schopenhauer - On physiognomy

 That the exteriora of a human being graphically reproduces his interiorb and the face expresses and reveals his whole essencec is an assumption whose a priori nature and thus certainty are demonstrated by the universal desire, which appears at every opportunity, to see someone who has distinguished himself in any way, bad or good, or who has produced an extraordinary work or, failing this, at least to learn from others what he looks like. Hence, on the one hand, the rush to those places where he is expected to be, and on the other the efforts of the daily newspapers, especially in England, to describe him minutely and strikingly, until soon thereafter painters and engravers give us graphic portrayals and finally Daguerre’s invention,d so highly valued for precisely this reason, satisfies our need most perfectly. Likewise in ordinary life everyone examines the physiognomy of everyone they meet and tries secretly to ascertain his moral and intellectual nature in advance from his facial features. All this could not be the case if, as some fools imagine, the appearance of a man were of no significance, as if the soul were indeed one thing and the body another, relating to the former as a coat to the man himself.

On the contrary each human face is a hieroglyph which truly can be deciphered, indeed whose alphabet we bear within us ready-made. A human being’s face even says more and is more interesting, as a rule, than his mouth, for it is the compendium of everything that he will ever 672 say, being the monogram of all this human being’s thinking and striving. It is also the case that the mouth expresses only the thoughts of a man, while the face expresses a thought of nature. Therefore everyone is worthy of being carefully observed, even if everyone is not worth talking to. – Now if each individual is worth observing as an individual thought of nature, then so too in the highest degree is beauty, for it is a higher, more universal concept of nature: it is nature’s thought of the species. This is why it compels our gaze so powerfully; it is nature’s fundamental and main thought, whereas the individual is only a secondary thought, a corollary.

Everyone tacitly proceeds from the principle that everyone is as they appear, which is a correct principle; but the difficulty lies in the application, the capacity for which is partly innate and partly to be gained by experience and which no one completely masters, so that even the most practised individual catches himself in mistakes. Nevertheless the face does not lie – regardless of what Figaro may saya – but it is we who read from it what is not there.1 To be sure, the deciphering of a face is a great and difficult art. Its principles2 can never be learned in the abstract.b The first condition for it is that we perceive our man with a purely objective look, which is not so easy. For at the faintest hint of dislike, affection, fear, hope or even the thought of what kind of impression we are now making on him, in short, as soon as anything subjective gets mixed in, the hieroglyph becomes confused and falsified. Just as the sound of a language is heard only by someone who does not understand it, because otherwise the signified immediately displaces the sign from consciousness, so too the only one who sees a person’s physiognomy is someone to whom that person is still a stranger, i.e., who has not become accustomed to his face through frequently seeing or even speaking with him. Therefore, strictly speaking, it is only at first glance that we have the pure objective impression of a face and thus the possibility of deciphering it. Just as odours affect us only when they first set in and we notice the taste of a wine really only with the first glass, so faces also make their full impression only the first time. This is why we should pay careful attention to it and make note of it, indeed, with individuals 673 who are important to us personally, we should write down our impression, that is, if we are to trust our own physiognomical feelings. Our subsequent acquaintance and socializing will efface that impression, but the sequel will someday confirm it.

Meanwhile we do not want to deny that the first sight is often extremely unpleasant – but then most people do not count for much! – With the exception of beautiful, good-natured and intelligent faces – and these are extremely few and rare – I believe the sight of every new face will generally arouse a sensation related to shock in a person of refined feelings, inasmuch as it presents something unpleasant in a new and surprising combination. It really is, as a rule, a gloomy sight (a sorry sight).c Indeed there are some whose faces display such a naïve coarseness and baseness of character, accompanied by such an animalistic limitation of the understanding, that we have to wonder how they even go about with such a face and do not wear a mask instead. Indeed, there are faces the mere sight of which makes us feel sullied. Therefore we cannot blame those whose privileged circumstances allow them the luxury of withdrawing and buffering themselves so that they remain entirely removed from the painful sensation of ‘seeing new faces’. – In the metaphysical explanation of this matter we have to consider that everyone’s individuality is precisely that from which he will be reclaimed and corrected by his existence itself. If on the other hand the psychological explanation suffices for us, then we must ask ourselves what kind of physiognomy is to be expected from those in whose hearts very rarely anything has stirred throughout their lives but petty, lowly, miserable thoughts, and crude, selfish, jealous, bad and malicious desires. Each of these has carved its impression on the face for as long as it has lasted; over time and through frequent repetition, all these traces have furrowed deeply and become like wagon ruts, so to speak. This is why the sight of most people causes us to be startled at first and we only gradually become 674 accustomed to their faces, that is, become so deadened to their impression that it no longer has an effect on us.

But precisely that slow formative process of the enduring facial expression through countless transitory, characteristic contractions of the features is the reason why intelligent faces develop only gradually and even achieve their elevated expression only in old age, whereas portraits from their youth show only the earliest traces of it.3 On the other hand, what I just said about the first shock is in keeping with the above observation that a face only makes its correct and full impression the first time. For in order to receive this impression purely objectively and unfalsified, we must not have any kind of relationship to the person, indeed if possible not have spoken with him yet, since every conversation has a befriending effect, to some extent, and introduces a certain rapport, a mutually subjective relationship under which the objectivity of perception immediately suffers. Moreover since everyone tries to win respect and friendship for himself, the one to be observed will immediately apply all kinds of dissimulation techniques already available to him, and with his various looks will dissemble and flatter until we are so corrupted that we can no longer see what the first glance clearly showed us. Accordingly we then say that ‘most people gain from a closer acquaintance’, but we should be saying most people ‘fool us’. But when negative circumstances later set in, the judgement of the first glance is usually vindicated and often asserts itself scornfully. If on the other hand the ‘closer acquaintance’ is hostile from the start, then likewise we will not discover that people gained anything by it. Another cause for the alleged gain from closer acquaintance is that the man whose first glance warned us of him no longer shows merely his own nature and character once we converse with him, but also his education, i.e., not merely what he really is by nature, but also what he has acquired as shared property with the whole human race; three-quarters of what he says does not belong to him but has entered him from outside,4 then we are often surprised to hear such a minotaur speaking so humanely. But if we proceed from the ‘closer acquaintance’ to an even closer one, then ‘the 675 bestiality’ promised by the face will ‘soon be splendidly revealed’.a – Thus whoever is gifted with physiognomical acumen should pay careful attention to the expressions which preceded all closer acquaintance and were therefore unfalsified. For the face of a human being says precisely what he is, and if it deceives us, then it is our fault, not his. Conversely, the words of a human being say merely what he thinks, and more often only what he learned or even what he merely pretends to think. To this must be added that when we speak with him, or even hear him speak to others, we abstract from his actual physiognomy by setting it aside as the substratum, the strictly given, and pay attention only to its pathognomical dimension, the play of facial expressions while he is speaking; but he arranges this in such a way that he puts forward only the good side.

Now when Socrates said to a young man who was introduced to him for the purpose of testing his abilities: “Speak, so that I can see you”, then he was right (assuming that by seeing he did not mean hearing) to the extent that only when speaking do someone’s features become animated, especially the eyes, and his intellectual means and abilities make their imprint on his facial expressions, allowing us then to provisionally assess the degree and capacity of his intelligence, which was exactly Socrates’ goal here. Otherwise, however, we should qualify this by saying first that it does not include the moral qualities of a person, which lie deeper, and secondly that what we gain objectively in the clearer development of his facial features through his facial expressions, we in turn lose subjectively through our personal relationship, into which he immediately enters with us and which brings about a mild fascination that does not leave us unbiased, as explained above. Therefore it would be more correct given this latter point of view to say: “Do not speak, so that I can see you.”

For in order to comprehend the true physiognomy of a man purely and deeply, we must observe him when he is alone and left to himself. Any socializing and conversation with others already cast a foreign reflection on 676 him, mostly to his advantage, since he is set in motion by action and reaction and elevated by them. On the other hand, alone and left to himself, stewing in his own thoughts and sensations – only then is he completely and utterly himself. Then a deeply penetrating physiognomical glance can comprehend his entire nature in general at once. For on his face, in and of itself, the fundamental tone of all his thoughts and strivings is impressed, the irrevocable decreea of what he has to be and what he only completely senses himself when he is alone.

Now for this reason physiognomics is a principal means to knowledge about people, because physiognomy in the narrower sense is the only thing that cannot be reached by their techniques of dissimulation, since its realm is merely that of pathognomy and mimicry. This is precisely why I recommend that everyone be interpreted when he is alone and focused on himself and before we have spoken with him, partly because only then do we have the physiognomical before us purely and unalloyed, since in conversation the pathognomical immediately rushes in and he then applies his deliberate dissimulation techniques, and partly because every personal relationship, even the most fleeting, makes us biased and thus subjectively contaminates our judgement.

One more thing I need to point out is that generally it is much easier physiognomically to discover a man’s intellectual abilities than his moral character, since the former tend to display outwardly and have their expression not only in the face and its play of expressions, but also in the gait, indeed in every movement no matter how small. Perhaps one could even distinguish from behind a dummkopf, a fool, and a man of intellect. The dummkopf is characterized by the leaden sluggishness of all his movements; foolishness stamps its imprint on every gesture; intellect and reflection do the same thing. This is the basis of Labruyère’s observation: ‘There is nothing so subtle, so simple and so imperceptible that it does not contain a mannerism that betrays us. A dummkopf cannot enter, exit, sit down, stand up, keep silent or stand on his feet like a man of intellect.’b Incidentally this explains that ‘sure and prompt instinct’c which ordinary 677 minds possess, according to Helvétius, so as to recognize people of intellect and flee them. The matter itself is based first of all on the fact that the larger and more developed the brain and the thinner the spinal cord and nerves in relation to it, the greater are not only intelligence but at the same time the mobility and suppleness of the limbs, because they are then more directly and decisively controlled by the brain and consequently everything is pulled more by one string, such that every movement expresses its precise purpose. But the whole affair is analogous to and indeed connected with the fact that the higher an animal is on the scale of beings, the more easily it can be killed by an injury to a single spot. Take for instance the batrachia; just as they are sluggish, lethargic and slow in their movements, so too are they unintelligent and yet extremely tenacious of life, all of which can be explained by the fact that they have very thick spinal cord and nerves despite a tiny brain. Generally speaking, gait and arm movement are mainly functions of the brain, because the outer limbs receive their movement and every modification thereof, no matter how small, from the brain by means of the spinal cord nerves. This is also precisely why voluntary movements exhaust us, and this exhaustion, like pain, has its seat in the brain and not, as we imagine, in the limbs, and therefore it induces sleep; whereas those not stimulated by the brain, that is the involuntary movements of organic life such as the heart, lungs and so on proceed tirelessly. Now since the same brain is responsible both for thinking and controlling the limbs, the character of its activity is expressed in the one as in the other according to the constitution of an individual; stupid people move like automata, while in intelligent people every joint is expressive.5 – Nevertheless, intellectual qualities are much better recognized from the face than from gestures and movements, from the shape and size of the brow, the tension and mobility of the facial features and above all from the eyes – ranging from the small, cloudy, dull and dim eyes of a pig through all the intermediate stages up to the radiant and flashing eyes of a genius. – The look of cleverness,a even of the finest, differs from that of 678genius in that it bears the stamp of service to the will; the latter, on the other hand, is free of it.6 – And so the anecdote taken from Petrarch’s contemporary Joseph Brivius and related by Squarzafichi in his life of Petrarch is quite credible, namely that once at the court of the Visconti, as Petrarch stood among many gentlemen and nobles, Galeazzo Visconti instructed his son, who was at that time still a boy and later would become the first Duke of Milan, to pick the wisest man among all those present. The boy looked at all of them for a while, but then took Petrarch by the hand and led him to his father to the great admiration of all who were present. For nature presses the stamp of its dignity so clearly on the privileged of our species that a child can recognize it. Therefore I would advise my perspicacious countrymen that if they ever again get the urge to trumpet an ordinary brain for thirty years as a great mind, they at least do not select such a tavern keeper’s physiognomy as Hegel’s, on whose all too familiar face nature had written ‘ordinary fellow’a in her most legible handwriting.

But things are different from the intellectual when it comes to morals, to the character of a human being; this is much more difficult to recognize physiognomically because, as something metaphysical, it lies incomparably deeper and while it is indeed also associated with corporality or the organism, this only indirectly and not in connection with a specific part and system of it, like the intellect. We must add that whereas everyone is generally very satisfied with their understanding and strives openly to display it at every opportunity, morals are very rarely exposed to the light of day and are in fact for the most part deliberately concealed, the long practice of which brings about great mastery. Meanwhile, as detailed above, bad thoughts and worthless aspirations gradually leave their mark on the face, especially the eyes. Accordingly when judging physiognomically it is easy for us to guarantee that a man will never produce an immortal work, but not that he will never commit a major crime.

adas Aeußere

bdas Innere

cWesen

d [The daguerreotype, an early form of photography]

a [Figaro says ‘My face lies, but not I’ in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, Act II]

bin abstracto

c [Schopenhauer’s English in parentheses]

a [Goethe, Faust, I, 2297–8]

aarrêt irrévocablebIl n’y a rien de si délié, de si simple, et de si imperceptible, où il n’y entrent des manières, qui nous décèlent: un sot ni n’entre, ni ne sort, ni ne s’assied, ni ne se lève, ni ne se tait, ni n’est sur ses jambs, comme un homme d’esprit. [Caractères (Characters), I, ch. 2]

cinstinct sûr et prompt [De l’esprit, Disc. II, ch. 3]

aKlugheit

aAlltagsmensch

Parerga and Paralipomena 2

The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Schopenhauer