The Power of a Thousand Eyes: Johann Caspar Lavater's Science of Physiognomical Perception

Abstract

In the classical age, a common point of reference in discussions of aesthetics, psychology, medicine and religion was the doctrine of physiognomy. In the earliest literature, the notion that a correspon dence exists between the outer appearance of man and his inner character was advanced, deepened and extended to suit a variety of ends. The Homeric poems carefully monitor expression, but go little way beyond providing rudimentary correlations between both mo mentary and permanent appearance and character: Thersites's repul siveness of body (his game foot, bandy legs and rounded shoulders) denotes a vicious nature, just as surely and as simply as the hand someness of Achilles signals his purity and inner strength.1 With Hip pocrates, this basic principle is developed in the course of a study of the effects of the environment on disposition and bodily features.2 According to Aulus Gellius, Pythagoras practiced a kind of physiog nomical diagnosis of the candidates who presented themselves as pupils before deciding whether to accept them into his school.3 That this kind of scrutiny was widely employed is suggested by the fact that Pythagoras apparently rejected Cylo on account of his support for a set of rival physiognomical doctrines.4 This small sampling could be easily extended to embrace Plato (who in the Timaeus and Laws made the important distinction be tween true and false appearances),5 Aristotle, Polemon, Juvenal, Pliny, Suetonius, Seneca and many others.6 Frequently, physiognomy served almost as a means of divination,7 and Galen, who includes a brief discussion of physiognomy in his work, deprecates the subject because of its unconsidered use as a means of seeing into the future.8 Elsewhere, however, Galen like many other physicians finds physi ognomy to be a useful diagnostic aid.9 Whilst interest in the subject may have flagged after the collapse of the Roman empire, physiog nomy grew in stature and importance as the Middle Ages discovered the Greco-Roman philosophers directly or via Islamic editors.10 In its revived form, as part of the dictum know thyself—know others,11