1. Hegel on the Inner and the Outer
2. 2For evidence of the breadth and duration of physiognomic interests, one might turn to Charles Darwin'sAutobiographywhere he mentions that the captain of the H. M. S. Beagle was a student of Lavater: "Afterwards, on becoming very intimate with [Robert] Fitz-Roy, I heard that I had run a very narrow risk of being rejected on account of the shape of my nose! He was an ardent disciple of Lavater, and was convinced that he could judge of a man's character by the outline of his features, and he doubted whether any one with my nose could possess sufficient energy and determination for the voyage." Charles Darwin,Autobiography(New York, 1950) 361. Quoted in John Graham,Lavater's Essays on Physiognomy: A Study in the History of Ideas(Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1979) 85. Equally amusing are the references made to Lavater (and to Gall) in Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin'sPhysiologie du gout. Illustrating, once again, just how pervasive the application of Lavater's theories were, Brillat-Savarin writes in a short section entitled "Predestined Gourmands": "I have always been a follower of Lavater and Gall: I believe in inborn tendencies. Since there are people who have obviously been put into the world to see badly, walk badly, hear badly [.] why can it not be that there are others who are meant to enjoy more deeply certain series of sensations?" and a paragraph later, "Human passions act on the muscles, and very often, no matter how much someone may hold his tongue, the various sentiments that surge in him can be plainly read on his face." See Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin,The Physiognomy of Taste, Or Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy, trans. M. F. K. Fisher (Washington D.C.: Counterpoint Press, 1999) 160.
3. 3Johann Joachim Winckelmann,Gedanken uber die Nachahmung der griechischen Werke in der Malerei und Bildhauerkunst(Dresden, 1755). This text, along with Winckelmann'sownanonymous attack on it and his own reply, both of which were designed to draw attention to the essay, were first translated into English by Henry (Johann Heinrich) Fuseli, the son of Winckelmann's friend Hans Casper Fuseli in 1765 asReflexions on the Imitation of the Painting and Sculpture of the Greeks. A more recent translation is Johann Joachim Winckelmann,Reflections on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and Sculpture, trans. Elfriede Heyer and Roger C. Norton (New York: State U of New York P, 1987). The standard edition of Winckelmann's work is Johann Joachim Winckelmann,Samtliche Werke: Einzige vollstandige Ausgabe, ed. Joseph Eiselein, 12 vols. (Donauoschingen, 1825-29).
4. 5In addition to being driven to discover natural types in the biological world, Goethe also set out to do the same for classical sculpture-and he did so by using physiognomical principles. While in Italy, Goethe attempted to construct a composite model of Greek beauty by abstracting from all classical sculptures their salient features. As Nicholas Boyle explains, in 1788 Goethe devised a plan to, first, "identify and eliminate from study all those images of Greek gods known to be modeled on historical characters, and then to use physiognomical principles on the remainder to determine the physical features by which the ancients represented their moral and aesthetic ideals. (No human characteristics, Goethe argued, was ever purely represented by a single real individual: the perfect humanity found in Minerva or Apollo must have been drawn not from one model, but from many)" (p. 547). Goethe planned to travel to Rome where, provided he could secure adequate funding, he estimated that the project could be completed in 10 years. See Nicholas Boyle,Goethe: The Poet and the Age(Oxford: Oxford UP, 1992). H. B. Nisbet also makes reference to Goethe's search for a composite "type" in classical sculpture. See Nisbet, "Herder, Goethe, and the Natural 'Type,' " 100.