PHYSIOGNOMY (cpueurraepovia) is the art of determining the mental character of an individual by the examination of his counte nance. The popular ideas of the indications afforded by different kinds of features, by the adoption of which almost every one is at times a practitioner of physiognomy, are nearly as definite as the few principles which those who have made it an object of peculiar study have established. The circumstance ou which the chief and surest indi cations afforded by the countenance depend, is, that when certain feelings and habits are much indulged in, the positions of the features which are associated with them are apt to become permanent, either by the formation of wrinkles or other marks in the skin, or by the en largement and disproportionate strength of the muscles chiefly exerted. Thus a person in the frequent habit of sneering contemptuously acquires at last a slight curve in his upper lip by the disproportionate size and power of its elevator muscle; he who is often meditating has the wrinkles of the slight frown and the contraction of the brows which are commonly associated with deep thought, permanently fixed ; he who has his attention constantly alive to the objects around him acquires an expression of vivacity in the openness of his eye and the quickness of the motions of all the muscles of his face; while he, on the other hand, whose thoughts are rarely roused to active efferta, acquires a smoothness of feature and a sluggishness of action in the several parts of the face, which indicate that its muscles have been exercised as rarely and with as little energy as his thoughts.
The peculiarities of feature thus acquired are often transmitted from the parent to the child ; and in the latter, their indications will be correct or false according as there has or has not been a coincident transmission of the parent's disposition. Or a child may acquire a peculiar expression of countenance by imitating those among whom it is placed, and in this case also it will only be by accidental coincidence that the indications of the features are correct. From these and other sources of fallacy, the attempts to raise physiognomy into a science have not been so successful as to encourage a deeper study of it than every one unconsciously engages in during his intercourse with the world.