| Title: | Physiognomy |
| Original Title: | Physionomie |
| Volume and Page: | Vol. 12 (1765), p. 538 |
| Author: | Louis, chevalier de Jaucourt (biography) |
| Translator: | Dena Goodman [University of Michigan] |
| Subject terms: |
Imaginary science
|
| Original Version (ARTFL): | Link |
| Rights/Permissions: |
This text is protected by copyright and may be linked to without seeking permission. Please see http://quod.lib.umich.edu/d/did/terms.html for information on reproduction. |
| URL: | http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.did2222.0003.868 |
| Citation (MLA): | Jaucourt, Louis, chevalier de. "Physiognomy." The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d'Alembert Collaborative Translation Project. Translated by Dena Goodman. Ann Arbor: Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library, 2019. Web. [fill in today's date in the form 18 Apr. 2009 and remove square brackets]. <http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.did2222.0003.868>. Trans. of "Physionomie," Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, vol. 12. Paris, 1765. |
| Citation (Chicago): | Jaucourt, Louis, chevalier de. "Physiognomy." The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d'Alembert Collaborative Translation Project. Translated by Dena Goodman. Ann Arbor: Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.did2222.0003.868 (accessed [fill in today's date in the form April 18, 2009 and remove square brackets]). Originally published as "Physionomie," Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, 12:538 (Paris, 1765). |
Physiognomy. I could write at length about this supposed art that teaches how to know the humor, the temperament, and the character of men by their facial features; but M. de Buffon has said everything positive it is possible to say about this ridiculous science in just the following two reflections.
It is permitted to judge in some ways what happens inside men by their actions and by observing closely how the face changes, to know the current state of the soul; but as the soul has no form at all that could be related to any material form, it cannot be judged by the shape of the body or the form of the face. A poorly formed body can have within it a very beautiful soul, and the natural goodness or evil of a person should not be judged by the features of his face; because these features are entirely unrelated to the nature of the soul, there is no analogy between them on which reasonable conjectures could even be based.
The ancients, however, were very attached to this type of prejudice, and throughout time there have been men who wanted to make a divinatory science out of their supposed knowledge of physiognomy ; but it is quite obvious that ordinarily these could extend only as far as divining the movements of the soul by those of the eyes, the face, and the body; but the shape of the nose, the mouth, and the other features have no more to do with the shape of the soul, with the nature of the person, than the length or width of the limbs has with the mind. Will a man be less wise because he has small eyes and a large mouth? It must thus be admitted that everything the physiognomists have told us is without any foundation, and that nothing is more chimerical than the conclusions they want to draw from their supposed metoposcopical observations. [1] Histoire naturelle de l’homme . [2]
Notes
1. According to the Oxford English Dictionary , metoposcopy is “the art of judging character or telling a person’s fortune from the forehead or face.”
2. As Jaucourt notes, these two paragraphs are adapted from Histoire naturelle de l’homme [ The Natural History of Man ], volumes 2-3 of George-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière avec la description du Cabinet du Roy (Paris, 1749). This passage is found in vol. 2, pp. 534-35. For an early (1797-1807) English translation see Buffon's Natural History, vol. 4, 93-94.