SOURCE: Berland, K. J. H. “Reading Character in the Face: Lavater, Socrates, and Physiognomy.” Word & Image 9, no. 3 (July-September, 1993): 252-69.

In the following excerpt, Berland argues that an evaluation of Lavater's comments on images of Socrates indicates that his method of physiognomy is not empirical, but instead “pseudo-inductive.”

The physiognomists are easy enough targets today, especially since there exist some physiognomical texts that do assert a mechanistic system of fixed and direct correspondences. But there are also more texts that insist on maintaining the proper distinction between natural causes (innate tendencies) and the potential for change (temperance and will).

Such a distinction also informs Johann Caspar Lavater's masterly work on physiognomy, but he attempts to take it a step further. In his endeavour to bring a scientific tone (if not an empirical method) to physiognomy, he asserts that a rigorous program of careful observations would reveal minute gradations of...