Delsarte System of Oratory eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 452 pages of information about Delsarte System of Oratory.

Delsarte System of Oratory eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 452 pages of information about Delsarte System of Oratory.

If the brow and voice are lowered, the case is grave and demands much consideration.

If brow and voice are elevated, the expression is usually mild, amiable and affectionate.

If the voice is raised and the brow lowered, the form is doubtful and suspicious.  With the brow concentric, the hand is repellent.

Both brow and hand concentric denote repulsion or retention; this is always the case with a door.

Both brow and hand eccentric mean inspiration, or allowing departure without concern.

There is homogeneity between the face, the eyebrow and the hand.

The degree and nature of the emotion must be shown in the face, otherwise there will be only grimace.

The hand is simply another expression of the face.  The face gives the hand its significance.  Hand movements without facial expression would be purely automatic.  The face has the first word, the hand completes the sense.  There are eighty-one movements of the hand impossible to the face; hence, without the hand, the face cannot express everything.  The hand is the detailed explanation of what the face has sought to say.

There are expressions of the hand consonant with the facial traits, and others dissonant:  this is the beautiful.

The weak hand and the strong face are the sign of impotence.

The weak hand and the strong face are the sign of perfidy.

The tones of the voice vary according to the expression of the face.  The face must speak, it must have charm.

In laughing, the face is eccentric; a sombre face is concentric.

The face is the mirror of the soul because it is the most impressionable agent, and consequently the most faithful in rendering the impressions of the soul.

Not only may momentary emotions be read in the expression of the features, but by an inspection of the conformation of the face, the aptitude, thoughts, character and individual temperament may be determined.

The difference in faces comes from difference in the configuration of profiles.

There are three primitive and characteristic profiles, of which all others are only derivations or shades.  There is the upright, the concave and the convex profile.  Each of these genera must produce three species, and this gives again the accord of nine.

These different species arise from the direction of the angles, as also from the position of the lips and nose.

Uprightness responds to the perpendicular profile; chastity, to the concave; sensualism, to the convex.

Let it be understood that we derogate in no way from the liberty of the man who remains always master of his will, his emotions and his inclinations.

A criterion of the face is indispensable to the intelligent physiognomist, and as the lips and nose have much to do with the expression of the face, we offer an unerring diagnosis in the three following charts: 

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Delsarte System of Oratory from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.