whose hospitality I again made use of. The Physiognomy, with all its
portraits and monstrous caricatures, weighed heavily and with an
ever-increasing load on the shoulders of the worthy man. We arranged
all as well as we could under the circumstances, and I promised him, on
my return home, to continue my assistance.
I was led to give this promise by a certain youthful unlimited
confidence in my own quickness of comprehension, and still more by a
feeling of my readiness of adaptation to any subject; for, in truth,
the way in which Lavater dissected physiognomies was not at all in my
vein. The impression which at our first meeting, he had made upon me,
determined, in some degree, my relation to him; although a general wish
to oblige which was always strong, joined to the light-heartedness of
youth, had a great share in all my actions by causing me to see things
in a certain twilight atmosphere.
Lavater's mind was altogether an imposing one; in his society it
was impossible to resist his decided influence, and I had no choice
but to submit to it at once and set to work observing foreheads and
noses, eyes and mouths, in detail, and weighing their relations and
proportions. My fellow observer did this from necessity, as he had to
give a perfect account of what he himself had discerned so clearly; but
to me it always seemed like a trick, a piece of espionage, to attempt
to analyse a man into his elements before his face, and so to get upon
the track of his hidden moral peculiarities. I had more pleasure in
listening to his conversation, in which he unveiled himself at will.
And yet, I must confess, I always felt a degree of constraint in
Lavater's presence; for, while by his art of physiognomy, he possessed
himself of our peculiarities, he also made himself, by conversation,
master of our thoughts, which, with a little sagacity, he would easily
guess from our variety of phrases.
He who feels a pregnant synthesis in himself, has peculiarly a right to
analyse, since by the outward particulars he tests and legitimizes his
inward whole. How Lavater managed in such cases, a single example will
suffice to show.
[Side-note: Lavater--His Character and Works.]
On Sundays, after the sermon, it was his duty, as an ecclesiastic,
to hold the short-handled, velvet, alms-bag before each one who went
out, and to bless as he received the pious gift. Now, on a certain
Sunday he proposed to himself, without looking at the several persons
as they dropped in their offerings, to observe only their hands, and
by them, silently, to judge of the forms of their owner. Not only the
shape of the finger, but its peculiar action in dropping the gift,
was attentively noted by him, and he had much to communicate to me on
the conclusions he had formed. How instructive and exciting must such
conversations have been to one, who also was seeking to qualify himself
for a painter of men!
Often in my after life had I occasion to think of Lavater, who was
one of the best and worthiest men that I ever formed so intimate
a relation with. These notices of him that I have introduced in
this work were accordingly written at various times. Following our
divergent tendencies, we gradually became strangers to each other,
and yet I never could bring myself to part with the favorable idea
which his worth had left upon my mind. In thought I often brought him
before me, and thus arose these leaves, which, as they were written
without reference to and independently of each other, may contain some
repetitions, but, it is hoped, no contradictions.
* * * * *
By his cast of mind, Lavater was a decided realist, and knew of nothing
ideal except in a moral form; by keeping this remark steadily in mind,
you will most readily understand this rare and singular man.
His _Prospects of Eternity_ look merely for a continuance of the
present state of existence, under easier conditions than those which we
have now to endure. His _Physiognomy_ rests on the conviction that the
sensible corresponds throughout with the spiritual, and is not only an
evidence of it, but indeed its representative.
The ideals of art found little favor with him, because with his sharp
look he saw too clearly the impossibility of such conceptions ever
being embodied in a living organization, and he therefore banished them
into the realm of fable, and even of monstrosity.
His incessant demand for a realization of the ideal gained him the
reputation of a visionary, although he maintained and felt convinced
that no man insisted more strongly on the actual than he did;
accordingly, he never could detect the error in his mode of thinking
and acting.
Seldom has there been a man who strove more passionately than he did
for public recognition, and thus he was particularly fitted for a
teacher; but if all his labors tended to the intellectual and moral
improvement of others, this was by no means their ultimate aim.
To realize the character of Christ was what he had most at heart;
hence that almost insane zeal of his to have pictures of Christ drawn,
copied, moulded, one after another; none of which, however, as to be
expected, ever satisfied him.
His writings are hard to understand, even now, for it is far from easy
to penetrate into his precise meaning. No one ever wrote so much of
the times, and for the times, as Lavater; his writings are veritable
journals, which in an especial manner require to be explained by the
history of the day; they, moreover, are written in the language of a
coterie, which one must first acquaint oneself with, before we can
hold communion with them, otherwise many things will appear stupid and
absurd even to the most intelligent reader. Indeed, objections enough
of the kind have been made against this author, both in his lifetime
and since.
Thus, for example, with our rage for dramatizing and representing under
this form all that struck us, and caring for no other, we once so
warmed his brain with a dramatic ardour, that, in his _Pontius Pilate_,
he labored very hard to show that there is no more dramatic work than
the Bible; and, especially, that the history of Christ's Passion must
be regarded as the drama of all dramas.
In this chapter, and indeed throughout the work, Lavater appears
greatly to resemble Father Abraham of Santa Clara; for into this manner
every richly gifted mind necessarily falls who wishes to work upon his
contemporaries. He must acquaint himself with existing tendencies and
passions, with the speech and terminology of the day, and adapt them
to his ends, in order to approach the mass whom he seeks to influence.
* * * * *
[Side-note: Lavater--His Character and Works.]
Since Lavater took Christ literally,--as described by the Scriptures,
and by most commentators,--he let this representation serve so far
for the supplement of his own being, that he ideally incorporated the
God-man into his own individual humanity, until he finally was able to
imagine himself melted into one and united with him, and, indeed, to
have become the same person.
This decidedly literal faith had also worked in him a perfect
conviction that miracles can be wrought to-day as well as heretofore.
Accordingly, since in some important and trying emergencies of his
earlier days, he had by means of earnest and indeed violent prayer,
succeeded in procuring an instantaneous and favorable turn of the
impending calamity, no mere cold objections of the reasoning intellect
would make him for a moment waver in this faith. Penetrated, moreover,
by the idea of the greatness and excellence of Humanity as restored by
Christ, and through Him destined to a blissful immortality, but, at
the same time, fully sensible of the manifold requisitions of man's
heart and mind, and of his insatiable yearnings after knowledge, and,
moreover, feeling in himself that desire of expanding himself into the
infinite to which the starry heavens seem so sensibly to invite us, he
wrote under these feelings Iris "_Prospects of Eternity_," which must
have appeared a very strange book indeed to the greater part of his
contemporaries.
All this striving, however, all wishes, all undertakings, were
overborne by the genius for physiognomy, which nature had bestowed upon
him. For, as the touchstone, by its blackness and peculiar roughness of
surface, is eminently fitted to distinguish between the metals which
are applied to it; so that pure idea of humanity, which Lavater carried
within himself, and that sharp yet delicate gift of observation, which
at first he exercised from natural impulse occasionally only and
accidentally, but afterwards with deliberate reflection and regularly,
qualified him in the highest degree to note the peculiarities of
individual men, and to understand, distinguish, and express them.
Every talent which rests on a decided natural gift, seems from our
inability to subordinate either it or its operations to any idea to
have something of magic about it. And, in truth, Lavater's insight into
the characters of individuals surpassed all conception; one was utterly
amazed at his remarks, when in confidence we were talking of this or
that person; nay, it was frightful to live near a man who clearly
discerned the nicest limits by which nature had been pleased to modify
and distinguish our various personalities.
Every one is apt to believe that what he possesses himself may be
communicated to others; and so Lavater was not content to make use of
this great gift for himself alone, but insisted that it might be found
and called forth in others, nay that it might even be imparted to the
great mass. The many dull and malicious misinterpretations, the stupid
jests in abundance, and detracting railleries, this striking doctrine
gave rise to, may still be remembered by some men; however, it must be
owned that the worthy man himself was not altogether without blame in
the matter. For though a high moral sense preserved the unity of his
inner being, yet, with his manifold labors, he was unable to attain
to outward unity, since he did not possess the slightest capacity for
philosophical method, nor for artistic talent.
He was neither Thinker nor Poet; indeed, not even an orator, in the
proper sense of the term. Utterly unable to take a comprehensive
and methodical view, he nevertheless formed an unerring judgment of
individual cases and these he noted down boldly side by side. His great
work on Physiognomy is a striking proof and illustration of this. In
himself, the idea of the moral or of the sensual man might form a
whole; but out of himself he could not represent this idea, except
practically by individual cases, in the same way as he himself had
apprehended them in life.
That very work sadly shows us how in the commonest matter of experience
so sharp-sighted a man, may go groping about him. For after spending
an immense sum and employing every artist and botcher living, he
procured at last drawings and engravings, which were so far without
character, that he is obliged in his work to say after each one that
it is more or less a failure, unmeaning and worthless. True, by this
means, he sharpened his own judgment, and the judgment of others; but
it also proves that his mental bias led him rather to heap up cases of
experience, than to draw from them any clear and sober principle. For
this reason he never could come to results, though I often pressed him
for them. What in later life he confided as such to his friends, were
none to me; for they consisted of nothing more than a collection of
certain lines and features, nay, warts and freckles, with which he had
seen certain moral, and frequently immoral, peculiarities associated.
There were certainly some remarks among them that surprised and
riveted your attention; but they formed no series, one thing followed
another accidentally, there was no gradual advance towards any general
deductions and no reference to any principles previously established.
And indeed there was just as little of literary method or artistic
feeling to be found in his other writings, which invariably contained
passionate and earnest expositions of his thoughts and objects, and
supplied by the most affecting and appropriate instances, what they
could not accomplish by the general conception.
* * * * *
[Side-note: Abuse of the Term--Genius.]
The following reflections, as they refer to those circumstances, may be
aptly introduced here.
No one willingly concedes superiority to another, so long as he can
in any way deny it. Natural gifts of every kind can the least be
denied, and yet by the common mode of speaking in those times, genius
was ascribed to the poet alone. But another world seemed all at once
to rise up; genius was looked for in the physician, in the general,
in the statesman, and before long, in all men, who thought to make
themselves eminent either in theory or practice. Zimmerman, especially,
had advanced these claims. Lavater, by his views of Physiognomy, was
compelled to assume a more general distribution of mental gifts by
nature; the word genius became a universal symbol, and because men
heard it uttered so often, they thought that what was meant by it, was
habitually at hand. But then, since every one felt himself justified
in demanding genius of others, he finally believed that he also must
possess it himself. The time was yet far distant when it could be
affirmed, that genius is that power of man which by its deeds and
actions gives laws and rules. At this time it was thought to manifest
itself only, by overstepping existing laws, breaking established
rules, and declaring itself above all restraint. It was, therefore,
an easy thing to be a genius, and nothing was more natural than that
extravagance both of word and deed should provoke all orderly men to
oppose themselves to such a monster.
When anybody rushed into the world on foot, without exactly knowing why
or whither, it was called a pass of genius; and when any one undertook
an aimless and useless absurdity, it was a stroke of genius. Young
men, of vivacious and true talents, too often lost themselves in the
limitless; and then older men of understanding, wanting perhaps in
talent and in soul, found a most malicious gratification in exposing to
the public gaze, their manifold and ludicrous miscarriages.
For my part, in the development and the expression of my own ideas,
I perhaps experienced far more hindrance and checks from the false
co-operation and interference of the like-minded, than by the
opposition of those whose turn of mind was directly contrary to my own.
With a strange rapidity, words, epithets, and phrases, which have once
been cleverly employed to disparage the highest intellectual gifts,
spread by a sort of mechanical repetition among the multitude, and in
a short time they are to be heard everywhere, even in common life, and
in the mouths of the most uneducated; indeed before long they even
creep into dictionaries. In this way the word genius had suffered so
much from misrepresentation, that it was almost desired to banish it
entirely from the German language.
And so the Germans, with whom the common voice is more apt to prevail
than with other nations, would perhaps have sacrificed the fairest
flower of speech, the word which, though apparently foreign, really
belongs to every people, had not the sense for what is highest and best
in man, been happily restored and solidly established by a profounder
philosophy.
* * * * *
In the preceding pages mention has been frequently made of the youthful
times of two men, whose memory will never hide from the history of
German literature and morals. At this period, however, we came to
know them as it were only by the errors into which they were misled
by a false maxim which prevailed among their youthful contemporaries.
Nothing, therefore, can be more proper than with due appreciation and
respect to paint their natural form, their peculiar individuality, just
as it appeared at that time, and as their immediate presence exhibited
itself to the penetrating eye of Lavater. Consequently, since the heavy
and expensive volumes of the great work on Physiognomy are probably
accessible to a few only of our readers, I have no scruple in inserting
here the remarkable passages of that work, which refer to both the
Stolbergs, in the second part and its thirtieth fragment, page 224:
[Side-note: Lavater's Sketch of the Stolbergs.]
"The young men, whose portraits and profiles we have here before us,
are the first men who ever sat and stood to me for physiognomical
description, as another would sit to a painter for his portrait.
"I knew them before, the noble ones--and I made the first attempt, in
accordance with nature and with all my previous knowledge, to observe
and to describe their character.
"Here is the description of the whole man.--
FIRST, OF THE YOUNGER.
"See the blooming youth of 25! the lightly-floating, buoyant, elastic
creature! it does not lie; it does not stand; it does not lean; it does
not fly; it floats or swims. Too full of life, to rest; too supple to
stand firm; too heavy and too weak, to fly.
"A floating thing, then, which does not touch the earth! In its whole
contour not a single slack line; but on the other hand no straight one,
no tense one, none firmly arched or stiffly curved; no sharp entering
angles, no rock-like projection of the brow; no hardness; no stiffness;
no defiant roughness; no threatening insolence; no iron will--all
is elastic, winning, but nothing iron; no stedfast and searching
profundity; no slow reflection, or prudent thoughtfulness; nowhere the
reasoner with the scales held firmly in the one hand, and the sword in
the other; and yet not the least formality in look or judgment! but
still the most perfect straight-forwardness of intellect, or rather
the most immaculate sentiment of truth! Always the inward feeler,
never the deep thinker; never the discoverer, the testing unfolder of
truth so quickly seen, so quickly known, so quickly loved, and quickly
grasped.... Perpetual soarer, a seer; idealizer; beautifier;--that
gives a shape and form, to all his ideas! Ever the half-intoxicated
poet, seeing only what he will see;--not the sorrowfully languishing;
not the sternly crushing; but the lofty, noble, powerful! who with
'thirst for the sun' (_Sonnendurst_), hovers to and fro in the regions
of air, strives aloft, and again--_sinks_ not to earth! but throws
himself headlong to earth, bather in the floods of the 'Rock-stream'
(_Felsenstrom_), and cradles himself 'in the thunder of the echoing
rocks around' (_Im Donner der hallenden Felsen umher_). His glance--not
the fire-glance of the eagle! His brow and nose--not the courage of the
lion! his breast--not the stedfastness of the steed that neighs for
battle! In the whole, however, there is much of the tearing activity of
the elephant....
"The projecting upper lip slightly drawn up towards the over-hanging
nose, which is neither sharply cut, nor angular, evinces, with such a
closing of the mouth, much taste and sensibility; while the lower part
of the face bespeaks much sensuality, indolence, and thoughtlessness.
The whole outline of the profile shows openness, honesty, humanity,
but at the same tune a liability to be led astray, and a high degree
of that good-hearted indiscretion, which injures no one but himself.
The middle line of the mouth bespeaks in its repose, a downright,
planless, weak, good-natured disposition; when in motion, a tender,
finely-feeling, exceedingly susceptible, benevolent, noble man. In the
arch of the eyelids, and in the glance of the eyes, there sits not
Homer, but the deepest, most thorough, and most quick feeling, and
comprehension of Homer; not the epic, but the lyric poet; genius, which
fuses, moulds, creates, glorifies, hovers, transforms all into a heroic
form--which deifies all. The half-closed eyelids, from such an arch,
indicate the keenly sensitive poet, rather than the slowly laboring
artist, who creates after a plan; the whimsical rather than the severe.
The full face of the youth is much more taking and attractive, than
the somewhat too loose, too protracted half-face; the fore-part of the
face in its slightest motion, tells of a highly sensitive, thoughtful,
inventive, untaught, inward goodness, of a softly tremulous,
wrong-abhorring love of liberty--an eager vivacity. It cannot conceal
from the commonest observer the slightest impression which it receives
for the moment, or adopts for ever. Every object, which nearly concerns
or interests him, drives the blood into the cheeks and nose; where
honor is concerned, the most maidenly blush of shame spreads like
lightning over the delicately sensitive skin.
[Side-note: Lavater's Sketch of the Stolbergs.]
"The complexion is not the pale one of all-creating, all-consuming
genius; not the wildly glowing one of the contemptuous destroyer;
not the milk-white one of the blond; not the olive one of the strong
and hardy; not the brownish one of the slowly plodding peasant; but
the white, the red, and the violet, running one into another, and so
expressively, and so happily, blended together like the strength and
weakness of the whole character. The soul of the whole and of each
single feature is freedom, and elastic activity, which springs forth
easily and is as easily repulsed. The whole fore-face and the way
the head is carried, promise magnanimity and upright cheerfulness.
Incorruptible sensibility, delicacy of taste, purity of mind, goodness
and nobleness of soul, active power, a feeling of strength and of
weakness, shine out so transparently through the whole face, that what
were otherwise a lively self-complacency dissolves itself into a noble
modesty, and most artlessly and unconstrainedly the natural pride and
vanity of youth melt with the loveliness of twilight into the easy
majesty of the whole man. The whitish hair, the length and awkwardness
of form, the softness and lightness of step, the hesitating gait, the
flatness of the breast, the fair unfurrowed brow, and various other
features spread over the whole man a certain feminine air, by which
the inward quickness of action is moderated, and every intentional
offence and every meanness made for ever impossible to the heart; but
at the same time clearly evincing that the spirited and fiery poet,
with all his unaffected thirst for freedom and for emancipation, is
neither destined to be a man of business, thoroughly persistent, who
steadily and resolutely carries out his plans, or to become immortal
in the bloody strife. And now, in conclusion, I remark, for the first
time, that I have as yet said nothing of the most striking trait--the
noble simplicity, free from all affectation! Nothing of his childlike
openness of heart! Nothing of the entire unconsciousness of his outward
nobility! Nothing of the inexpressible _bonhommie_ with which he
accepts and bears reproaches or warnings, nay, even accusations and
wrongful charges.
"But who can find an end, who will undertake to tell all that he sees
or feels in a good man, in whom there is so much pure humanity?"
DESCRIPTION OF THE ELDER STOLBERG.
"What I have said of the younger brother--how much of it may be
said also of the elder! The principal thing I have to remark is the
following:--