Signs of character, or, How to read a character at sight
Nature has placed on every individual sign of character, intending them to be seen and understood. No amount of deception on the part of the individual can conceal many of them.
It is important that every person should be acquainted v/ith those signs and their meanings. If they were understood, an immense amount of loss, misery, and disaster would be prevented.
An elaborate system of education is now common, intended to help people to succeed in life, which it often fails to do, partly because in the whole of this system there is no practical knowledge of character taught-, and people are left to gather this knowledge for themselves, in many cases after years of bitter experience, and when it is too late to be of any use to them. The traditional traveller from another planet would hardly credit this. Such a state of things is partly caused by the professed friends of character-reading, whose systems are often: so elaborate and minute that it would require years, and a powerful microscope, to study them.
A vast amount of imposture is carried on under the guise of character-reading, such as fortune-telling, which does much to disgust intelligent people with the whole thing, but it has no necessary connection whatever.
the book details :Author: A. Wallace Mason
Publication date: 1888
Company: Toronto: A.W. Mason
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An elaborate system of education is now common, intended to help people to succeed in life, which it often fails to do, partly because in the whole of this system there is no practical knowledge of character taught-, and people are left to gather this knowledge for themselves, in many cases after years of bitter experience, and when it is too late to be of any use to them. The traditional traveller from another planet would hardly credit this. Such a state of things is partly caused by the professed friends of character-reading, whose systems are often: so elaborate and minute that it would require years, and a powerful microscope, to study them.
A vast amount of imposture is carried on under the guise of character-reading, such as fortune-telling, which does much to disgust intelligent people with the whole thing, but it has no necessary connection whatever.
That character can be read at sight, the following pages will prove to anyone who will take the trouble to learn and use the signs there given. An effort has been made to make them as simple and clear as possible, and each point has been carefully illustrated.
They are gathered by many years of observation, in the cottage, the camp, the workshop, the warehouse, the slums as well as the mansions of great cities, the college, the dissecting room, the hospital, the jail, and the asylum. I have been frequently asked by medical men, ' Do not your studies in anatomy and physiology shake your faith in phrenology? "
This book is my reply to that question.
This book is my reply to that question.
The habit of reading character by the face is as old as humanity itself. And every individual on seeing a stranger, who is likely to be in any way related to him in business, or otherwise, tries to decipher the character in the face. A great many rules have been given by physiognomists, from Lavater down to the present, to enable people to do this correctly, some of which are erroneous and misleading. The best system of reading character at sight is to train the eye to take in at a glance the size and proportions of both the head and face; when this can be done correctly, the character of everyone can be estimated in a few minutes.
To attain .this very desirable object, a number of rules will be given, which can be relied upon. Not on The principal of the bumpologist, who has to run the head to find the supposed bumps, as if he were polishing a tabletop. There are certain bumps on the head that should mislead no one, as they have nothing to do with brain development. Behind each ear is one of these; they are called the mastoid process but are below the base of the brain.
They are named by George Combe, the asses' bridge, in that all amateur phren- ologists stumble across them. Another bony prominence is the occipital protuberance, situated at the centre of the back head, well-marked on muscular subjects, seldom to be found on females ; it is situated between philoprogenitiveness and amativeness.
Do not be misled by such bumps, but estimate the size of faculties or groups of faculties by their distance from the opening of the ear, as it is opp3site this point, in the centre of the brain, that the medulla oblongata is situated, and from this point, all the brain fibre radiates.
The size of faculties or groups of faculties is estimated by their distance from this part. The intellectual faculties are grouped in the front of the head; the social at the back; the moral and spiritual at the top, and the self-preserving or selfish faculties at the sides of the head. By placing before the reader striking contrasts of those groups, which are large and small, many of them well-known characters, you will see that this difference of shape is not accidental. The first two are very marked, both in the shape of the head and in the expression of the face.
Pseudo science? but fun :)
the book details :
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