Such a capricious association of factors that are ex- ternal for one another does not give a law. Physiognomy, however, would claim distinction from other spurious arts and unwholesome studies on the ground that in deal- ing with determinate individuality it considers the neces- sary opposition of an inner and an outer, of character as a conscious nature and character as a definitely em- bodied organic shape, and relates these moments to one another in the way they are related to one another by their very conception, and hence must constitute the content of a law. In astrology, on the other hand, in palmistry and such like kinds of knowledge, there Physiognomy 303 appears merely external element related to external element, anything whatsoever to an element alien to it. A given constellation at birth, and, when the external element is brought closer to the body itself, certaia given lines on the hand, are external factors making for long or short hfe, and the fate in general of the particular person. Being externalities they are indifferent towards one another, and have none of the necessity for one another which ought to he in the relation of what is outer to what is inner.
The hand, to be sure, does not seem to be such a very external thing for fate; it seems rather to stand to it as something inner. For fate again is also merely the phenomenal manifestation of what the specifically determinate individuahty inherently is as having an inner determinate constitution originally and from the start. Now to find out what this individuality is in it- self, the palmist, as well as the physiognomist, takes a shorter cut than, e.g., Solon, who thought he could only know this from and after the course of the whole hfe: the latter looked at the phenomenal exphcit reahty, while the former considers the imphcit nature {das Ansich). That the hand, however, must exhibit and reveal the inherent nature of individuahty as re- gards its fate, is easily seen from the fact that after the organ of speech it is the hand most of all by which a man actuahses and manifests himself. It is the hvely artificer of his fortune: we may say of the hand it is what a man does, for in it as the effective organ of his self-fulfilment he is there present as the animating soul; and since he is ultimately and origin- ally his own fate, the hand will thus express this innate inherent nature.
304 Phenomenology of Mind From this peculiarity, that the organ of activity is at once a form of being and the operation effected within it, or again that the inner inherent being is itself exphcitly present in it and has a being for others, we come upon a further aspect of it different from the preceding. For if the organs in general proved to be incapable of being taken as expressions of the inner for the reason that in them the operation is present as a process, while the operation as a deed or act is merely external, and inner and outer in this way fall apart and are or can be alien to one another, the organ must, in view of the pecuharity now considered, be again taken as also a middle term for both, since this very fact, that the operation takes place and is present in it, constitutes eo ipso an external attribute of it, and indeed one that is different from the deed or act; for the former holds by the individual and remains with him.
This mediating term uniting inner and outer is in the first place itseK external too. But then this exter- nahty is at the same time taken up into the inner; it stands in the form of simple unbroken externaUty op- posed to dispersed and disintegrated externality, which either is a single performance or condition contingent for the individuality as a whole, or else, in the form of a total externality, is fate or destiny, split up into a plurality of performances and conditions. The mere lines of the hand, then, the ring and compass of the voice, as also the individual pecuharity of the language used: or again this idiosyncracy of language, as expressed where the hand gives it more durable existence than the voice can do, viz.: in writing, especially in the particular style of " handwriting " — all this is an expression of the inner, Physiognomy 305 Physiognomy 305 so that, as against tlie multifarious externality of action and fate, this expression again stands in the position of simple mere externahty, plays the part of an inner in relation to the externahty of action and fate. Thus, then, if at first the specific nature and innate peculiarity of the iadividual along with what these become as the result of cultivation and development, are regarded as the inner reahty, as the essence of action and of fate, this inner being gets its appearance in external fashion to begin with from the mouth, hand, voice, handwriting, and the other organs and their permanent characteristics. Thereafter and not till then does it give itself further outward expression, when reahsed in the world.
Now because this middle term assumes the nature of an outer expression, which is at the same time taken back into the inner, its existence is not confined to the immediate organ carrying out the action; this middle term is rather the movement and form of coun- tenance and figure in general which perform no outward act. These lineaments and their movements on this principle are the checked and restrained action that stops at the individual and, as regards his relation to what he actually does, constitute his own personal inspection and observation of the action — expression in the sense of reflection upon the actual expression.
The individual is therefore not a mute and silent spectator on the occasion of his external action, since he is there reflected into himself at the same time, and gives articulate expression to this self- reflection. This theoretical activity, the individual's conversing with himself on the matter, is also percep- tible to others, for his speaking is itself an outer ex- pression.
VOL. I.— X 306 Phenomenology of Mind la this inner, then, which, in being expressed remains an inner, observation finds the individual reflected out of Ms actual reality; and we have to see how the case stands with this necessity involved in the unity here.
His being thus reflected is to begin with different from the act itself, and therefore can he, and be taken for something other than tlie deed is. We look at a man's face and see whether he is in earnest with, what he says or does. Conversely, however, wkat is here intended to be an expression of the inner is at the same time an existent objective expression, and hence itself falls to the level of mere existence, which is absolutely contingent for the self-conscious individual. It is therefore no doubt an expression, but at tlie same time only in the sense of a sign or symbol, so that to the content expressed the peculiar nature of that by which it is expressed is completely indifferent. The inner in thus appearing is doubtless an invisible made visible, but without being itself attached to this appearance. It can just as weU make use of some other appearance as another inner can adopt the same kind of appearance. Lichtenberg,* therefore, is right in say- ing: " Suppose the physiognomist ever did have a man in his grasp, it would merely require a courageous resolution on the man's part to make himself again in- comprehensible for centuries."
In the previous case f the immediately given circum- stances formed a sphere of existence from which indi- viduahty selected what it could or what it wanted, either submitting to or transmuting this given existence, * A critic of physiognomy in Uber Physiognomik, 2 Auf. Gdttingen, 1778, p. 35.
t i.e., the relation of self-consciousijess to external reality.
Physiognomy 307 for which reason this did not contain the necessity and inner nature of individuaUty. Similarly here the immediate being in which individuality clothes its appearance is one which either expresses the fact of its being reflected back out of reahty and existing within itself, or which is for it merely a sign indifferent to what is signified, and therefore signifying in reahty nothing; it is as much its countenance as its mask, which can be put off when it likes. Individuality permeates its own shape, moves, speaks in the shape assumed; but this entire mode of existence equally well passes over into a state of being indifferent to the will and the act. In- dividuahty effaces from it the significance it formerly had — of being that wherein individuahty is reflected into itself, or has its true nature — and instead puts its real nature rather in the will and the deed.
Individuahty abandons that condition of being reflected into self which finds expression in lines and lineaments, and places its real nature in the performance, the work done. Herein it contradicts the relationship which the instinct of reason, engaged in observing self-conscious individuahty, establishes in regard to what its inner and outer should be. This point of view brings us to the special idea at the basis of the science of physiognomy — if we care to call it so. The opposition this form of observation comes upon is in form the opposition of practical and theoretical, both falling inside the practical aspect itself — the opposition of individuahty, making itself real in action (in the most general sense of action), and individuahty as being in this action at the same time reflected thence into self, and taking the action for its object. Observa- tion apprehends and accepts this opposition in the 308 Phenomenology of Mind same inverted form in whicb. it is when it makes its appearance. To observation, tlie deed itself and the performance, whether it be that of speech or a more sohd reahty, stand for the contingent, non- essential outer while the individuality's existence with- in itself passes for the essential inner. Of the two aspects which the practical mind involves, intention and act, (the pondering over the action and the action itself,) observation selects the former as the true inner; the latter is to have its more or less unessential esternahsation in the act, its true outer expression, how- ever, is to be had in the form in which the individual is embodied. This latter expression is the sensuous immediate presence of the individual self-conscious agent: the inwardness which is to be the true and internal aspect, is the personal pecuharity of the in- tention, and the individual singleness of his self-exist- ence— both together the mind as subjectively " meant." Thus, what observation takes for its object is an ex- istence that is " meant "; and there it looks for laws. The primary way of thinking about and giving the " meaning " of the '' presmnptive " presence of mind, is that of natural physiognomy, hasty judgment formed at a glance regarding the inner nature and the character of its form and shape. The object of this kind of guesswork thinking is so constituted that its very nature involves its being in truth something other than merely sensuous and immediate. Certainly what is really present is just this condition of being in sensuous form reflected out of sense into self; it is the visible as a sensuous presentment of the invisible, which consti- tutes the object of observation. But this very sensuous immediate presence is an actuality of mind only as it Physiognomy 309 is for subjective conjecture (Meinung); and obser- vation from tbis point of view occupies itself with its " presumed " (gemeint) existence^ with physiognomy, handwriting, sound of voice, etc.
This sort of existence refers to just such a supposed or presumed (gemeintes) inner. It is not the murderer, the thief that is to be known; it is the capacity to be a murderer, a thief. The definitely marked abstract attribute is thereby lost in the particular individual's concrete infinite characteristic nature, which now de- mands more skilful delineations than the former qualifi- cations supply. Such skilful dehneations no doubt say more than the qualification, "murderer,'' "thief," or "good-hearted," "unspoiled," and so on; but are a long way short of their aim, which is to express the existence that is " meant," the single individuahty, as far short as the dehneations of the form and shape, which go further than a ' ' flat brow, " a " long nose, " etc. For the individual shape and form, hke the individual self-consciousness, is, qua "presmned " existence, inexpressible. The " science of knowing men " * which takes to do with a suppositi- tious human being, hke the science of physiognomy, which deals with its presumptive reahty and seeks to raise to the level of demonstrable knowledge those un- critical assertions of natural physiognomy, is therefore something with neither foundation nor finahty; it cannot manage to say what it "means" because it merely "means" or "presumes," and its content is merely what is " presumed " or " meant."
The so-called " laws," this kind of science sets out to * This refers to the claims put forward by Lavater, whose work was entitled Fhysiognomische Fragmente zur Bejorderung der Menschenkenntniss und Menschenliehe. Liepzig, 1776-8.
310 Phenomenology of Mind fizid, are relations holding between these two presumed or supposed aspects, and hence can amount to no more than an empty ''fancying." Again, too, since this pretence at knowledge, which takes upon itself to deal with the reahty of mind, finds its object to be just the fact that mind is reflected from sense existence back into self, and determinate existence is an in- different accident for it, it is bound to be aware at once that by the so-called " laws " discovered it really means nothing at all, but that, strictly speaking, all this is mere chatter, or merely a " fancy " or " opinion " of its own, — an expression which brings out the truth that to state one's " opinion," one's " fancy," and not to convey thereby the fact itself, but merely a " fancy of one's own," are one and the same thing. In con- tent, however, such observations cannot differ from these: "It always rains at our annual fair," says the dealer; "And every time, too," says the housewife, " when I am drying my washing."
Lichtenberg, who characterises physiognomic ob- servation in this way, makes this remark: "If any one says, ' You act, certainly, like an honest man, but I can see from your figure you are forcing yourself to do so, and are a rogue at heart,' without a doubt every brave fellow to the end of time when accosted in that fashion will retort with a box in the ear."
This retort is very striking, for the reason that it refutes the fundamental assumption of such a guess- work method of " conjecture " {meinen), viz. that the reality of a man is his face, etc.
The true being of a man is rather his act; indi- viduality is real ia the deed, and a deed it is which cancels both the aspects of what is "meant" or "pre- Physiognomy §ll sumed'^ to be. In tlie one aspect wiiere wliat is " presumed " or " imagined " takes the form of a passive bodily being, individuality puts itself forward in action as tlie negative essence whicb only is so far as it cancels being. Then furthermore the act does away with the inexpressibleness of what self-conscious individuality really " means "; in regard to such " meaning," this in- dividuahty is endlessly determined and determinable. This false infinite, this endless determining, is abolished in the performance of the act. The act is some- thing simply determinate, universal, to be grasped as an abstract, distinctive whole; it is murder, theft, a benefit, a deed of bravery, and so on, and what it is can be said of it. It is such and such, and its being is not merely a symbol, it is the fact itself. It is this, and the individual human being is what the act is. In the bare simphcity of this being, the individual has for others a definite essential nature of a certain general kind, and ceases to be merely something that is " meant " or " presumed " to be this or that. No doubt he is not there put forward in the form of mind; but when it is a question of his being qua being, and the twofold being of bodily shape and act are pitted against one another, each claim- ing to be his true reahty, the deed alone is to be affirmed as his genuine being — not his figure or shape, which would express what he " means " to convey by his acts, or what any one might "conjecture" he merely could do. In the same way again when his performance and his inner possibfiity, capacity, or intention are opposed, the former alone is to be regarded as his true reahty, even if he finds things turn out different from what he expected, and " fancies," when ol2 Phenomenology of Mind he turns from the act to what is in his " mind," that he is something else in his " inner mind " than what he is in the act. Individuahty which commits itself to the objective element, when it sets out to do something, no doubt puts itself at the mercy of that element, to be altered and perverted as the latter decides. But what settles the character of the act is just this, — whether the deed is a real thing that holds together, or whether it is merely a pretended or "supposed" performance, which is in itself null and void and passes away. Ob- jectification does not alter the act itseK, it merely shows what the deed is, i.e. whether it is or whether it is nothing.
The breaking up of this being into intentions, and subtleties of that sort, by which the real man, i.e. his deed, is to be reduced again to, and explained in terms of, his "conjectured" being, as even the in- dividual himself may produce particular intentions to explain his own reahty, — all this must be left to idle " fancying " and " presuming " to furnish at its leisure. If this idle thinking will set its ineffective wisdom to work, and will deny the agent the character of reason, and use him so badly as to want to declare his figure and his Hneaments to be his real being instead of his act, then it may expect to get the retort above spoken of, a retort which shows that figure is not the inherent being, but is at any rate an object that can be pretty roughly handled.
If we look now at the range of relations as a whole in which self-conscious individuahty can be observed standing towards its outer aspect, there will be one left which has still to come before observation as an object. In psychology it is the external reahty of Phrenology 313 Phrenology 313 things wtiich in the life of mind is to have its counterpart conscious of itself and make the mind inteihgible. In physiognomy, on the other hand, mind or spirit is to be known in its own proper outer (physical) aspect, a form of being which may be called the language or utterance of mind — the visible invisibihty of its inner nature. There is still left the further character of the aspect of reahty, — that individuahty expresses its nature in its immediate actuahty, an actuahty that is definitely fixed and purely existent.
This last relation [of mind to its reahty] is distin- guished from the physiognomic by the fact that this is the speaking presence of the individual, who in his practical active outer expression brings to hght and manifests at the same time the expression wherein he reflects himself into himself and contemplates himself, an expression which is itself a movement, passive lineaments which are themselves essentially a mediated form of existence. In the feature still to be considered, however, the outer phase is in the end an entirely inactive objectivity, which is not in itself a speaking sign, but presents itself on its own account, separate from the self-conscious process, and has the form of a bare thing.
In the first place in regard to the relation of the inner to this its outer, it is clear that that relation seems boimd to be understood in the sense of a causal con- nection, since the relation of one immanent and in- herent entity to another, qua a necessary relation, is causal connection.
Now, for spiritual individuahty to have an elfect on the body, it must qua cause be itself corporeal. The corporeal aspect, however, wherein it acts as a 314 Phenomenology of Mind cause, is the organ, not the organ of action on external reahty, but of the action of the self-conscious being within itself, operating outward only on its own body. It is at the same time not easy to see what these organs can be. If we merely think of organs in general, the organ for work and toil would at once occur to us, so, too, the organ of sex, and so on. But organs of that sort are to be considered as instruments or parts which mind qua one extreme possesses as a means for dealing with the other extreme, which is an outer object. In the present case, however, an organ is to be rmder- stood to be one wherein the self-conscious individual, as an extreme, maintains himself on his own account and for himself against his own proper actuahty which is opposed to him, the individual not being at the same time turned upon the outer world, but reflected in his own action, and where, further, his aspect of existence is not an existence objective for some other individual. In the case of physiognomy, too, the organ is no doubt considered as an existence reflected into seK and criticising the action. But in this case the existence is objective in character, and the outcome of the physiog- nomical treatment is that self-consciousness treats its own reahty as something to which it can be indifierent. This indifference disappears in the fact that this very state of being reflected into self is directly active: thereby that existence occupies and maintains a necessary relation to it. But to operate effectually on that existence it must itself have a being, though not properly speaking an objective being, and it must be shown to be an organ in this sense.
In ordinary hfe, anger, e.g. as an internal action of that sort, is located in the hver. Plato * even * Timaus, 71, 72.
Phrenology 315 assigns the liver something still higher, something which to many is even the highest function of all, viz. prophecying, or the gift of uttering in an irrational manner things sacred and eternal. But the process which goes on in the individual's hver, heart, and so on, cannot be regarded as one wholly internal to the individual, wholly reflected into his self; rather it is there in such a form that his Body is from the first smitten with it, and the process assumes a physical existence, becomes an animal force, reacting on and directed towards external reahty.
The nervous system, on the other hand, is the immediate stability of the organism in its process of movement. The nerves themselves, no doubt, are again organs of that consciousness which from the fu'st is immersed in its outward impulses. Brain and spinal cord, however, may be looked at as the immediate presence of self-consciousness, a presence self-con- tained, not an object and also not transient. In so far as the moment of being, which this organ has, is a being for another, is an objective existence, it is a being that is dead, and is no longer the presence of self-consciousness. This self-contained existence, how- ever, is by its very nature a fluent stream, wherein the circles that are made in it immediately break up and dissolve, and where no distinction is expressed as permanent, or real. Meanwhile, as mind itself is not an abstractly simple entity, but a system of processes, wherein it distinguishes itself into moments, but in the very act of distinguishing remains free and detached; and as mind articulates its body as a whole into a variety of functions, and designates one particular part of the body for only one function: — so too one can 316 Phenomenology of Mind represent to oneself the fluent state of its internal exist- ence [its existence within itself] as something that is articulated into parts. Moreover, it seems bound to be thought of in this way, because the self-reflected being of mind in the brain itself is again merely a middle term between its pure essential nature and its bodily articulation, an intermediate link, which thereby forms the nature of both, and thus from the side of the latter, must also again have in it the actual articulation.
The psycho-organic being has at the same time the necessary aspect of a stable subsistent existence. The former must retire, qua extreme of self-existence, and have this latter as the other extreme over against it, an extreme which is then the object on which the former acts as a cause. If now brain and spinal cord are that bodily self-existence of miad, the' skull and vertebral column form the other extreme separated of!, viz. the sohd fixed stable thing.
When, however, any one thinks of the proper place where mind exists, it is not the back that occurs to him, but merely the head. Since this is so, we can, in examining a form of knowledge hke what we are at present deahng with, content ourselves with this reason, — not a very bad one in the present case, — in order to confine the existence of mind to the skuU. Should it strike any one to take the vertebral column for the seat of mind, in so far as by it too knowledge and action doubtless are sometimes partly induced and partly educed, this would prove nothing in defence of the view that the spinal cord must be taken as well for the indwelling seat of mind, and the vertebral column for the existential counterpart, because this proves too much. For we may bear in mind that there are Phrenology 317 also other approved external ways for succouring tlie activity of mind in order to stimulate or inhibit its activity.
The vertebral column, then, drops — "rightly," if we hke — out of account; and our "construing" that the skull alone does not in fact contain the "organs" of mind is just as good as many other doctrines " construed " by "philosophy of nature." For this was previously ex- cluded from the notion of this relation, and on that account the skull was adopted as the aspect of existence; or, if we may not recall what the state of the case essentially and in principle involves, even experience teaches us clearly that, as we do not see with the eye qua organ, so it is not with the skull that we commit murder, steal, write poetry, etc.
We must on that account refrain too from using the expression " organ " when speaking of that significance of the skull which we have still to mention. For although it is a common thing to hear people say, that to reasonable men it is not words but facts that really matter, yet that does not give us permission to describe a thing in terms not appropriate to it. For this is at once stupidity and deceit, pretending merely not to have the right "word," and hiding from itself that in reahty it has not got hold of the fact itself, the notion. If the latter were there, it would soon find the right word.
What has been here determined is, in the first instance, merely that just as the brain is the cafut vivum, the skull is the cafut mortuum.
It is in this ens mortuum, then, that the mental processes and specific functions of the brain would have to find their external reality manifested and 318 Phenomenology of Mind