The Characters of Theophrastus [Tr. By I. Taylor] Illustr. By Physiognomical Sketches. To Which Are Subjoined Hints on the Individual Varieties of Hum

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1831 edition. Excerpt: ...or chiefly to be learned by a continued analytical scrutiny of the phenomena of our own consciousness, has operated, not only to shut out the common light of day from the walks of the science, and to straiten its path; but it has tended to leave the study of human nature in the hands of that particular class of thinkers who are the least qualified to lead it forth from the nether world of solitary speculation. And in fact this department of science has always been a sequestered haunt of ill-grown intellects, from which men of sound understanding have been fain to keep aloof. If the science of mind is ever to be placed on terms of equality and correspondence with the sister sciences, this service will be performed not by dialecticians, but by philosophers: not by those whose intellectual eminence results from the disproportionate enlargement of a single faculty, the power of abstraction; but by those who surpass other men simply in a high and rare perfection of common sense. There is perhaps no conjunction of faculties so rare as that of the power of abstraction, with the tact and the habit of observation. But both are indispensable to the study of human nature. Without that power of abstraction, by which the changes and the elements of our consciousness are held apart for separate examination, the substance that is the object of the science will never be distinctly apprehended; and without the disposition to be conversant with common facts the mind will too quickly recede from the labors of observation, and amuse itself in a world of its own creation. THE RUSTIC. A State of perfectly balanced activity in the facial muscles, without tension or rigidity, without relaxation or torpor, without the alternations of an illadjusted counteraction, ..