CONTENTS.

DEDICATION

ADVERTISEMENT .............................

PREFACE

PART FIRST.

On the influence of climate in general

PART SECOND.

On the particular effects which climate thus produces,

and on the classification of the species which re-

sults from it

PART THIRD.

Further examination of the form of the head, and

of the Criteria of Intellect which it presents

PART FOURTH.

Physiognomical Details, as founded on the pre-

ceding Physiology...............................................

Page

V.

vii.

1

13

35

45

PART FIFTH.

Some remarks on that of Lavater ......................................... 88

PREFACE.

PREVIOUS to examining the Influence of Climate and other external agents on the form and colour of man, it cannot be improper briefly to investigate that capacity of matter, by which it is enabled to pass through every form and every colour.

The simple fact, that the same objects appear in the same place to any one, proves that there exists something independent of sensation-a cause or at least a basis for all sensation. This cause or basis of our sensations, is denominated

MATTER; and the first two axioms of philosophy, express the fundamental truths which refer to it: Nothing,' say they, has no property'; and 'no substance, or nothing can be produced from nothing.' These axioms, blended indeed with the errors of heathen philosophy, are admirably expressed by Lucretius, in the following lines;

Know this grand truth, the base of nature's law, NOUGHT CAN THE GODS THEMSELVES FROM

THING DRAW.

When lurid meteors fire the troubled air,

When thunders below, and blue lightnings glare,
Fear-struck, and strangers to the grand design,
Weak men ascribe them to a power divine:
But this great truth illumes the erring mind,
Her gloomiest terrors scatters to the wind,

And shews, how heaven and earth are spread abroad,
Uncalled, unaided by the power of God.

NO

Such being the fundamental truths which refer to matter, we are naturally led to the consideration of space.

SPACE is either the absence of matter, or the distance between its portions or between objects; and, without this, no motion could take place, nor

any external operation exist-a truth which Lucretius, with equal felicity, expresses in the following lines:

But think not matter crowds her whole domain,
An incorporeal void her realms contain;
A splendid truth, to guide the erring soul,
Dispel thy doubts, and ope the mighty whole!
A void is vacant space which touch defies,
And in this void the source of motion lies.
For were it not as bodies are possest
Of power inert, for ever must they rest,
And each to each a fixed resistance prove;
Then whence were motion, if no space to move?
If doomed no impulse ever to obey,

Fixed were the whole, and wedged in close array
But, lo! the heavens revolve around the pole,
Earth, air and seas, in various movements roll.
But had not nature formed a wide inane,
Silent and sad had stretched her dull domain;
No life had bloomed, no creature raised its head,
But crowded matter lain unformed and dead.

Such space between the parts of matter, leads us naturally to the consideration of the particles which the interposition of space thus forms.

With the PARTICLES, or simplest state, of matter, then, it is highly probable, that the simplest form-perfect sphericity, is connected.