there is a
person whose beauty comes near the images of the gods, veneration is
equally due to him. To him who asked why people oftener and longer
frequent the company of handsome persons: "That question," said he, "is
only to be asked by the blind." Most of the philosophers, and the
greatest, paid for their schooling, and acquired wisdom by the favour and
mediation of their beauty. Not only in the men that serve me, but also
in the beasts, I consider it within two fingers' breadth of goodness.

And yet I fancy that those features and moulds of face, and those
lineaments, by which men guess at our internal complexions and our
fortunes to come, is a thing that does not very directly and simply lie
under the chapter of beauty and deformity, no more than every good odour
and serenity of air promises health, nor all fog and stink infection in a
time of pestilence. Such as accuse ladies of contradicting their beauty
by their manners, do not always hit right; for, in a face which is none
of the best, there may dwell some air of probity and trust; as, on the
contrary, I have read, betwixt two beautiful eyes, menaces of a dangerous
and malignant nature. There are favourable physiognomies, so that in a
crowd of victorious enemies, you shall presently choose, amongst men you
never saw before, one rather than another to whom to surrender, and with
whom to intrust your life; and yet not properly upon the consideration of
beauty.

A person's look is but a feeble warranty; and yet it is something
considerable too; and if I had to lash them, I would most severely
scourge the wicked ones who belie and betray the promises that nature has
planted in their foreheads; I should with greater severity punish malice
under a mild and gentle aspect. It seems as if there were some lucky and
some unlucky faces; and I believe there is some art in distinguishing
affable from merely simple faces, severe from rugged, malicious from
pensive, scornful from melancholic, and such other bordering qualities.
There are beauties which are not only haughty, but sour, and others that
are not only gentle, but more than that, insipid; to prognosticate from
them future events is a matter that I shall leave undecided.

I have, as I have said elsewhere as to my own concern, simply and
implicitly embraced this ancient rule, "That we cannot fail in following
Nature," and that the sovereign precept is to conform ourselves to her.
I have not, as Socrates did, co