f it. But on the other hand, what I have just
said about the shock which the first sight of a face generally produces,
is in keeping with the remark that it is only at that first sight that
it makes its true and full impression. For to get a purely objective and
uncorrupted impression of it, we must stand in no kind of relation to
the person; if possible, we must not yet have spoken with him. For every
conversation places us to some extent upon a friendly footing,
establishes a certain _rapport_, a mutual subjective relation, which is
at once unfavorable to an objective point of view. And as everyone's
endeavor is to win esteem or friendship for himself, the man who is
under observation will at once employ all those arts of dissimulation in
which he is already versed, and corrupt us with his airs, hypocrisies
and flatteries; so that what the first look clearly showed will soon be
seen by us no more.

This fact is at the bottom of the saying that "most people gain by
further acquaintance"; it ought, however, to run, "delude us by it." It
is only when, later on, the bad qualities manifest themselves, that our
first judgment as a rule receives its justification and makes good its
scornful verdict. It may be that "a further acquaintance" is an
unfriendly one, and if that is so, we do not find in this case either
that people gain by it. Another reason why people apparently gain on a
nearer acquaintance is that the man whose first aspect warns us from
him, as soon as we converse with him, no longer shows his own being and
character, but also his education; that is, not only what he really is
by nature, but also what he has appropriated to himself out of the
common wealth of mankind. Three-fourths of what he says belongs not to
him, but to the sources from which he obtained it; so that we are often
surprised to hear a minotaur speak so humanly. If we make a still closer
acquaintance, the animal nature, of which his face gave promise, will
manifest itself "in all its splendor." If one is gifted with an acute
sense for physiognomy, one should take special note of those verdicts
which preceded a closer acquaintance and were therefore genuine. For the
face of a man is the exact impression of what he is; and if he deceives
us, that is our fault, not his. What a man says, on the other hand, is
what he thinks, more often what he has learned, or it may be even, what
he pretends to think. And besides this, when we talk to him, or even