If it is improper to vindicate one’s self, it might not seem altogether unfitting to vindicate one’s subject from ridicule; and it might appear prudent, if not altogether necessary, to commence by vindicating the Nose from the charge of being too ridiculous an organ to be seriously discoursed upon. But this ridiculousness is mere prejudice; intrinsically one part of the face is as worthy as another, and we may feel assured that He who gave the _os sublime_ to man, did not place, as its foremost and most prominent feature, a _ridiculous_ appendage.
But this prejudice ought not to weigh with any thinking mind. If it is true—as Dr. Prichard asserts, and as every ethnologist admits—that protruding jaws indicate a low state of civilisation, an animal and degraded mind, is it more ridiculous to assert that the flat, depressed Nose, which always accompanies the prognathous jaws, is likewise an indication of a similar mind? If it is true that the oval form of head indicates a high-class of mind, and a capacity for the highest civilisation, is it absurd to assert that the Romano-Greek Nose, which generally accompanies, and is characteristic of that form of head, is likewise indicative of a similar mind? Nasology is strictly in harmony with the deductions of the ablest physiognomists and ethnologists. It contradicts no laws which have been established between mind and matter; on the contrary, it upholds, supports, and maintains the investigations of the ablest writers on anthropology, and has only not been touched upon by them, because the necessity they are under of forming many of their deductions from skulls, precludes their making the soft parts of the face a standard of comparison.
To come then at once to our subject. We have a belief, founded on long-continued, personal observation, that there is more in a Nose than most owners of that appendage are generally aware. We believe that, besides being an ornament to the face, a breathing apparatus, or a convenient handle by which to grasp an impudent fellow, it is an important index to its owner’s character; and that the accurate observation and minute comparison of an extensive collection of Noses of persons whose mental characteristics are known, justifies a Nasal Classification, and a deduction of some points of mental organisation therefrom. It will not be contended that all the faculties and properties of mind are revealed by the Nose;—for instance, we can read nothing of Temper or the Passions from it.[2] Perhaps it rather reveals Power and Taste—Power or Energy to carry out Ideas, and the Taste or Inclination which dictates or guides them. As these will always very much form a man’s outward character, the proposition which is sought to be established is this:—“THE NOSE IS AN IMPORTANT INDEX TO CHARACTER.”