On the skull and portraits of George Buchanan / by Karl Pearson.

  • Karl Pearson
Date:
1926
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the skull and portraits of George Buchanan / by Karl Pearson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    George Buchanan’s skull would be of interest, but I have not ventured to take it nor to ask for it to be taken. I want to put before you something much less abstruse, and more direct in its appeal to your imaginations. In the rough and tumble of everyday experience, in trusting to our fellow-men, in the appointment of colleagues, assistants and servants, and even in the choice of acquaintances and friends, we are largely influenced by our reading of character from physiognomy. We may admit it or we may not, but it is a fact that facial expression draws our confidence or serves as a warning mark. The reading of physiognomy is not a science with its ascertained rules; it is not wholly, I believe, a result of past experience, but rather an instinct modified by experience. We are reduced to the sentiment of Martial, as englished by Tom Brown: “I do not love thee, Doctor Fell, The reason why I cannot tell; But this alone I know full well, I do not love thee, Doctor Fell.” Even a Christchurch undergraduate is susceptible to facial expression ! Probably in judging half-unconsciously by physiognomy we are right in nine cases out of ten, and badly wrong on the tenth occasion. We should do better, if we judge by the dynamic expression as given by the film of an individual rather than by the static expression of a bust or portrait. The reconstruction from the skull of the head is a branch of science, which has of recent years made some progress, but while the facial expression does to some extent depend on the form of the skull, and the strength of the musculature which can be partially judged from the skull markings, we are left wholly in the dark as to those facial lines which leave no permanent traces on the skull itself, and which have so much to do with our judgment of character. Why is it that we desire to see and to acquire portraits of great men, or of the individual men, we treat as our personal heroes or saints? I think it undoubtedly arises from the fact that a portrait, at any rate a good portrait, helps us to a truer characterisation, a truer appreciation, than many pages of verbal description. We are thrown back on our instinctive judgment of physiognomy. I believe that at present one of the chief services which can be done by aid of the skull of a great man is to find out from it which portrait, if portraits exist, truly represents him. With all due reverence I would exhume the skull of Shakespeare, of Newton or of Milton, and then we should be able to standardise their
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