The characters of Theophrastus / translated from the Greek, and illustrated by physiognomical sketches. To which are subjoined the Greek text, with notes, and hints on the individual varieties of human nature. By Francis Howell.

  • Theophrastus.
Date:
1824
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The characters of Theophrastus / translated from the Greek, and illustrated by physiognomical sketches. To which are subjoined the Greek text, with notes, and hints on the individual varieties of human nature. By Francis Howell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    part, itis when the propriety of some point of conduct happens to be called in question: reason is then roused to become the ingenious and pertinacious apologist of actions that affront common sense. But we can hever permit common sense to be insulted, without inflicting a lasting injury upon the understanding. Those minor absurdities of the daily life by which petty wishes are gratified, or by which groundless fears-or groundless suspicions are appeased, are therefore to be avoided, not merely because they tend to cover the character with ridicule; but because they are excrescences, by nourishing of which, Reason is enfeebled. There are, perhaps, few individuals to be found whose domestic conduct is entirely free from some such unreasonable and inexplicable habits. Happily, neither the course of human affairs at large, nor private interests, are much under the direction of individual minds: it is the common sense of mankind in the mass, by which men, singly, are governed. The mere impulse of imitation, and the sway of social prin- ciples, operate to remedy the perversities and absurdi- ties of individual minds. If the conduct of individuals were strictly individual, it is hard to imagine the spec- tacle of fantastic incongruity which the world would exhibit. For such, in the majority of instances, is the condition of human nature, that reason, instead of boldly swaying the life, ventures to creep abroad only in those rare moments, when every imperious passion, and every lordly impulse, great and small, and every