ABSTRACT
Marin Cureau de la Chambre was a French philosopher and medical practitioner who rose to become one of the royal doctors of King Louis XIV, a member of the Academie francaise in 1634 and the prestigious Academie royale des sciences in 1666. All his life, he demonstrated a keen philosophical interest in the physiognomy and psychology of men and wrote numerous works on the subject of mankind’s passions. The Characters of Passions, and of habits, being the markes of the motions, and designs of the soul, are also its effects, as is already said; but because there are also two sorts of effects, those which are performed in the soul, and those which are effected in the body; there are also two kinds of Characters; the one Moral, the other Corporal. Its far more difficult, to say wherein the Corporal Characters consist, and what intention nature hath in forming them.
