ABSTRACT
Lavater's guide to physiognomy, the study of facial characteristics and their representational meaning, was ambiguously systematic and meant to spread a message that would somehow be to the advantage of all humanity. As a companion to aesthetics, psychology, and anthropology, physiognomy was offered by Lavater as an equally potent, scientific, and independent disciplinary field that provide a key to the science of character through a methodology that would standardize close readings of the face. Lavater strings together the general meaning of the ancient text and highlights the analogies that mediate the connection between body and soul by means of human-animal syllogisms. Lavater anticipated the acceptance of physiognomy as an academic science that would both balance the right mix of science and religion and fuse Christianity with rational inquiry successfully. The tension between the Greek science of philosophy and the truths of Christian theology marked the discourse of physiognomy throughout the medieval period.
