German philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer, “On Physiognomy,” in The Essential Schopenhauer, (Unwin, 1962), wrote: “That the outer man is a picture of the inner, and the face an expression and revelation of the whole character, is a presumption likely enough in itself, and therefore a safe one to go by; evidenced as it is by the fact that people are always anxious to see anyone who has made himself famous by good or evil, or as the author of some extraordinary work … every human face is a hieroglyphic, and a hieroglyphic, too, which admits of being decipheral, the alphabet of which we carry about with us already perfected.” And, in the same paper he put it even more concisely: “In private, people always proceed upon the principle that a man is what he looks.” Similar remarks were also made latter in the 20th century by the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. Psychological evidence tends to confirm this.
