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.

    337/360 (page 247)
    have attended the partition of prevailing systems of | science, or of religious belief, into sects; and then, by the observation of individual cases around us, to mark those diversities of influence under which opinions are sometimes the perfect representatives of temper, and sometimes the discordant product of temper, education, professional pursuits, or worldly interest. Such an inquiry would be amply rewarded, if it only served to establish and to exhibit in a strong light, two remarkable and highly significant facts, belonging to the history of Christianity,—namely, That, while this system, owing to its having within itself a vigour and a life which nothing but truth can impart, has always presented a strongly marked expression of the great standing varieties of human opinion; it has, at the same time, exhibited, (wherever.its records have been familiarly known by the common people) a sovereign uniformity of influence upon manners, morals, and intellectual improvement. Under the Polytheism of Greece and Rome, sects were almost entirely con- fined to the educated class; because the system had not enough moral influence to urge the mass of the people into those diversities of opinion that result from ill-directed speculation. In the Mahomedan world, where the influence of the system was strong enough, and sufficiently popular in its nature, for this purpose, the sects that have arisen have always been connected with political changes: they have had the character of family feuds, and might appropriately