Excerpt from Human Documents: Portraits and Biographies of Eminent Men

These sentences are written merely as suggestions, and from the point of view of morals; there is also the point of view of heredity, and the curious resemblance be tween those who belong to certain pro fessions. Just what it is that makes us almost certain to recognize a doctor or a priest at first glance is too subtle a question for discussion here. Some one has said that we usually arrive, in time, at the oppo site extreme to those preferences and opin ions which we hold in early life. The man who breaks away from conventionalities, ends by returning to them, or out of narrow prejudices and restrictions grows towards a late and serene liberty. These changes show themselves in the face with amazing clearness, and it would seem also, that even individuality sways us only for a time that if we live far into the autumnal period of life we lose much of our individuality of looks, and become more emphatically mem bers of the family from which we spring. A man like Charles the First was already less himself than he was a Stuart we should not fail in instances of this sort, nor seek far afield. The return to the type compels us steadily; at last it has its way. Very old persons, and those who are dangerously ill, are often noticed to be curiously like their nearest of kin, and to have almost visibly ceased to be themselves.

All time has been getting our lives ready to be lived, to be shaped as far as may be by our own wills, and furthered by that con scious freedom that gives us to be ourselves. You may read all these in any Human Doc ument - the look of race, the look of family, the look that is set like a seal by a man's occupation, the look of the Spirit's free or hindered life, and success or failure in the pursuit of goodness - they are all plain to see. If we could read one human face aright, the history not only of the man, but of humanity itself, is written there.

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