LAVATER, Johann Kaspar (1741-1801), is a remarkable instance of a man who has obtained celebrity by following a bypath apart from the proper work of his life. As a preacher, theological writer, and spiritual director he occupied duriħg his lifetime a position not very dissimilar to that held by Keble in our own day, but he survives for posterity chiefly as the author of a work on physiognomy. He was born at Zürich, November 15,1741. Consistent with himself from the first, he manifested little application to study, but great depth of feeling, especially on religious themes, and a remarkable fluency of fervent and persuasive discourse. When barely one and twenty he greatly distinguished himself by denouncing, in conjunction with his friend the painter Fuseli, an iniquitous magistrate, who was compelled to make restitution of his ill-gotten gains. In 1769 Lavater took orders, and officiated till his death as deacon or pastor in various churches in his native city. The advantages of his manner and address, as well as his oratorical fervour and genuine depth of conviction, gave him great personal influence, especially with women; he was extensively consulted as a casuist, and was welcomed with demonstrative enthusiasm in his numerous journeys through Germany. His mystical writings were also widely popular. Scarcely a trace however, of this influence has remained, and Lavater’s name would be forgotten but for his work on physiognomy, Physiognomische Fragmente zur Beförderung der Menschen-kenntniss und Menschenlieben Leipsic, 1775-78, republished in French with extensive additions by the author. The fame even of this universally known book rests to a great extent upon the handsome style of publication and the accompanying illustrations. It is not to be compared with the ...subsequent labours of Caius for scientific value, and leaves the study of physiognomy as desultory and unsystematic as it found it. The author’s remarks, nevertheless, frequently display remarkable acuteness and insight into character, and the illustrations render it very valuable to artists. Next to his physiognomy, Lavater is perhaps chiefly remembered for his acquaintance with Goethe, and the lively portrait of him in Wahrheit und Dichtung. The impression he produced upon one so dissimilar to himself shows that the man was greater than his works. At a later period Goethe became estranged from him, somewhat abruptly accusing him of superstition and hypocrisy. Of the former charge he cannot be acquitted, seeing that he had manifested a tendency to run after Cagliostro; but he seems to have been no more open to the latter than every man whose ideal of creed and conduct is too exalted to be maintained with unvarying consistency. A more cogent reason for Lavater’s discredit with Goethe was his intellectual intolerance. No man was more bigoted upon paper, while in truth his heart was open to all. He was continually propounding the alternative of his own form of Christianity or atheism; and it is indeed true that, if passages in his own writings are to be taken literally, he was himself incapable of conceiving a Deity apart from the person of the Redeemer. Much that he has written might be expressed in the language of Feuerbach with but slight alteration. He had a mystic’s indifference to historical Christianity, and, although esteemed by himself and others a champion of orthodoxy, was in fact only an antagonist of rationalism. During the latter years of his life his influence waned, and he incurred ridicule by some exhibitions of vanity, pardonable in the recipient of so much incense. He redeemed himself by his patriotic conduct during the troubles occasioned by the French occupation of Switzerland, which brought about his tragical death. On the taking of Zürich by the French in 1799, Lavater, while endeavouring to appease the soldiery, was shot through the body by an infuriated grenadier, and died after long sufferings borne with great fortitude, on January 2, 1801. His life was written in the following year by his son-in-law Georg Gessner, with natural partiality and unavoidable reticences, but faithfully in the main. There are more recent biographies by Hegner and Bodemann, the latter entirely from the religious point of view.
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