Blue and Green Or The Gift of God Author:Henry Pottinger Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER XII. EUIN. " To him that hath shall be given, and from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath "—to human ears an appalling a... more »nd pitiless dictum, continually ratified to the letter by the common run of human experience, and easily to be interpreted and justified by human intelligence. There is no need for us to wrangle over the exact meaning which we must attach to the words; every one in his or her inmost heart can thoroughly appreciate and apply them; every one can furnish instances to exemplify their truth. That people who come into this world cursed with moral deformities, which are probably hereditary, and from which they can no more exempt themselves than they can from being born hunchbacked and infirm—people who are, in short, what are termed weak or faulty characters,—that such must pay the penalty of their congenital defects, is an inexorable law. Nature is so pitiless on this VOL. III. E point that she generally adapts, in some degree, the physical to the moral conformation. Even in extreme youth the fool not unfrequently shows his folly in his face, the infirm of purpose his irresoluteness, the malicious his malignity, the future libertine his incontinence. There are those who laugh at the sciences of physiognomy and phrenology. Let him do so who can conscientiously aver that he has ever met with a retreating, apish forehead covering a sagacious brain, a vacillating nature combined with a square, Napoleonic jaw and chin; a vulturine nasal beak and near shifting eyes with a frank, honest nature, a snub nose with statesmanlike or commanding qualities, or narrow, pinched nostrils with a cogitative mind; an ear placed forward and near the top of the head with any intellectual force, a brutal mouth with a refined disposition, thin ...« less