(_ββ_) The human countenance has consequently a _second_ central point, in which that attitude to facts, which indicates the relation of the soul or spirit, is declared. We find this in the _upper_ portion of the face, in the thoughtful brow and the eye, through which we face the soul, which looms out beneath it, together with its environment. Thought, reflection--that is, the introspection of the spiritual identity--is necessarily connected with the forehead, whose internal life in concentrated clarity looks forth from the eye. Through the prominence of the forehead and the correspondingly retreating appearance of the mouth and the cheek-bones the human countenance derives its _spiritual_ character. This projection of the brow is therefore necessarily that which determines the entire formation of the skull, which no longer falls back, forming the side of an acute angle as its extreme point the mouth is pressed to the front[157], but rather permits of a line being drawn from the forehead through the nose to the point of the chin, which, with a second drawn over the rear of the skull to the apex of the forehead, form a right angle, or one at least which approximates to it. (_γγ_) _Thirdly_, we may say that the _nose_ forms the passage and connection between the lower and upper portion of the face, that is to say, between the purely contemplative and spiritual forehead and the practical organ of nutrition; and if we take into consideration its natural function as the organ of smell it is rightly placed in this intermediate position between an attitude to the external world which is either wholly practical or ideal. No doubt the sense of smell in such a position is still associated with an animal want; it is intimately connected with the taste; and for this reason, in the case of the mere animal, the snout is at the service of the mouth and the organ of nourishment. But the sense of smell is by itself as a fact no actual consumption of objects, as eating and tasting are; it merely accepts the result of the process in which the objects pass into the atmosphere and its invisible and mysterious medium of dissolution. Assuming, then, that the passage from forehead and nose is of such a formation that the forehead viewed independently arches forward, and yet in relation to the nose retreats, whereas this latter organ on its part, in proximity to the forehead, is withdrawn back and only projects beyond this point, we see that both these portions of the face--that is, the contemplative part, the forehead, and that which suggests a practical use, with which we may associate the mouth, form an emphatic contrast, in virtue of which the nose, as belonging in a sense to both extremes, appertains equally to the practical aims[158] of the mouth. Furthermore, the forehead, in its isolated position, receives the appearance of severity and exclusive spiritual concentration in its contrast to the eloquent sympathy of the mouth, which is primarily