Reading the Face

As a boy travelling to school by tram, Norbert Glas often passed the time by studying his fellow passengers’ faces. He would muse on what the shapes and contours of their noses, eyes and mouths signified. Later in life, having become a medical doctor and a student of Rudolf Steiner’s spiritual-scientific world view, Glas gained numerous insights into the mysteries of human physiognomy. In this, the first translation into English of his seminal work, Glas begins by defining the three parts of the human face and explaining the importance of their relative proportions. A person with a face that is more pronounced in one of these areas will tend to have certain personality traits, as well as specific physiological characteristics. People with a strong mouth and chin, for example, tend to have a strong will and an active, driven and assertive nature. With the help of numerous photos and drawings, Glas presents the physiognomy of three basic types of people, and further analyses the specifics of the human head, forehead, ears, eyes, mouth and nose.
This book will be valuable to doctors, teachers, or anyone wishing to better understand – and hence tolerate and love – their fellow human beings.

Author Biography

NORBERT GLAS was born in Austria in 1897. After receiving his medical degree at the Faculty of Medicine in Vienna, he practised medicine in Austria and later in England. He wrote numerous books that have been published in several languages. He died in 1986.