Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development Part 20

(5) Nero, from eleven; (6) A combination of five different Greek female faces; and (7) A singularly beautiful combination of the faces of six different Roman ladies, forming a charming ideal profile.

My cordial acknowledgment is due to Mr. R. Stuart Poole, the learned curator of the coins and gems in the British Museum, for his kind selection of the most suitable medals, and for procuring casts of them for me for the present purpose. These casts were, with one exception, all photographed to a uniform size of four-tenths of an inch between the pupils of the eyes and the division between the lips, which experience shows to be the most convenient size on the whole to work with, regard being paid to many considerations not worth while to specify in detail. When it was necessary the photograph was reversed. These photographs were made by Mr. H. Reynolds; I then adjusted and prepared them for taking the photographic composite.

The next series to be exhibited consists of composites taken from the portraits of criminals convicted of murder, manslaughter, or crimes accompanied by violence. There is much interest in the fact that two types of features are found much more frequently among these than among the population at large. In one, the features are broad and ma.s.sive, like those of Henry VIII., but with a much smaller brain. The other, of which five composites are exhibited, each deduced from a number of different individuals, varying four to nine, is a face that is weak and certainly not a common English face.

Three of these composites, though taken from entirely different sets of individuals, are as alike as brothers, and it is found on optically combining any three out of the five composites, that is on combining almost any considerable number of the individuals, the result is closely the same. The combination of the three composites just alluded to will now be effected by means of the three converging magic-lanterns, and the result may be accepted as generic in respect of this particular type of criminals.

The process of composite portraiture is one of pictorial statistics.

It is a familiar fact that the average height of even a dozen men of the same race, taken at hazard, varies so little, that for ordinary statistical purposes it may be considered constant. The same may be said of the measurement of every separate feature and limb, and of every tint, whether of skin, hair, or eyes. Consequently a pictorial combination of any one of these separate traits would lead to results no less constant than the statistical averages. In a portrait, there is another factor to be considered besides the measurement of the separate traits, namely, their relative position; but this, too, in a sufficiently large group, would necessarily have a statistical constancy. As a matter of observation, the resemblance between persons of the same "genus" (in the sense of "generic," as already explained) is sufficiently great to admit of making good pictorial composites out of even small groups, as has been abundantly shown.

Composite pictures, are, however, much more than averages; they are rather the equivalents of those large statistical tables whose totals, divided by the number of cases, and entered in the bottom line, are the averages. They are real generalisations, because they include the whole of the material under consideration. The blur of their outlines, which is never great in truly generic composites, except in unimportant details, measures the tendency of individuals to deviate from the central type. My argument is, that the generic images that arise before the mind's eye, and the general impressions which are faint and faulty editions of them, are the a.n.a.logues of these composite pictures which we have the advantage of examining at leisure, and whose peculiarities and character we can investigate, and from which we may draw conclusions that shall throw much light on the nature of certain mental processes which are too mobile and evanescent to be directly dealt with.

III. COMPOSITE PORTRAITURE.

[_Read before the Photographic Society, 24th June, 1881_.]

I propose to draw attention to-night to the results of recent experiments and considerable improvements in a process of which I published the principles three years ago, and which I have subsequently exhibited more than once.

I have shown that, if we have the portraits of two or more different persons, taken in the same aspect and under the same conditions of light and shade, and that if we put them into different optical lanterns converging on the same screen and carefully adjust them--first, so as to bring them to the same scale, and, secondly, so as to superpose them as accurately as the conditions admit--then the different faces will blend surprisingly well into a single countenance. If they are not very dissimilar, the blended result will always have a curious air of individuality, and will be unexpectedly well defined; it will exactly resemble none of its components, but it will have a sort of family likeness to all of them, and it will be an ideal and an averaged portrait. I have also shown that the image on the screen might be photographed then and there, or that the same result may be much more easily obtained by a method of successive photography, and I have exhibited many specimens made on this principle. Photo-lithographs of some of these will be found in the _Proceedings of the Royal Inst.i.tution_, as ill.u.s.trations of a lecture I gave there "On Generic Images" in 1879.

The method I now use is much better than those previously described; it leads to more accurate results, and is easier to manage. I will exhibit and explain the apparatus as it stands, and will indicate some improvements as I go on. The apparatus is here. I use it by gaslight, and employ rapid dry plates, which, however, under the conditions of a particularly small aperture and the character of the light, require sixty seconds of total exposure. The apparatus is 4 feet long and 6-1/2 inches broad; it lies with its side along the edge of the table at which I sit, and it is sloped towards me, so that, by bending my neck slightly, I can bring my eye to an eye-hole, where I watch the effect of the adjustments which my hands are free to make. The entire management of the whole of these is within an easy arm's length, and I complete the process without shifting my seat.

The apparatus consists of three parts, A, B, and C. A is rigidly fixed; it contains the dark slide and the contrivances by which the position of the image can be viewed; the eye-hole, _e_, already mentioned, being part of A. B is a travelling carriage that holds the lens, and is connected by bellows-work with A. In my apparatus it is pushed out and in, and clamped where desired, but it ought to be moved altogether by pinion and rack-work.[24] The lens I use is a I B Dallmeyer. Its focal length is appropriate to the size of the instrument, and I find great convenience in a lens of wide aperture when making the adjustments, as I then require plenty of light; but, as to the photography, the smaller the aperture the better. The hole in my stop is only two-tenths of an inch in diameter, and I believe one-tenth would be more suitable.

[Footnote 24: I have since had a more substantial instrument made with these and similar improvements.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: DIAGRAM SHOWING THE ESSENTIAL PARTS]

_Side View._

_End View._

A The body of the camera, which is fixed.

B Lens on a carriage, which can be moved to and fro.

C Frame for the transparency, on a carriage that also supports the lantern; the whole can be moved to and fro.

_r_ The reflector inside the camera.

_m_ The arm outside the camera attached to the axis of the reflector; by moving it, the reflector can be moved up or down.

_g_ A ground-gla.s.s screen on the roof, which receives the image when the reflector is turned down, as in the diagram.

_e_ The eye-hole through which the image is viewed on _g_; a thin piece of gla.s.s immediately below _e_, reflects the illuminated fiducial lines in the transparency at _f_, and gives them the appearance of lying upon _g_,--the distances _f e_ and _g e_ being made equal, the angle _f e g_ being made a right angle, and the plane of the thin piece of gla.s.s being made to bisect _f e g_.

_f_ Framework, adjustable, holding the transparency with the fiducial lines on it.

_t_ Framework, adjustable, holding the transparency of the portrait.

C is a travelling carriage that supports the portraits in turn, from which the composite has to be made. I work directly from the original negatives with transmitted light; but prints can be used with light falling on their face. For convenience of description I will confine myself to the first instance only, and will therefore speak of C as the carriage that supports the frame that holds the negative transparencies. C can be pushed along the board and be clamped anywhere, and it has a rack and pinion adjustment; but it should have been made movable by rack and pinion along the whole length of the board. The frame for the transparencies has the same movements of adjustment as those in the stage of a microscope. It rotates round a hollow axis, through which a beam of light is thrown, and independent movements in the plane, at right angles to the axis, can be given to it in two directions, at right angles to one another, by turning two separate screws. The beam of light is furnished by three gas-burners, and it pa.s.ses through a condenser. The gas is supplied through a flexible tube that does not interfere with the movements of C, and it is governed by a stop-c.o.c.k in front of the operator.

The apparatus, so far as it has been described with any detail, and ignoring what was said about an eye-hole, is little else than a modified copying-camera, by which an image of the transparency could be thrown on the ordinary focusing-screen, and be altered in scale and position until it was adjusted to fiducial lines drawn on the screen. It is conceivable that this should be done, and that the screen should be replaced by the dark slide, and a brief exposure given to the plate; then, that a fresh transparency should be inserted, a fresh focusing adjustment made, and a second exposure given, and so on. This, I say, is conceivable, but it would be very inconvenient. The adjusting screws would be out of reach; the head of the operator would be in an awkward position; and though these two difficulties might be overcome in some degree, a serious risk of an occasional shift of the plate during the frequent replacement of the dark slide would remain. I avoid all this by making my adjustments while the plate continues in position with its front open.

I do so through the help of a reflector temporarily interposed between it and the lens. I do not use the ordinary focusing-screen at all in making my adjustments, but one that is flush, or nearly so, with the roof of the camera. When the reflector is interposed, the image is wholly cut off from the sensitised plate, and is thrown upwards against this focusing-screen, _g_. When the reflector is withdrawn, the image falls on the plate. It is upon this focusing-screen in the roof that I see the fiducial lines by which I make all the adjustments. Nothing can be more convenient than the position of this focusing-screen for working purposes. I look down on the image as I do upon a book resting on a sloping desk, and all the parts of the apparatus are within an easy arm's length.

My reflector in my present instrument is, I am a little ashamed to confess, nothing better than a piece of looking-gla.s.s fixed to an axle within the camera, near its top left-hand edge. One end of the axle protrudes, and has a short arm; when I push the arm back, the mirror is raised; when I push it forward it drops down. I used a swing-gla.s.s because the swing action is very true, and as my apparatus was merely a provisional working model made of soft wood, I did not like to use sliding arrangements which might not have acted truly, or I should certainly have employed a slide with a rectangular gla.s.s prism, on account of the perfect reflection it affords. And let me say, that a prism of 2 inches square in the side is quite large enough for adjustment purposes, for it is only the face of the portrait that is wanted to be seen. I chose my looking-gla.s.s carefully, and selected a piece that was plane and parallel. It has not too high a polish, and therefore does not give troublesome double reflections. In fact, it answers very respectably, especially when we consider that perfection of definition is thrown away on composites. I thought of a mirror silvered on the front of the gla.s.s, but this would soon tarnish in the gaslight, so I did not try it. For safety against the admission of light unintentionally, I have a cap to the focusing-screen in the roof, and a slide in the fixed body of the instrument immediately behind the reflector and before the dark slide. Neither of these would be wanted if the reflector was replaced by a prism, set into one end of a sliding block that had a large horizontal hole at the other end, and a sufficient length of solid wood between the two to block out the pa.s.sage of light both upwards and downwards whenever the block is pa.s.sing through the half-way position.

As regards the fiducial lines, they might be drawn on the gla.s.s screen; but black lines are not, I find, the best. It is far easier to work with illuminated lines; and it is important to be able to control their brightness. I produce these lines by means of a vertical transparency, set in an adjustable frame, connected with A, and having a gas-light behind it. Below the eye-hole _e_, through which I view the gla.s.s-screen _g_, is a thin piece of gla.s.s set at an angle of 45, which reflects the fiducial lines and gives them the appearance of lying on the screen, the frame being so adjusted that the distance from the thin piece of gla.s.s to the transparency and to the gla.s.s-screen _g_ is the same. I thus obtain beautiful fiducial lines, which I can vary from extreme faintness to extreme brilliancy, by turning the gas lower or higher, according to the brightness of the image of the portrait, which itself depends on the density of the transparency that I am engaged upon. This arrangement seems as good as can be. It affords a gauge of the density of the negative, and enables me to regulate the burners behind it, until the image of the portrait on _g_ is adjusted to a standard degree of brightness.

For convenience in enlarging or reducing, I take care that the intersection of the vertical fiducial line with that which pa.s.ses through the pupils of the eyes shall correspond to the optical axis of the camera. Then, as I enlarge or reduce, that point in the image remains fixed. The uppermost horizontal fiducial line continues to intersect the pupils, and the vertical one continues to divide the face symmetrically. The mouth has alone to be watched. When the mouth is adjusted to the lower fiducial line, the scale is exact. It is a great help having to attend to no more than one varying element.

The only inconvenience is that the image does not lie in the best position on the plate when the point between the eyes occupies its centre. This is easily remedied by using a larger back with a suitable inner frame. I have a more elaborate contrivance in my apparatus to produce the same result, which I need not stop to explain.

For success and speed in making composites, the apparatus should be solidly made, chiefly of metal, and all the adjustments ought to work smoothly and accurately. Good composites cannot be made without very careful adjustment in scale and position. An off-hand way of working produces nothing but failures.

I will first exhibit a very simple but instructive composite effect.

I drew on a square card a circle of about 2-1/2 inches in diameter, and two cross lines through its centre, cutting one another at right angles. Round each of the four points, 90 apart, where the cross cuts the circle, I drew small circles of the size of wafers and gummed upon each a disc of different tint. Finally I made a single black dot half-way between two of the arms of the cross. I then made a composite of the four positions of the card, as it was placed successively with each of its sides downwards. The result is a photograph having a sharply-defined cross surrounded by four discs of precisely uniform tint, and between each pair of arms of the cross there is a very faint dot. This photograph shows many things.

The fact of its being a composite is shown by the four faint dots.

The equality of the successive periods of exposure is shown by the equal tint of the four dots. The accuracy of adjustment is shown by the sharpness of the cross being as great in the composite as in the original card. We see the smallness of the effect produced by any trait, such as the dot, when it appears in the same place in only one of the components: if this effect be so small in a series of only four components, it would certainly be imperceptible in a much larger series. Thirdly, the uniformity of resulting tint in the composite wafer is quite irrespective of the order of exposure. Let us call the four component wafers A, B, C, D, respectively, and the four composite wafers 1, 2, 3, 4; then we see, by the diagram, that the order of exposure has differed in each case, yet the result is identical. Therefore the order of exposure has no effect on the result.

----------+------------------------------------ Composite. Successive places of the Components. 1 2 A B D A C D B C 4 3 D C C B B A A D ===============================================

In 1 it has been A, D, C, B, " 2 " B, A, D, C, " 3 " C, B, A, D, " 4 " D, C, B, A,

I will next show a series consisting of two portraits considerably unlike to one another, and yet not so very discordant as to refuse to conform, and of two intermediate composites. In making one of the composites I gave two-thirds of the total time of exposure to the first portrait, and one-third to the second portrait. In making the other composite, I did the converse. It will be seen how good is the result in both cases, and how the likeness of the longest exposed portrait always predominates.

The next is a series of four composites. The first consists of 57 hospital patients suffering under one or other of the many forms of consumption. I may say that, with the aid of Dr. Mahomed, I am endeavouring to utilise this process to elicit the physiognomy of disease. The composite I now show is what I call a hotch-pot composite; its use is to form a standard whence deviations towards any particular sub-type may be conveniently gauged. It will be observed that the face is strongly marked, and that it is quite idealised. I claim for composite portraiture, that it affords a method of obtaining _pictorial averages_, which effects simultaneously for every point in a picture what a method of numerical averages would do for each point in the picture separately. It gives, in short, the average tint of every unit of area in the picture, measured from the fiducial lines as co-ordinates. Now every statistician knows, by experience, that numerical averages usually begin to agree pretty fairly when we deal with even twenty or thirty cases. Therefore we should expect to find that any groups of twenty or thirty men of the same cla.s.s would yield composites bearing a considerable likeness to one another. In proof that this is the case, I exhibit three other composites: the one is made from the first 28 portraits of the 57, the second from the last 27, and the third is made from 36 portraits taken indiscriminately out of the 57. It will be observed that all the four composites are closely alike.

I will now show a few typical portraits I selected out of 82 male portraits of a different series of consumptive male patients; they were those that had more or less of a particular wan look, that I wished to elicit. The selected cases were about 18 in number, and from these I took 12, rejecting about six as having some marked peculiarity that did not conform well with the remaining 12. The result is a very striking face, thoroughly ideal and artistic, and singularly beautiful. It is, indeed, most notable how beautiful all composites are. Individual peculiarities are all irregularities, and the composite is always regular.

I show a composite of 15 female faces, also of consumptive patients, that gives somewhat the same aspect of the disease; also two others of only 6 in each, that have in consequence less of an ideal look, but which are still typical. I have here several other typical faces in my collection of composites; they are all serviceable as ill.u.s.trations of this memoir, but, medically speaking, they are only provisional results.

I am indebted to Lieutenant Leonard Darwin, R.E., for an interesting series of negatives of officers and privates of the Royal Engineers.

Here is a composite of 12 officers; here is one of 30 privates. I then thought it better to select from the latter the men that came from the southern counties, and to again make a further selection of 11 from these, on the principle already explained. Here is the result. It is very interesting to note the stamp of culture and refinement on the composite officer, and the honest and vigorous but more homely features of the privates. The combination of these two, officers and privates together, gives a very effective physiognomy.

Let it be borne in mind that existing cartes-de-visite are almost certain to be useless. Among dozens of them it is hard to find three that fulfil the conditions of similarity of aspect and of shade. The negatives have to be made on purpose. I use a repeating back and a quarter plate, and get two good-sized heads on each plate, and of a scale that never gives less than four-tenths of an inch between the pupils of the eyes and the mouth. It is only the head that can be used, as more distant parts, even the ears, become blurred hopelessly.

It will be asked, of what use can all this be to ordinary photographers, even granting that it may be of scientific value in ethnological research, in inquiries into the physiognomy of disease, and for other special purposes? I think it can be turned to most interesting account in the production of family likenesses. The most unartistic productions of amateur photography do quite as well for making composites as those of the best professional workers, because their blemishes vanish in the blended result. All that amateurs have to do is to take negatives of the various members of their families in precisely the same aspect (I recommend either perfect full-face or perfect profile), and under precisely the same conditions of light and shade, and to send them to a firm provided with proper instrumental appliances to make composites from them. The result is sure to be artistic in expression and flatteringly handsome, and would be very interesting to the members of the family. Young and old, and persons of both s.e.xes can be combined into one ideal face. I can well imagine a fashion setting in to have these pictures.

Professional skill might be exercised very effectively in retouching composites. It would be easy to obliterate the ghosts of stray features that are always present when the composite is made from only a few portraits, and it would not be difficult to tone down any irregularity in the features themselves, due to some obtrusive peculiarity in one of the components. A higher order of artistic skill might be well bestowed upon the composites that have been made out of a large number of components. Here the irregularities disappear, the features are perfectly regular and idealised, but the result is dim. It is like a pencil drawing, where many attempts have been made to obtain the desired effect; such a drawing is smudged and ineffective; but the artist, under its guidance, draws his final work with clear bold touches, and then he rubs out the smudge. On precisely the same principle the faint but beautifully idealised features of these composites are, I believe, capable of forming the basis of a very high order of artistic work.

B.--THE RELATIVE SUPPLIES FROM TOWN AND COUNTRY FAMILIES TO THE POPULATION OF FUTURE GENERATIONS.

[_Read before the Statistical Society in_ 1873.]

It is well known that the population of towns decays, and has to be recruited by immigrants from the country, but I am not aware that any statistical investigation has yet been attempted of the rate of its decay. The more energetic members of our race, whose breed is the most valuable to our nation, are attracted from the country to our towns. If residence in towns seriously interferes with the maintenance of their stock, we should expect the breed of Englishmen to steadily deteriorate, so far as that particular influence is concerned.

I am well aware that the only perfectly trustworthy way of conducting the inquiry is by statistics derived from numerous life-histories, but I find it very difficult to procure these data.

I therefore have had recourse to an indirect method, based on a selection from the returns made at the census of 1871, which appears calculated to give a fair approximation to the truth. My object is to find the number of adult male representatives in this generation, of 1000 adult males in the previous one, of rural and urban populations respectively. The principle on which I have proceeded is this:--