My Scientific Section could be considered to have completed my appointed task. The faces in that section demonstrate the principal facts of the grammar and orthography of human facial expression with the most complete empiricism. The six subjects were of differing ages, both male and female. Some of them had an attractive facial expression. However, some readers must have disapproved of the unpleasantness of some of the faces.

The old man photographed in most of my electrophysiological experiments did have common, ugly features. To a sophisticated man such a choice may seem strange. Some artists and eminent amateurs, believing that this part of my album had been assembled from an aesthetic point of view, asked me: Why use such an ugly face for an artistic subject? I would certainly like to present only young and beautiful faces but, above all, I had scientifically to demonstrate the workings of the lines of the face; for this, an electrophysiological study of Adonis would have been much less fitting than my old and ugly subject.

I would remind the reader of the motives governing my choice of subjects – “I have preferred this coarse face to one of noble, beautiful features, not because in order to be true to nature one must show her imperfections; I simply wanted to prove that, despite defects of shape and lack of plastic beauty, every human face can become spiritually beautiful through the accurate rendering of his or her emotions.”