In a 1774 letter to Lavater, Goethe wrote a poem later incorporated in the Physiognomische Fragmente. It concludes with these words apostrophizing nature: `Wirst alle deine Krafte mir / In meinem Sinn erheitern / Und dieses enge Dasein hier / Zur Ewigkeit erweitern." During the period following Sophie's death in March 1797, Novalis, steeped in Lavater's writings,' similarly writes: `Getrost, das Leben schreitet / Zum ewgen Leben hin; / Von innrer Glut geweitet / Verklart sich unser Sinn.' 3 This paper attempts to explore precisely what it was in Lavater's writings, primarily in his first famous work, Aussichten in die Ewigkeit (1768-73), and in the slightly later project, the Physiognomische Fragmente (1775-78), that attracted the interest of writers like Goethe, Herder, Hamann, and then the Romantic, Novalis. The above passages by Goethe and Novalis suggest that eternity grows from the present: indeed, in the Aussichten Lavater sets out to prove how the future can be read in the present. He is preeminently engaged with the study of how signs point to the future and thus, in general, how signs operate. I hope here to contribute to our understanding of semiotic practice in the last third of the eighteenth century and the role, until now left largely unexplored, that Lavater played therein.4