Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 37.djvu/541

Rh Large "veneration," say the phrenologists, produces an instinctive feeling of respect; a defect of "veneration" has the effect of diminishing the reverence for power. Dr. Spurzheim called it the emotion of reverence arid respect.

We see again the strong relation between the old phrenology and the results of the experiments of modern phrenology. On the one hand, I have shown you that the effect produced by Ferrier's faradization is the natural language of a feeling of non-resistance; on the other, that observations of Gall resulted in ascribing to this portion of brain the seat of the emotion of respect and reverence. Of course, respectful people do not resist authority.

Gall appears to me to have been aware of the importance that the study of the physical expression of our emotions and thoughts will play some day, and to have been expecting that this study of the physical parallel to our mental operations will furnish new evidence for his or any other system, built upon the parallelism of brain and mind. He devotes a chapter to pathognomy, of which the following extract may prove interesting: "This art is founded on Nature herself; for it is Nature that prompts all the gestures, the attitudes, the movements, finally the whole mimicry, by which men and animals express all their feelings and ideas. Pathognomy has its fixed and immutable laws, whether we appy it to man or to animals, so long as the question relates to the same 'feelings and the same ideas. Pathognomy is the universal language of all nations and of all animals. There is no beast or man who does not learn it; there is no beast or man who does not understand it. It accompanies language and strengthens its expressions; it supplies the defects of articulate language. Words may be ambiguous, but pathognomy never is so. What would become of engraving, painting, sculpture, the comic art, eloquence, poetry, if the expression of the sentiments and ideas were not subjected to immutable laws? What means would they have in their power to paint modesty, prudence, fear, despair, baseness, joy, anger, contempt, pride or devotion? Where is the animal or man who takes time to deliberate on the manner in which he would make his feelings and his ideas understood by others? Even at the moment when the feelings and the ideas arise, they are written on the exterior in characters discernible by all the world. It is certain, therefore, that the feelings, ideas, affections, and passions are manifested by suitable expression according to determinate and invariable laws."

Gall noted the physical expression of our emotions, though he could give us no explanation of its cause.

With the assistance of Hitzig, Fritsch, and Ferrier's experiments on the one hand, and Gratiolet, Piderit, Darwin, and