Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 43.djvu/567

Rh been translated into fourteen distinct tongues. His three works on Love—Physiology, Hygiene, and Ethnology—have sold by thousands in Germany and France. Perhaps the only one of his more important works which has appeared in America is his Fisionomia e Mimica—Physiognomy and Expression. This has been issued in at least two forms within the last three years and has sold largely. Although we have already referred to it briefly, it deserves especial mention. It is an excellent example of Mantegazza's nervous, impetuous style. Nothing that has been written elsewhere upon expression can approach it. Every great emotion of mankind is taken up, and the form of expression by which it makes itself known is exhaustively analyzed. The subject itself is so attractive and the treatment so interesting that the book—unlike most scientific books—will bear reading and re-reading for pleasure. No one but an Italian could have written it. Expression is at its best where the blood is hot and vigorous, and where people feel as they live; in such a country as Italy, and among a people like the Italians, only could such a study be so well made.

Analysis is the word which describes all of Mantegazza's work. Analysis shows itself in his writings; it shows itself also in his museum, one of the most remarkable in the world. It is the National Museum of Anthropology and Ethnology. Fair in ethnography, good in general anthropology, it is remarkable in somatology, and unique in psychology. Who but the writer of Fisionomia e Mimica could analyze so cleverly the material in Physical Anthropology? Who but so good an analyst could fail so utterly in combining the material into a symmetrical whole? Mantegazza's Museum of Psychological Anthropology is his latest hobby. Here he plans to show by material objects the operations of the mind—the development of religiosity, the expression of love, of fear, of cruelty—of every emotion of our kind.

As an editor Mantegazza has done vast service. His Archivio per l'Antropologia e la Etnologia is a standard journal in the science, but of course reaches only a select circle of fellow-workers. The Hygienic Almanacs, however, which have appeared under his direction for a quarter of a century, in editions of many thousands, have not only done much to improve sanitary conditions among his own people, but in their German and Hebrew translations have reached thousands outside of the land of his birth. While speaking of this service, we may mention that Mantegazza's contributions to medicine have been neither few nor unimportant. It was he who introduced coca into Europe, and his monograph upon this valuable plant was "crowned."

Mantegazza is to visit America in September, and it is to be hoped that he may meet that hearty kindness from us which he has always extended to American men of science in Italy.