Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 5.djvu/84

74 describing "the dome of thought, the temple of the soul." In the gorilla, the same lines, being inclined to each other, are united by about a quarter of a circle, nearly circumscribing the cranial and mental capacity of that venerable progenitor of ours. In the goat, the same lines, being still more inclined, are united by about an eighth of a circle, giving verge and room enough for his caprices. And so on to the least part of a circle, representing the least cerebral and mental capacity.

The rule of comparison here indicated will apply perfectly to each one of the ten profiles illustrating the scale of development in the principal figure of the article in question; but that artificial angle of the frontal line of the face to the dorsal line of the body will not apply at all to intelligent human beings, except in the case of the Flatheads, whose peculiar conformation has been produced by a too rigid application of it in their plastic infancy. In man as Nature made him, the front line of the facial angle can form an angular relation to the axis of the body through the base-line of the facial angle, and in no other way. At the top of the head the front and dorsal lines can only meet in a curve, and there they form what may more properly be called the cranial arch than the facial angle. The facial angle of Camper is truly an angle and truly facial, but the proposed substitute for it is neither. Nature really does form angles of varying acuteness and obtuseness to the base-line of the face at its two extremities—very acute angles between it and the front line of the face at its anterior extremity, and very obtuse angles between it and the line of the spinal column at its posterior extremity, in the lower vertebrates, and almost right angles at the same points in human beings. Those formed by the front and base lines of the face constitute the facial angle of the upper part of the face, and indicate the degrees of intellectual and artistic development: those formed by the base-line of the face and the axial line of the neck constitute the facial angle of the lower part of the face, and indicate the degrees of affectional and passional development.

To do full justice to the article we have stopped to consider, we must not slight the assertion on which the author bases his objection to Camper's facial angle and his preference for his own, namely, that "the base of the skull does not keep in harmony" with the front of the face in the changes that occur through the stages of vertebrate evolution, but that it "varies irregularly," while the "axis of the body" does not. A little examination will show this to be a great mistake. While the lines representing the front face and dorsal surfaces are "effecting a grand variation of 180°, or the half of a circle"—beginning with the lowest vertebrate, in which those lines are "in direct line" with each other, and ending with the highest vertebrate, in which they are parallel with each other—the line representing the base of the face, extending along the floor of the