Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 5.djvu/86

76 lowest vertebrate forms to the highest, we see the absurdity of making either of these lines the basis of an angle in relation to the other. Take the novel rule, that for the true facial angle "the relation of the [front] face is not to the base of the skull, but to the axis of the body," and, for example, apply it to the camel! What sort of work would we make in deciphering such a hieroglyphical facial angle as that? But, considering the invariable straightness of the base of the skull, and its horizontal position in the attitude of attention, or in the social exercise of the external and internal senses and emotions, and considering at the same time the infinite variety of forms and motions given by these faculties to the features and muscles of the face and to the spinal column and its appendages, we see the propriety of making the base-line the standard of comparison for the two other lines in the construction of our facial angles and in our method of using them. All things considered, we may plant ourselves anew on the base-line of the old facial angle, assured that it is what its name signifies—fundamental, the centre of support and dependence between the transitional and variable lines, and presenting fixed extremities, constituting axial centres, in relation to which the movable lines are radii, forming with the baseline angles of all degrees between one and ninety in the development of animal life, from the lowest vertebrate form up to its highest and most perfect type. No one can read Camper's work "On the Connection between the Science of Anatomy and the Arts of Drawing, Painting, and Statuary," and examine its numerous and scrupulously accurate illustrations, without being convinced that the facial angle there described is founded in Nature, in spite of all the criticisms he or others may be able to pass upon it. If it be true, as Herbert Spencer says, that science is distinguished from common knowledge by being a more accurate system of measurements of ordinary phenomena, guided by more accurately understood and applied principles of generalization, Camper's facial angle may be regarded as the first step of a strictly scientific mind in the erection of a positive science of Comparative Physico-Psychology; and we have only to learn its true significance better than the master, by following the same induction of generals in regard to each particular line of it that he followed in regard to the whole, in order to complete the magnificent superstructure for which he laid so solid a foundation.