PHILOSOP
OF
XPRESSION
BROWN
8080
388
A 961,206

ARTES
LIBRARY
1837
SCIENTIA
VERITAS
OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
E-FLURIBUS UNUM
TUBBUR
QUAERIS PENINSULAM AMOENAM
CIRCUMSPICE

THE SYNTHETIC PHILOSOPHY
OF EXPRESSION
AS APPLIED TO
THE ARTS OF READING, ORATORY,
AND PERSONATION
BY
MOSES TRUE BROWN, M. A.
PRINCIPAL OF THE BOSTON SCHOOL OF ORATORY, AND PROFESSOR OF ORATORY
AT TUFTS COLLEGE
It is a truth perpetually illustrated, that accumulated
facts lying in disorder begin to assume some order if an
hypothesis is thrown among them
HERBERT SPENCER

bien ou
rien
The Riverside Press
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1886
་
Copyright, 1886,
BY MOSES TRUE BROWN.
All rights reserved.
The Riverside Press, Cambridge:
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.
!
PREFACE.
THE study of Human Expression has for cen-
turies attracted either the curious or critical at-
tention of one or more of the great minds of
each succeeding age. But it is only within the
last half of the present century that this im-
portant subject has presented such a unity of
classified knowledge as to make good its claim to
be ranked among the recognized sciences.
We may confidently say that to the researches
of two great philosophic minds, Darwin and
Mantegazza, we owe the substance of that body
of truth which forms the present Philosophy of
Human Expression, and with equal confidence
we may assert that to François Delsarte we owe
the practical application of philosophic methods
to the speech arts,
Reading, Oratory, and Dra-
matic Expression.
Darwin, while making the now world-renowned
voyage of the Beagle, incidentally gathered the
data upon which he founded the conclusions
given the world in his great work, "The Expres-
sion of the Emotions in Man and Animals,'
a treasury of exhaustive research and thorough
analysis.
>>
iv
PREFACE.
Taking a comprehensive survey of the mass
of material left by the early physiognomists, he
correlated the empirical observations of such
more modern writers as Lavater, Gratiolet, and
Piderit with the exact scientific knowledge of
Sir Charles Bell and Duchenne, in their studies
of the Anatomy of Expression; and by a series
of broad generalizations founded his philosophy
upon three principles which must forever remain
as foundations of the Philosophy of Human Ex-
pression.
The three principles by which Darwin ac-
counted for most of the expressions of man and
animals are:
I. The principle of serviceable associated
habits.
II. The principle of antithesis.
III. The principle of the direct action of
the nervous system on the body, independently
of the will, and independently, in large part,
of habit.
Darwin's masterly presentation, published in
Europe in 1872, and in America in 1875, awak-
ened an intense interest in the scientific world.
It startled many minds into alarm by its bold
theories based upon the modern hypothesis of
evolution. But it came as a draught from a
living spring to men thirsting for new truth,
and tired of teleological explanations of natural
phenomena that did not explain.
To no one did this message of Darwin come
PREFACE.
V
7
with a greater awakening impulse than to Paolo
Mantegazza, a Florentine scientist, who has lit-
erally made the globe his quarry in search for
human expression.
Accepting with an enthusiasm born of convic-
tion the deductions, based upon evolution, of
Darwin, he drew from a vast storehouse of spe-
cial observations and experiences among all races
of mankind the material for his celebrated work,
published in Paris in 1885, "La Physionomie et
l'Expression des Sentiments."
This work gives in detail what Darwin has
given in general. It presents the most critical
and exact analysis of the human body and each
of its expressive organs, with a wealth of illus-
tration suggestive of the widest and most search-
ing methods of modern science.
We turn from these great masters of philo-
sophic thought to Delsarte. And we are com-
pelled to say that there is to-day no such body
of systematized knowledge, left by this great
teacher — and open to the world — as, stand-
ing alone and without interpretation, merits
the title of a philosophy of expression.
The knowledge left by Delsarte is fragment-
ary, and often obscure and incoherent. And yet
the extracts from his manuscripts, which have
from time to time been given the world by his
disciples, show that a strong intellect and a
stronger psychological insight were at work,
even to the hour of his death, striving to solve
the problems of human expression.
!
vi
PREFACE.
Į
We cannot escape the conviction that with
Delsarte insight was greater than reason. He
was a greater teacher than thinker, a greater
seer than philosopher. We think it will be
found that the world owes a debt of gratitude
to Delsarte, not for any profound philosophy,
but for showing how a philosophy of expression
may be practically and successfully taught.
It now only remains for the author of this
treatise to attempt to justify the appearance at
this time of the Synthetic Philosophy of Expres-
sion.
For more than twenty years a teacher and
student of the Art of Expression, he well re-
members the appearance of the great work of
Charles Darwin. It may with truth be said that
until Mr. Darwin wrote no such thing as a sci-
ence of expression existed or was possible. His
application of the principles of evolution to ex-
pression was the first step of the new advance.
His great book widened the horizon for every
thoughtful student. To the author of this vol-
ume it was the sunrise of a new day.
The work of Mantegazza, issued only last
year, acknowledges his indebtedness to Darwin,
and emphasizes and enforces his conclusions.
But neither of these great writers attempted
to apply their philosophy to the conscious art
technique by which the reader, actor, or orator
enforces his thought and passion. They made
no claim to be teachers, nor even to suggest
1
...
PREFACE.
vii
how the principles formulated by them might be
taught.
In this treatise the author has attempted to
show how the philosophy of these great discov-
erers may be applied to the conscious art forms
which every expressive speaker must employ.
He has largely adopted the nomenclature of
Delsarte. He has not hesitated, however, to
criticise the dicta of the great teacher whenever
he has found what he considers error or unsound
statement. Thus, he has felt obliged to substi-
tute the term Emotive, as signifying a state of
the Being, for Moral, and the term Poise, as
signifying a mode of motion, for Normal.
Against the empirical statement, accredited
to Delsarte, of Nine Laws of Gesture as ulti-
mate in expression, he has felt compelled to enter
a decided word of protest. He has attempted
to show that a single principle—the Law of
Correspondence-underlies these nine laws for-
mulated by Delsarte, as well as the numerous
categories presented as laws of gesture by his
followers.
The author asks the special attention of the
student of Expression to the correspondences il-
lustrated by the revelations and implications of
the globe, and to his argument that all our ges-
tures bear fixed relations to the lines, spaces,
arcs, and forms of the globe (see Chapters X.
and XII.).
So far as he is aware, no serious attempt has
viii
PREFACE.
been made by the writers upon Delsarte to ap-
ply his philosophy to the two great agencies of
expression, Voice and Articulate Speech. We
think we do no injustice to Delaumosne, or Ar-
naud, or Alger, when we pronounce their discus-
sions to be incomplete. The author of this trea-
tise has attempted to run the same parallels of
inference and deduction in his discussion of voice
and articulation that he has used in his treat-
ment of gesture. He submits his discussion of
these great agents of expression (see Chapters
XVI. and XVII.) to the critical judgment of
thoughtful students.
In conclusion, he may be permitted, in justice
to his intent, to say that he has made an honest
and sincere effort to present a consistent and
logical body of truth, which he hopes may hold
an humble place as a philosophy in the litera-
ture of human expression. He has thrown "an
hypothesis into the mass of accumulated facts
lying in disorder " known as the Delsarte Sys-
tem of Expression, in hopes that if he has been
unable to evolve such an orderly procedure of
logical statement as may merit the title of a phi-
losophy, his effort may stimulate other and bet-
ter thinkers to a broader unfolding of the Sci-
ence of Expressive Man.
BOSTON, JUNE, 1886.
CONTENTS.
1. FIRST PRINCIPLES
1
II.
THE THREE CONDITIONS OF BEING.
THE THREE
SPECIAL AGENTS OF EXPRESSION.
MODES OF MOTION
THE THREE
15
III.
THE THREEFOLD DIVISION OF THE BODY IN EX-
PRESSION.
THE LAWS OF
GESTURE.
DEL-
SARTE'S DIVISION INTO NINE.
THEIR TRUE BA-
SIS
43
•
IV. THE NINE LAWS OF GESTURE (concluded)
66
V. THE HUMAN FORM. - ITS FITNESS FOR EXPRES-
SION
89
VI.
THE HUMAN FORM (continued). - ACTION, AS DE-
TERMINED FROM THE BASE
98
VII. THE HUMAN FORM (concluded).
STRUCTURE, AS
DETERMINING
FEET
ACTION.
INDICATIONS OF THE
107
*
VIII. THE TORSO AND ITS EXPRESSIONS
IX. THE HEAD AND ITS EXPRESSIONS
X. THE HAND AND ARM IN GESTURE
XI.
XII. FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS. THE REALM OF COR-
115
129
•
145
THE GESTURES OF THE HAND AND ARM, AS MANI-
FESTING THE STATES OF THE BEING
162
RESPONDENCE IN GESTURE
•
184
XIII. THE HUMAN FACE AS AN AGENT OF EXPRESSION
XIV. THE HUMAN FACE, AS AN AGENT OF EXPRESSION
202
(continued)
219
XV.
THE HUMAN FACE, AS AN AGENT OF EXPRESSION
(concluded)
239
XVI. THE HUMAN VOICE AND ITS EXPRESSIONS
259
XVII.
ARTICULATE SPEECH, AS AN AGENT OF EXPRESSION 280
THE SYNTHETIC
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
CHAPTER I.
FIRST PRINCIPLES.
THERE are two subsistences of whose reality
man is conscious, and whose recorded phenom-
ena, and deductions therefrom, make the sum of
that knowledge which he calls science.
These subsistences are (1) Matter; and (2)
Spirit, Mind, or Soul.
(a.) Nothing exists or can exist, so far as we know, or
can think, that is not one or the other of these actual exist-
They are the universal whole.
ences.
There are two words, everywhere spoken,
when man would cover with a name his concept
of the aggregate of Matter and the aggregate
of Mind.
These words are the Universe, and God. The
Universe is matter in form, occupying Space,
existing in Time, held by law.
2
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
X
God is Spirit; and is sustaining Cause, ani-
mating Centre, and pervading Soul of the Uni-
verse.
(b.) Matter is the reality of space. The concept of the
Greek mind, adopted by modern science, is that universal
space is filled with a tenuous and imponderable form of
matter — the æther. Matter is composed of atoms. These
are innumerable, infinitely small, indivisible, and indestruc-
tible.
When atoms aggregate, new bodies appear; when they
disaggregate, bodies previously existing disappear. The
Universe alone sums up their totality.
All masses are globes, both the infinitely
small and the infinitely great, and are in never-
ceasing motion.
(c.) Both the infinitely small and the infinitely great are
alike unthinkable.
Take the infinitely small: Sir William Thompson con-
ceives that a drop of water is made up of units so small,
that could we magnify this single drop to the size of the
earth, the atoms of which it is composed would not be
larger than a cricket-ball !
Take the infinitely great: Its spaces are simply incon-
ceivable. There is no circumference, the centre is every-
where.
Gigantic masses in globular form are scattered in all di-
rections through this immensity of space. They fill remote
depths of unfathomable abysses. They revolve around
themselves and around each other, in orbits to which they
are held by surrounding attractions.
Our sun with its pellets of cosmic stuff, including the
earth, about which we are so much concerned, according to
Herschel is moving through space toward some remote and
unknown centre, in the direction of the constellation of
Hercules.
FIRST PRINCIPLES.
3
The grandest conclusion of modern science is
that the Universe is bound together in Time
and Space as a single whole. Said Galton:
"There is nothing as yet observed in the order
of events, to make us doubt that the Universe
is bound together in space and time, as a single
Entity."
So we may affirm of these two subsistences,
Matter and Spirit, that they are Body and Soul
of the Universe.
And further, that it is unthinkable that Mat-
ter can exist and be active without Soul; or that
Soul can manifest its existence without Body.
66
(d.) Looking out upon the crowding phenomena which
day and night unfold, the greatest philosophic thinker now
upon the planet, Herbert Spencer, is forced thus to speak:
Among the mysteries which become the more mysterious
the more they are thought about, there will remain the one
absolute certainty, that man is ever in the presence of an
Infinite and Eternal Energy from which all things proceed."
And Oken, interpreting the problem from the metaphys-
ical side, said: "The Universe is an analysis of the self-con-
sciousness of God; Its appearance is a synthesis of His
self-consciousness."
Now from the broad, the general, the univer-
sal, let us descend to the restricted, the particu-
lar, the immediate. From concepts of the in-
finite of Matter and Soul as revealed in the
Universe, let us consider the finite of Matter
and Soul as revealed in Man.
(e.) That man images the Universe
his being all forms, forces, essences
that he includes in
that he reflects
4
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
through his organism the universal whole, are no longer
fancies, dreams, and speculations of poets and transcenden-
tal philosophers. The modern law of Evolution binds to-
gether the problems of Natural History, as Newton's laws
bind together the motions of the heavenly bodies.
When the consciousness of man shall have digested the
amazing deductions of such minds as Spencer and Darwin,
Huxley and Fiske, as to man's origin and appearance on the
earth; when the materialist shall have put in his evidence
to the last word, and all its importance shall have been fully
realized and fairly weighed, I foresee that the pendulum
of human thought and belief will swing back toward the
grander conceptions of Oken and Swedenborg and Emer-
son, towards which goal all this challenging of Nature inev-
itably leads; that the Spiritual is at the centre both in the
Universe and in Man, who reflects and images the Universe.
Said Schopenhauer, with immense significance: "The
Materialists endeavor to show that all, even mental, phe-
nomena are physical; and rightly: only they do not see
that on the other hand everything physical is at the same
time metaphysical!"
Man as we find him on this earth is a union
of matter and Soul.
Let us call this mysterious union of matter
and Soul in form, The Organism.
And we may say, Man is a Soul served by
organs.
Now certain necessities result from such an
organization as man presents.
Of necessity man is a creature limited by
three unavoidable restrictions. These restric-
tions are Space, Time, and Motion.
And we may say that, standing upon the
earth, these three restrictions hold him, inexora-
bly, in their grasp.
FIRST PRINCIPLES.
5
And further -a most important conclusion
we shall find that all his expressions, whether of
Voice, Gesture, or Articulate Speech, bear defi-
nite relations to these three great restrictions.
And we should be able to formulate a com-
plete Philosophy of Expression, were we able
to state all man's relations to these three re-
strictions.
(f) Let us try to make plain by a diagram ¹our idea of
man conditioned by Space, Time, and Motion.
We project one side of a triangle.2 The word
Space
we write over the left side. Space holds all things, small,
great and greatest. It holds man: where can he go out of
Space?
The right side of our triangle is struck out.
Time.
Time
is an unavoidable condition of the Being. Once man was
not on earth as apparition. Now he is (it is present). He
was yesterday (it has passed). He will be . . . Ah! how
long! where, whence, under what conditions?
The third line is sketched.
Motion. Motion is Force
expending itself. And Force is the source of all active
phenomena occurring in the material world. Motion is the
evidence of a Force behind it. Man as mass is matter. So
the cosmic forces, gravity, electricity, etc., acting upon this
mass, are a most formidable restriction. In the last analysis
our sensations are only so many modes of motion. When
vibration reaches the conscious self we say, "I feel, I taste,
hear, see, smell, which translated mean, I vibrate, I am set
in motion!" See what modern science says of these pulses
from the outer, beating in upon the conscious self.
1 The blackboard and diagram have come to be essential aids in
the presentation of abstract ideas. He is a poor teacher to whom
they are not indispensable.
2 We shall have frequent occasion to use the triangle in formulat-
ing abstract ideas. In using this figure, or when speaking of triads
or trinities, we wish it understood that no theological signification is
intended.
6
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
If the air vibrate oftener than sixteen, but less often than
30 thousand times in a second we say, "I hear music!"
The transfer of energy oftener than 30 thousand and less
often than 458 trillions in a second, “I feel heat!" At the
rate of 458 trillions, "I see red!" And the sensation of
577 trillions of ether vibrations in a second is translated by
our consciousness as green, while vibrations pulsing through
the ether at the rate of 727 trillions become violet, in our
consciousness.
Space.
Time.
We may now venture to put our idea in dia-
gram. Let us call it the Triad¹ or
Trinity of Restriction. It will come
to bear an increasing interest and
importance as we proceed.
Motion:
Thus is man conditioned by an environment
from which there is no escape.
Space, Time, and Force showing itself as Mo-
tion, are his greatest earthly restrictions.
Let us put our idea into three propositions :-
1. Soul can manifest itself, both in the Uni-
verse and in man, only through matter.
2. All manifestations of Soul - both in the
Universe and in man-must declare themselves
in relation to, and correspondence with, Space,
Time, and Motion.
3. Whatever successively appears in Time is
simultaneously extended in Space.
Thus self-motion, motion of the exterior, which
we can see is sent from the interior, is our only
evidence of life, and is the only, but ultimate,
distinction between the organic and inorganic.
1 The idea of triads is older than Aristotle. Far back of Greece, in
Chaldea, Persia, Egypt, Assyria, three was the sacred number, and
back of these records existed a traditional three!
FIRST PRINCIPLES.
7
The organic dies so soon as motion disappears
The inorganic lives so soon as motion
in it.
enters it.
When the principle of Life resides in a mass
moved from a centre, it is an Organism. Oken's
definition reads: "An Organism is a circum-
scribed, closed mass which moves itself."
We may predicate of any organism these
things:
1. An organism is mass in form, with control-
ling centre and near environment.
2. While centre and near environment are
one, and continue as one, there is Life.
3. When this relation of controlling centre
and controlled environment no longer exists,
what was near environment becomes remote.
Then comes the return of specialized matter to
the general mass of the earth. This is the dis-
appearance or death of the organism. This is
the retreat of the individual into the Universal.
Said Robin: "To live and to crystallize are
two properties never united."
A diagram will make plain our idea.
AN ORGANISM.

other
All
or
matter
An
is
periphery
organism is
centre
and
near environ-
ment.
remote
environment
In our diagram the life or psychic element is
8
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
centre. The centre controls its body, mass, or
near environment.
This is true of all animals. As the animal
evolves higher psychic elements, it becomes able
to control its near environment for higher ex-
pressions than those of merely maintaining and
perpetuating its life.
It becomes able to comprehend and control
something of its remote environment. Man of
this era has a much greater control of remote
environment than any other animal. And the
perfected man of the future will attain to a
knowledge and control of his two environments,
inconceivable to the most advanced men of to-
day.
(g.) Let us examine the relations of body and psychic as
they present themselves in the most perfect earthly organ-
ism, that of man.
To "bode" is to portend, to foreshadow.
The Anglo-
Saxon word "bodian" meant, to announce, to tell.
(6
To
'body," then, is to produce in form, to cause to appear.
So, a body is an appearance, an apparition, a phenomenon.
Now that which is bodied cannot be the same thing as
the body. It must be another thing, another somewhat.
Body is exterior, and is seen. This other is interior, and is
unseen. The Body is container. This other is contained.
*We call the Outer, Body. The Inner we call Soul.
The body holds its form, substance, and continuance
from the Soul. It is held out of, and separated from, the
great mass of matter by the Soul. When let go by the
Soul it disappears as Organism. There is a triumph of
cosmic over organic force.¹
1 This twofold division of the organism, into body and soul, is com-
paratively recent in the history of man. Says Herbert Spencer: "The
FIRST PRINCIPLES.
9
We may now venture a definition of the two
entities which make the organism that we call
Man.
1. The Body, or Exterior, is a persistent
aggregate and continuance of objective phe-
nomena.
2. The Soul, or Interior, is a persistent
aggregate and continuance of subjective phe-
nomena.
3. All phenomena of the Body are expres-
sible in terms of Matter and Motion.
All phenomena of the Soul are expressible
in terms of Thought and Feeling.
And it is upon the related phenomena of the
Organism that we base the Science of Expression,
which is a branch of the broader Science of
Esthetics.
So that a Philosophy of Expression is a branch
of the Philosophy of Esthetics, which is the
Philosophy of the Fine Arts.¹
(h.) After all is said of the result of modern investiga-
tion into the material organ of the mind, the brain, the
hypothesis of a sentient, thinking entity dwelling within a corporeal
framework is now so deeply woven into our beliefs and into our lan-
guage that we can scarcely imagine it to be one which the primitive
man did not entertain and could not entertain."
1 It was a bold generalization of Ludwig Noire that divided the
empire of Philosophy into two great divisions, Kinetics and Esthetics.
By Kinetics he would consider as a problem of pure mechanics the
objective world, from the first motion of the atom to the revolutions
of the solar system; from the formation of the first cell to the life of
man.
By Esthetics he would solve the subjective world, from the first
tremor of an embryo to the most brilliant achievements of the mind;
from the first reaction of the monera to the highest flights of human
genius.
10
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
great secret, "What is and where is Soul?" constantly
eludes us.
Said Serres: "We have been dissecting the
brain since the age of Galen, yet there is not an anatomist
who has not left his successor something to do." Said
Ribot: "In the presence of the fibres of the brain we are
like hackney-coachmen, who know the streets and the houses,
but know nothing of what goes on inside them."
And the latest writer, M. Luys, who has brought the
microscope and the resources of photography to his aid to
complement years of observation, study, and experiment in
one of the great hospitals of Paris, declares that the secrets
of nervous organization escape from our eyes as fast as we
press into the regions where they conceal themselves.
And it is not to be wondered at that men divide them-
selves into two schools of thought, the Materialistic and
the Spiritualistic, when brought to confront this mystery.
The vice has been that neither school is disposed to treat
dispassionately the thought of the other.
-
Says the Materialist, with scalpel in hand, and a brain
fresh from the body before him: "I cannot find, in all this
mass of white and gray matter, the thing which you call
Soul. The microscope discloses a marvelous structure,
not open to unaided vision. I find, as the unit of structure,
the cell, with nucleus as centre, and nucleolus as centre of
centre; and no vision pierces further! The Brain seems to
be an admirable instrument for receiving and registering
impressions from the outer world. I can conceive, too, that
the stored energy laid up in its centres manifests itself as
thought, will, and feeling, under the law of the correlation
of forces; but I nowhere find the something you seem
pleased to call the Soul!
Says the Spiritualist, with a fine affectation of scorn, with
no scalpel, microscope, or brain before him; evolving his
answer from his inner consciousness: "Do you hope to find,
in dull, dead matter, Spirit, Mind, Soul? Why waste your
time in a fruitless search for what you can never apprehend
through the senses? Besides, it is a dead house you are
searching through for its late occupant! Did you ever
FIRST PRINCIPLES.
11
search through a living, pulsating, inhabited brain? Higher
than all your search is the evidence of the rational deduc-
tions founded in the eternal justness and fitness of things;
that deep, central current of belief in Immortality which
sweeps through human thought as the Gulf Stream through
the ocean, bankless and shoreless.” 1
At the present halt of Science, the Soul, to a Materialist,
if he should give it a name, is the function of a highly
specialized form of matter, the nervous mass. Said Le-
fèvre: "Soul is the function of the cerebral mass, concen-
trating itself in memory, thought, and personality."
To the Spiritualist, Soul is another thing than matter: it is
an entity, living and imperishable! The nervous organiza-
tion, as all material parts of the organism, is admittedly
perishable as structure; but the conscious self that controls
the body, the inner force, must persist. In fact, advanced
spiritualism declares that matter is the shadow of which
Spirit is the substance.
It seems certain that the present hostility-largely ap-
parent of Science to the immanence of Soul, both in the
Universe and in man, is to lead to a broader philosophy, a
philosophy which shall reconcile all the varied phenomena
which Nature presents to the human mind.
And this new and better philosophy will assuredly have
for its basis the deepest, widest, and most certain of all
truths; that the Power that is behind this apparent veil, the
Universe, and the power that is behind this veil of flesh,
the human body, can only be made known by stirrings be-
hind the tapestry of matter.
1 The thought of James Freeman Clarke, spoken at Concord, Mass.,
at the funeral services of Emerson, the Plato of our era. Mr. Clarke
said of this great soul: "Like the greatest thinkers, he did not rely
on logical proof, but on the higher evidence of universal instincts;
the vast streams of belief, which flow through human thought like
currents in the ocean, - those shoreless rivers which forever roll along
their paths in the Atlantic and Pacific, not restrained by banks, but
guided by the revolutions of the globe and the attractions of the
sun."
12
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
We have made this general survey of the re-
lations of the Soul to its environment - both
near and remote that the student may be bet-
ter prepared to comprehend something of the
breadth and significance of what I think I may
claim to be A New Philosophy of Expression.
It will be seen that in its broadest application
such a Philosophy must embrace all the phenom-
ena resulting from the mysterious union of soul
and body.
ment
It must recognize the action of the environ-
near and remote upon the soul, as also
the modes of reaction of the soul upon its envi-
ronment.
It should trace- if it were pushed to ulti-
mate grounds -the manifestations of the sim-
plest life upon the earth, up to imperial man,
whose expressions would epitomize and reveal the
Kosmos.
It must embrace, also, all the complex phe-
nomena which arise from the necessity man
feels, while in the presence of Nature, to em-
body, and thereby attempt to realize, his worship
of the True, the Good, and the Beautiful.
Hence a complete Philosophy of Expression
would embrace the philosophy of the Fine Arts,
plastic, graphic, and dramatic - the Arts of the
eye and ear.1
1 Oken has made a twofold division of Art; the Plastic and the
Sonant, or that of Form and that of Motion. Sculpture is mass in
Form. Sculpture repeated in light is Painting. Music is the Art of
FIRST PRINCIPLES.
13
In the present treatise upon Human Expres-
sion, we shall discuss, mainly, the immediate ex-
pressions of the soul through the body. We
shall attempt to show that the soul manifests it-
self as a threefold essence; through three divi-
sions of the body; and by three modes of motion.
One great principle will be stated as founda-
tion for much the greater number of our expres-
sions.
This principle is the Law of Correspondence.
It will be fully stated when we come to consider
the Nine Laws of Gesture.
Two diagrams will have greater and greater
significance as our work unfolds. Indeed, they
may be said to centre our Philosophy. The stu-
dent will come to regard them as keys to unlock
many a difficult door.
We present here the two diagrams, and urge
the student to turn back and to refer to them
again and again as he proceeds.
(1)
(2)
Space.
Time.
Structure.
Function.
Motion.
EXPRESSION.
Utility.
EXPRESSION.
(i.) The student will refer to page 6 for an explanation
of Diagram (1). This diagram represents the broadest re-
striction man encounters upon the earth. It will be shown,
as we proceed, that all our expressions are related to these
three great restrictions of Space, Time, and Motion.
Motion. The dance of Tones is Music. The Sonant Arts, rooted in
Music, are Poetry, Oratory, Reading. Dramatic Art is living Sculp-
ture, with an environment of all the Fine Arts.
14
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
Diagram (2) is explained at the commencement of Chap-
ter VI., in which, and the chapters following, we have stated.
the grounds of our belief that the evolution of man as an ex-
pressive being has been a progressive development along the
three parallels of Structure, Function, and Utility.
In our discussion of the great subject of Hu-
man Expression, we shall hope to present to the
reason and judgment of earnest students proof
and confirmation that man is indeed an abstract
and epitome of the forms and forces of the Uni-
verse, and that the poet sang only prosaic truth
in her sublime utterance :
"God collected and resumed in man
The firmaments, the strata, and the lights,
Fish, fowl, and beast, and insect, - all their trains
Of various life caught back upon his arm,
Reorganized and constituted man,
The Microcosm, the adding-up of works!"
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.
CHAPTER II.
THE THREE CONDITIONS OF BEING.
THE THREE
THE THREE
SPECIAL AGENTS OF EXPRESSION.
MODES OF MOTION.
MAN as Psychic¹ manifests himself as three
conditions of Being, or, we may say, he mani-
fests three Natures.
These conditions of Being, or three Natures,
are I. The Vital. II. The Mental. III. The
Emotive.
(a.) It should be borne constantly in mind that in deal-
ing with the Psychic we are considering an organic whole.
Nature makes no division of the psychic element, and any
process by which we break it up into parts is an operation
purely of our own making, and is used simply as a conven-
ience. In the somewhat abstract discussion which follows,
the reader will save himself from confusion by keeping this
idea in mind.
I. Man as a psychic Being is Vital, Sensi-
tive, Instinctive.
Through this part of his Being he exhibits
the phenomena of Life.
1 As we shall frequently use the term Psychic, as a noun, in our trea-
tise, let us define it as an energy centred in the organism and controlling
its action. The term is used as generic, and covers the three specific
terms, Life, Mind, and Soul.
16
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
(b.) We nowhere find sentient life, save in connection with
a highly organized kind of matter which we call nerve sub-
stance. A dot of this substance not so large as a pin's head
organizes an insect kingdom. Said Darwin: "The brain of
an ant is one of the most marvellous atoms of matter in the
world, — perhaps more so than the brain of a man.'
Stated in terms of matter, Life is an energy centred in
nerve substance, and nowhere exists save in connection with
such substance.
1
This is true alike of the structureless protozoa inhabiting
a stagnant pool, and of man who is at the summit of neural
development.
II. Man as a psychic Being is Mental, In-
tellectual, Reflective. Through this part of his
Being he exhibits the phenomena of Mind.
He thinks, and compares his thoughts with
things. He perceives, recalls what he has per-
ceived, and projects pictures of what he has seen.
He reasons, and links his reasonings in proposi-
tions. He is the only being on earth who uses
the syllogism.
(c.) We may diagram the pentarchy of the intellectual
faculties.
Generalization. 5.
-Reason. 4.
MIND
Imagination. 3.
Memory. 2.
Perception. 1.
These are the faculties by the aid of which man attains to
all knowledge. They are the instruments with which he
1 Since the passing from a structureless state to a structural state
is itself a vital process, it follows that vital activity must have existed
while there was yet no structure. HERBERT SPENCER.
TRIADS OF EXPRESSION.
17
constructs his science, art, and literature.
And in the last
analysis we shall find that our sciences are but human
knowledge, partly unified, based upon the power of detect-
ing identity and difference in the phenomena which Nature
presents to the knowing faculties.
III. Man as a psychic Being is Emotive,
Passional, Ethical, Spiritual.
Through this part of his being he exhibits the
phenomena of the Emotions. He loves and hates,
is affectionate, or bears enmity. He is benevo-
lent, or malignant. He is loyal to his concepts of
truth and duty. He worships; and, contempla-
tive of the Spiritual, is reverent even to mysti-
cism.
These are three states or conditions of one
Being. Neither state exists without the others,
nor independently of the others, any more than
a triangle can exist without three sides.
Separate the terms by which you state a three-
fold essence, -you cannot separate the essence;
nor can you know of the existence of the Being
except through its manifestations.
We repeat, then, the idea which we shall at-
tempt to unfold in the pages of this treatise.
The Philosophy of the manifestations of the
Psychic through the Body is the Philosophy of
Human Expression.
(d.) The question has occurred, doubtless, to the student,
Does scientific Psychology justify this division of the Psy-
chic in man into Vital, Emotive, and Mental states or con-
ditions?
We think so. The division of the psychic element, made
2
18
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
by the old psychologists, into Intellect, Feeling, and Will, is
held substantially to-day.
Says Sully: 1 Mind is the sum of our processes of know-
ing, of our feelings of pleasure and pain, and of our vol-
untary doings. It is non-material, the inner world as
distinguished from the external." Says Hermann Lotze: 2
"Sensations, ideas, feelings, and acts of will constitute the
well-known facts, the whole of which we are accustomed
to designate as the life of a peculiar entity called 'The
Soul.'"
We diagram the two divisions of the Psychic.
THE
PSYCHIC.
(1)
The usual division:
(2)
The division adopted in this treatise :-
Will.
Mental.
Thought.
THE
PSYCHIC.
*
Emotive.
Feeling.
Vital.
It will be seen that the Will is not found in our division
of the Psychic. True, but it is not left out of our scheme.
This determining power of the Psychic this power by
whose aid our Mental, Emotive, or Vital states declare them-
selves we make the direct agent of the Psychic.
So we accept the empirical definition, accredited to Del-
sarte as that which best explains the phenomena of the Be-
ing in action.
The Will is the direct agent of the Soul, and lends itself
to which side of the Being desires to manifest.
We are aware that Delsarte is accredited with making a
threefold division differing from that which we have pre-
sented.
It becomes necessary, therefore, that we shall state the
grounds of difference and the reasons for our dissent.
We present the division accredited to Delsarte by two of
his disciples.
1 See Sully's Psychology, pp. 2, 20. Appleton & Co., New York.
2 See Lotze's Outlines of Psychology, p. 1. Ginn & Co., Boston.
TRIADS OF EXPRESSION.
19
THE
*
PSYCHIC.
Mr. Mackaye's division.
M. Delaumosne's division.
Mental. II.
Mind. II.
Moral. III.
THE
PSYCHIC.
Soul. III.
Vital. I.
Life. I.
Now we consider the use of the term "Moral" to repre-
sent a generic division of the Psychic as in the highest de-
gree unfortunate. We have found it confusing. No one of
the followers of Delsarte, so far as we know, has yet given
it a comprehensible definition. It manifestly cannot bear its
ordinary English meaning, of reference to our sense of right
and wrong, for that so restricts its signification that it is im-
possible to cover what, by numerous examples, Delsarte evi-
dently intended to cover with the term.
Thus what confusion this statement, accredited to Mr.
Steele Mackaye,' makes in any scheme of psychology!
999
"In man we find a Vital nature which feels, a Mental
nature which thinks, and a Moral nature which loves.'
But suppose we write "hates" in the place of loves? Does
the action cease to be "moral,” according to the definition?
But has the term "Moral" no place in our scheme? Yes;
with us
"Moral" is a specific term, included in the generic
term Emotive.
We think no one can read the definition of Feeling as
given by Herbert Spencer without recognizing the probabil-
ity that by the term "Moral" Delsarte intended to cover
the entire class of Feelings which Mr. Spencer classes as
Emotions.
He divides all Feelings into two classes,
Emotions.
Sensations and
Sensations are Feelings arising in the bodily framework.
Emotions are Feelings arising in the mental framework.
In this treatise we have adopted in place of the term
"Moral," accredited to Delsarte, the more consistent term
1 It will be borne in mind by the reader that authoritative state-
ments do not exist of the ideas either of Delsarte or Mr. Mackaye.
We therefore use the compliant term "accredited" when referring to
statements afloat in their names.
20
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
Emotive. By so doing the terms Vital and Emotive can be
held in entire consistency with modern Psychology.¹
Let us diagram our idea of the Emotive nature. It will
be seen that we make the Ethical (moral) a division of the
Emotive nature.
THE EMOTIVE
ELEMENT.
Its manifestations.
Mystical. 5.
Spiritual. 4.
Ethical. 3.
Passional. 2.
Instinctive. 1.
These modes of
Thus, Vital ex-
Our contention is, that the Being of man,
though invisible, manifests itself through the
body in three modes or phases.
manifestation are well defined.
pressions, as we shall attempt to show, bear a
distinct character that separates them from Emo-
tive expressions. So, too, expressions from the
Mental nature have certain distinct character-
istics which separate them from either Vital or
Emotive expressions.
And more than this; we contend that each of
the three natures chooses the ground of its dis-
play, and that the body has its well-defined tracts,
through which, by a seeming preference, the Unity
1 To show that a mind used to psychological methods would gather a
similar impression of the term "Moral" to that presented by us, we
quote a definition given before the Summer Session of 1885 of the Bos-
ton School of Oratory, by Professor Bulkley, of the Howard Univer-
sity, Washington, D. C. He thus presents what he concludes to be
Delsarte's idea in the use of the term "Moral: "—
The combined intellective and motive forces, leading to the conviction
under which, by will power, the orator speaks and acts.
This definition includes the three fundamental factors of the Being,
namely: The Intellectual, The Emotional, The Volitional.
TRIADS OF EXPRESSION.
21
we call the Human Soul manifests itself in one of
its three phases of Being.
Thus, expressions amount to proofs, and so we
are enabled to trace backward from the outer ex-
pression to find the inner condition that prompted
the expression. Thus the outer sign reveals the
inner mood.
(e.) Let us illustrate.
Both Darwin and Mantegazza,
from a wide survey of Human Expression, embracing all
races now upon the earth, agree that menace or threatening
to attack shows itself the world over by two expressions sent
out from the Vital nature: (1.) By making fists. (2.) By
a firm closure of the mouth, and by drawing up the lips from
the teeth, usually on the left side.
We shall give proof upon proof that, back of these open
manifestations, lurks the phase of the Being that prompts
the expression.
We ask the student to study carefully the fol-
lowing diagram of the classification of the Three
States of the Being:-
II. MENTAL.
Generalization.
Reason.
Imagination.
Memory.
Perception.
Mystical.
THE PSYCHIC
AS
UNITY.
Its manifesta- III. EMOTIVE.
tions.
•*.
Spiritual
Ethical.
Affectional. Passional.
I. VITAL.
Vital Instincts.
Simple manifestations of
Life.
22
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
(f) Our diagram is intended to represent all sentient
life upon the earth, from the simplest protozoa to man. Sur-
veying psychic appearance in animals along the chain of
sentient existence, it seems apparent that it is the added
psychic element that marks higher and higher degrees of in-
telligence and feeling, from the simplest manifestations of
Life, up to the complexity of Thought, Feeling, and Will,
which we call the human Soul.
We formulate, in a single proposition, the
mode of the existence of the human Soul upon
the earth.
The human Psychic is one in Consciousness.
It is three in Manifestation.
(g.) Can this formula be justified? Let us see. Close
your eyes, kind reader, and ask yourself the question, "How
many am I?"
You will never get other answer than the declaration of
the oneness of the Ego, "I am I." Nor has Philosophy on
this side of the question advanced a single step since the
days of Aristotle. If you should interrogate the Ego at in-
tervals of ten, twenty, sixty years, the same answer would
come back out of the deeps of your consciousness, "One Be-
ing in the midst of many changes!
We thus arrive at the most central fact in human experi-
ence, that the Soul is one in consciousness.
Let us examine the second part of our proposition.
is three in Manifestation."
ers.
"It
One day you are sick, and are tossing uneasily upon your
pillow. The nurse brings to your bedside a bouquet of flow-
You turn your head and open your eyes. "They are
beautiful!" you say, with the intoned voice almost of song.
Their perfume reaches you. "Exquisite!" you exclaim.
"Let me hold them in my hands! And you comment
upon their arrangement, form, and color. And now you say,
“Who could have sent them, and arranged with so much
taste, too?"
TRIADS OF EXPRESSION.
23
""
"Ah! here is a letter! You open it and glance at the
writing; tears fill your eyes, there is a choking at the
throat. “How kind and thoughtful!" you exclaim.
Now, note the significant order of your action. You first
heard the nurse's step and voice. You turned your head
and saw the flowers. Then their perfume greeted you.
Then you spoke with an intoned voice.
sensations. Such, too, your emotions, stimulated by your
sensations.
Such were your
At the same time that these feelings were aroused, you
took note of the various objects surrounding you. When
you spoke of the arrangement, form, and color of the com-
posite whole presented you in the bouquet, you used dis-
criminating words. If you had gone on to note accurately
resemblances or differences of structure, the mental nature
would have prompted you to use words of scientific im-
port.
And what a complex of Vital, Emotive, and Mental strug-
gled for supremacy, when you read the letter.
read the letter. Memory ran
on a swift errand to hunt for the sender of the flowers.
Imagination drew a heightened picture of the form, face,
and voice of the sender. You were reading on, when the
unexpected happened. A single phrase of the letter caught
your eye, and a torrent of feeling - how different from
thought! — flooded out from your psychic centre. Such
were the manifestations of that marvelous entity, dwelling
within its tabernacle of flesh!
Now, ask yourself, was it the same Being that gave forth
these diverse phenomena?
The illustration we have just given, if thought upon, will
convince the student that these three phases or states of the
Being seldom appear in any expression as single, separate,
and distinct, so that we may find no trace of the others.
Mantegazza has well stated this point: "It rarely hap-
pens that an emotion is expressed as a simple state. It is
more often a binary, or even a threefold combination.” ¹
1 La Physionomie et l'Expression des Sentiments. Par P. Mante-
gazza. Paris.
24
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
We confidently state, as a practical conclusion
which any one may verify, either by reflecting
upon his own states, or by observing others'
moods, that in the expression of any given pas-
sion, one of the three states of the Being leads,
while the other two assist. In most of our ex-
pressions it is quite easy to detect blends or com-
posites of the three Primary States.
These considerations, doubtless, led Delsarte
to a constant and critical observation of all the
phenomena of the Psychic as exhibited in the
every-day gestures, tones, and speech of people
about him.
Delsarte is reported to have formulated, in
synthetic tables, the expressions of each agent.
Thus the gestures of the head, torso, hand,
face, eye, were put into synthetic tables, and
these tables were called "the nine squares.
""
(9.) There can be little doubt that Delsarte held a form
of transcendental philosophy which had hardly crystallized,
at the time of his death, into logical statement. We have
direct evidence that he thought it somehow possible to re-
duce all the phenomena of Expression to the rule of Law;
and that the hidden laws of Expression had a definite
agreement with the idea of the Trinity. Hence the syn-
thetic tables of threes and multiples of three.
In support
of our hypothesis we quote the words of two of his intimate
students.
Angelique Arnaud ¹ says: "The principle of the Delsarte
system lies in the statement that there is in the world a uni-
versal formula which may be applied to all sciences, to all
things possible. This formula is The Trinity.”
1 See The Art of Oratory, System of Delsarte. By Edgar S. Werner.
Albany, N. Y.
TRIADS OF EXPRESSION.
25
And Delaumosne: "All phenomena, spiritual as well as
material, must be considered under three or nine aspects, or
not be understood."
We reproduce one of "the Nine Squares" as
given by Delaumosne.
CRITERION OF THE STATES OF THE Being.
DELAUMOSNE.1

Derivatives, Species, or Blends.
State of the
Being as Pri-
mary, or
Genus.
1.
3.
2.
II.
1-II.
3-II.
2-II.
Mental.
Vito-Mental.
Emoto-Mental.
Mento-Mental.
III.
Emotive.
1-ΠΙ.
Vito-Emotive.
3-ІІІ.
Emoto-Emotive.
2-III.
Mento-Emotive.
I.
1-1.
3-I.
2-I.
Vital.
Vito-Vital.
Emoto-Vital.
Mento-Vital.
The vertical columns are for species, deriva-
tives, or blends.
The horizontal planes are for the genus, or
primary.
The name that marks the species comes first.
It is the adjective.
The name that marks the genus comes last.
It is the noun. It may have before it one or two
adjectives expressing "blends."
9
In the middle horizontal plane, we place the
1 This table agrees with Delaumosne, except that the author has
used the term "Emotive " in place of Moral," for reasons already
stated.
26
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
Emotive genus. In the middle vertical column
the Emotive species.
(h.) The student will note that in the left vertical column
are found the three Primary states of the Being,
The
Mental, Emotive, and Vital, — marked with the Roman
numerals II., III., I.
At the right of this column are the Nine Squares, each
square presenting a "blend," or "composite," consisting of
two elements: a primary state as the noun, and a secondary,
or assisting state, as the adjective.
These secondary states are marked with the Arabic
figures 1, 3, 2, and are read as 1, Vito; 3, Emoto; 2,
Mento.
It will be readily seen that triple blends can be put into
each of these squares. Such blends would represent com-
plex psychic states, such as every human being has again
and again experienced.
We diagram three triads of composite states; each of
the three states, in turn, being primary. Let the student
remember that these diagrams are only convenient forms for
representing the indivisible Unity, the Soul.
THE PSYCHIC
(1)
AS
UNITY.
Mento - 2.
A complex Emoto-3.
or blend.
(2)
THE
*
PSYCHIC.
THE
(3)
*
PSYCHIO.
.Vital - I.
Vito-1.
A complex
Mento - 2.
or blend.
A complex
or blend.
Emotive - III.
Emoto-3.
Vito-1.
Mental-II.
We again quote Mantegazza:
"An emotion is seldom ex-
pressed as a simple state. It is more often a binary, or
even a threefold combination.”
TRIADS OF EXPRESSION.
27
That the student may more fully realize that
our division of the Psychic in man does not
differ in any essential point from the conclusions
of modern psychology, we present a diagram, to
which we ask serious attention: -
THE PSYCHIC.
An energy cen-
tred in the
Body and con-
trolling its ac-
tion.
*
It Thinks. {Intellect, from Perception to
It Feels.
It Wills.
{
Sensations. Feelings arising
in the bodily framework.
Emotions. Feelings arising
in the mental framework.
Will. The determining pow-
er. The direct Agent of the
Psychic.
One other statement seems necessary to a clear
comprehension of the meaning of certain forms
of Gesture, which will be presented further on
in our treatise.
The Psychic in man exists in two conditions
in relation to its environment.
1. As Active. 2. As Passive.
This difference is incorporated in the nervous
system.
Connected with the Passive side of our na-
ture are the organs and faculties of sight,
hearing, taste, smell, touch, and organic sensi-
bility generally. This side of our nature is
receptive.
Connected with the Active side are the muscu-
lar system and the nerves which govern it. Thus
with the sense organs and skin is allied our Pas-
sive, or Receptive nature. And with the muscles
is allied our Active nature.
It will be found that these two conditions of
28
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
the Psychic, incorporated in the physical struc-
ture, determine the form and direction of all
our gestures.
Having stated our psychological grounds with
what clearness we have found possible, we come
to the practical question, How does the Psychic
manifest itself? We ask the student's thought-
ful attention to our answer.
Man manifests the three states of the Being
through:
1. The body as a whole.
2. Through its divisions, tracts, or zones.
3. Through three special organs, which are
the three special agents of the three states of
the Psychic.
These special organs are:-
I. The Phonetic. III. The Muscular. And
II. The Articulatory.
I. The Phonetic manifests more completely
the Vital state of the Being.
III. The Muscular manifests more completely
the Emotive state of the Being.
II. The Articulatory manifests more com-
pletely the Mental state of the Being.
Yet each of these special organs manifests in
greater or less degree the other states. Each is
special. Each is also general.
Let us consider these agents in detail:
The Phonetic organ is that instrument which
gives forth sound, voice, and modulations of
voice.
TRIADS OF EXPRESSION.
29
It is Nature's instrument for manifesting to
the ear the Life element of the Being.
It is a tone instrument, and spontaneously
gives forth the fundamental tones of the musical
scale.
Music grew into Art as this instrument became
more and more differentiated from the breathing-
tube of the mammals. And the ear kept pace
with the differentiated trachea.
So, no hearing, no speech. No discriminating
ear, no artist in song or speech. The con-
genite deaf are also dumb. The bird is Nature's
symbol of tone. It is materialized hearing and
song,
Man, through his physical structure, is of the
class Mammalia. All mammals give voice to
the Life within them, and thus disclose their
natures.
The flesh-eating mammals, the lion, the tiger,
the wolf, give forth an aggressive, forceful, and
vital voice, in the major key, which corresponds
with actions of seizing, holding, and tearing
prey.
The herbivora utter plaintive and unaggres-
sive tones, mainly in the minor key, which cor-
respond with their peaceful intent, and which
carry an appeal to our sympathies.
The voice of man, with its varying sounds,
is a synthesis of the voices of all the animals.
His larynx is the last step of differentiation in
30
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
an animal breathing-tube. So the Vital nature
of man finds its primary agent for its expres-
sion in the Phonetic organ.
(i.) The babe is an epitome of the human race. His
unfolding symbolizes its advance.
The babe reflects the passive Vital nature, with latent
Emotive and Mental.
As baby lies in the cradle, it is only a step in advance of
a lump of protoplasm.
It is merely an organized possibility.
It lives. It is the race symbol of the Vital, and the help-
less Vital. It neither thinks, nor loves, nor hates. Its
Emotive and Mental natures are embryonic. It is sensitive,
because it is an animal organism.
So it can best illustrate the first law of Life, imposed
upon it at birth, which is Want.
The cry it uttered when it entered the world was the cry
of organic Want, which was satisfied when the air filled its
lungs.
Born a subject into the kingdom of Want, it will from
this time forth begin to group all its sensations into two
classes. Those of Pleasure, when Want is satisfied; and of
Pain, when Want is answered by denial. These sensations
centre its Vital nature. It puts them into cries, wails, and
reflex motions. The great poet of insight and rhythm voices
the cry of the helpless Vital of the new-born babe :
"What am I?
An infant crying in the night:
An infant crying for a light:
And with no language but a cry.
و,
TENNYSON.
The second special organ of manifestation is
the Muscular apparatus.
Through muscles all movements of the human
body are made.
TRIADS OF EXPRESSION.
31
Without muscle in motion, no expression is
possible.
In the last analysis, all expression is muscle
in motion.
The problem in gesture is how to present
form and to move muscle in accordance with
æsthetic law.
We shall find that the muscles, more especially
of the face, as civilization has advanced, have
differentiated in a marked manner from the Vital
type to serve the Emotive nature of man.
So
the muscular play that served the coarse animal
sensations of primitive man has, to-day, become
the facile agent of the Emotive nature.
(j.) We found that the babe gave expression to its organic
sensations of pleasure and pain by the cry, the wail, and
spontaneous motions.
This was the first stage of its Being. When there began
to stir within it a psychic movement of blended Sensation
and Emotion, by which it dimly and obscurely recognized.
its mother's caress, it smiled.
The child has now advanced to the second stage of its
Being. It adds now the smile and frown to the cry and wail.
It does not think yet. Its psychic state may be described as
nebulous and chaotic. Its open stare into the face of exist-
ence, the spontaneous play of its fingers and toes, show plainly
that it has not yet been able to separate itself from objects
surrounding it, nor its body from itself.
But baby feels; and it is a higher kind of feeling than
that which prompted the cry and the wail. From this time
forward, feelings arising in the mental framework will more
and more struggle to express themselves.
As the affectional nature is aroused by its mother's smile
and voice, it springs, and caresses with its little hands, crows
32
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
its content, and jubilates with the first rudiments of the in-
toned voice.
Now, too, it makes tentative efforts to combine the two
languages, that of the voice and that of the gesture.
With a serious impartiality it smiles at, and reaches for,
the moon, seen through the window; or babbles its content
at the red flames in the grate; or beats the cradle with
papa's watch or the tin soldier; and rejoices its whole being
with the incipient rhythm of immense musical promise, in
the dance of sound which it pulses out from the discordant
rattle.
The third special organ of manifestation is
the Articulatory Apparatus.
The action of the articulatory apparatus gives,
as its product, speech.
As by the differentiation of the breathing-
tube, common to all mammals, man attained to
a superior organ of voice, so the differentiation
of the mouth cavity and its contained organs
gave him the instrument of articulate lan-
guage.
This is the special organ of the Mental Being;
the last structural differentiation, both in the
individual and in the race.
Through the action of this agent, man can
put a sound in the place of a thing and so not
need to present the thing. By recording these
sounds, he can make all the past become pres-
ent and now. It is greatly significant that the
Greek language has but one word for language
and reason; for what is a man's word but his
reason coming forth to behold itself?
TRIADS OF EXPRESSION.
33
(k.) The child has now reached the third and last stage of
its development. To manifestations of the Vital and Emo-
tive natures he now adds those of the Mental.
He now
thinks, feels, and lives. What he cannot say by cries and
gestures, he begins to say by jointed sounds, as signs of
things. The flame that was to him an unnamed sensation
of sight is now "red."
The planet is "
(6
meaw
is now
وو
moon; the aggregate of form, fur, and
66 cat."
And before long, when he wants to say five or seven things
about the fire, moon, or cat, or about mother, book, or
school, he puts two or more of the things into words.
Soon he will prefigure in sentences what he thinks, with
much that he wills and feels.
Take away the faculty of language, and he will inevitably
revert to the Vital. He will go back to animal cries and
gestures.
Said Noire: "When there was no language there was
no reason.'
دو
And now occurs the question: By what means
does the body, with its separate divisions and its
specialized organs, manifest this threefold Being,
speak this threefold language?
The answer to this question discloses the
centre and core of the Synthetic Philosophy of
Expression.
What Inflections are in the system of Walker,
what Stress in the system of Rush, is Delsarte's
formula in the New Philosophy of Expression.
This formula is central, in all human expres-
sion, and bears the force of law.
Law: The three States of the Psychic
manifest through the body and its zones by
three Modes of Motion.
3
34
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
These three modes of motion are: I. Eccen-
tric, or Centrifugal. II. Concentric, or Centrip-
etal. And III. Poise; or Centred motion.
Eccentric motion is motion from a centre out-
wards; Concentric, towards a centre, inwards;
and Poise is centred, or balanced, motion.
That the human Psychic and its body come
under the sway and rule of the cosmic laws that
govern all the masses of matter of the universe;
and that it also centres in and controls its own
mass, and moves outwards from, or inwards to-
wards, or poises at, its own centre, is Delsarte's
great discovery.
(7.) We can credit a saying of Delsarte, reported by a
student of the great teacher:
"In this world there are two centres, towards which and
from which everything tends. These are:
—
"1. The centre of gravity, immediately of the earth;
remotely of the universe.
"2. The human centre found within ourselves, the centre
of the Being or Ego."
To which we add: 3. The spiritual centre, out from
which and into which flow all existences. Of which centre
the material universe is the body; itself is sustaining cause
and continuance.
Thus it is through motion, and only through
motion, that the Psychic makes itself known.
Through motion the unseen is seen. Broadly
speaking, our Vital states express themselves as
Eccentric motion; our Mental states as Con-
centric motion; our Emotive states as Eccen-
tric or Concentric, according to the nature of
TRIADS OF EXPRESSION.
35
the emotion.
And the Poise of the Being
(namely, the equilibrium or balance of Vital,
Emotive, and Mental) tends to express itself by
motion held at rest; that is to say, by a centred
or poised external.
Let us put our conclusions into a proposition
which carries the force of law.
In all organisms, simplest or most complex,
motion is manifestation; at the base Life, at
the summit Soul.
(m.) See how true this is! We all use the phrase,
"Where there is motion there is Life." This is our simple
test, and every one applies the logic of common sense, and
abides by the result.
Thus, for example, we are walking along the seashore;
we find on the beach a crab. Is it alive? one asks. Poke
it with your cane and see! Yes; it reacts. It is alive.
So we can construct the chain of Being from the monera
to man.
In
In all sentient organisms motion is manifestation.
the lowest animals, motion is evidence of the simplest con-
dition of Life. In the higher animals, motion is evidence of
a complex condition. In the highest animals, nearest man,
as the dog and horse, motion is evidence of a still further
complex condition of the Psychic. In man, motion is evi-
dence of the highest complexity attained by any animal upon
the earth.
Now we find that through the entire chain of sentient
life, until we reach man, the only mode of motion which
any animal can consciously use is the eccentric, which mani-
fests the Vital nature. Man alone a fact of vast sig-
nificance consciously commands the three modes, the
Eccentric, Concentric, and Poise.¹
The Emotive nature, variously described by
1 It will be noted that the terms descriptive of Motion, Eccentric,
36
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
""
the disciples of Delsarte as "Moral," "Affective,"
"Spiritual," "Mystic," and like terms, exists in
man in two conditions: 1. As Active Emotive.
2. As Receptive Emotive. This difference is
incorporated in the nervous system, and it is be-
cause of this difference that the Emotive nature
sometimes expresses itself through either of the
three forms of motion.
We may say, broadly, that active emotions,
which ally themselves with the Vital nature, de-
clare themselves by eccentric motions, while the
reflective emotions, which ally themselves with
the Mental nature, declare themselves by concen-
tric motions.
The structure and function of the nervous sys-
tem bear out our statement.
The nervous system reaches out with its white
threads towards its environment. It receives im-
pressions from the outer world. These impres-
sions travel inwards along the nerve lines. At
the great neural centre, the brain, they are re-
ceived, correlated, and coördinated. Now if the
impressions received lead to reflection, to turning
over and over in the mind what is received, the
Concentric, and Poise, are identical with Centrifugal, Centripetal, and
Centred or Motion held in balance.
As these last terms have already been adopted as scientific usage, it
is an open question whether it would not be better to use them in
the nomenclature of Expression. Another consideration favors the
use of well-known and recognized terms, namely, the absolute neces-
sity we are under, in these days of research, when all theories are sifted
as never before, to present a logical and consistent body of truth, if
we would claim a place among the recognized sciences for this latest
child of the Soul - the Science of Human Expression.
TRIADS OF EXPRESSION.
37
gestures accompanying these psychic states would
be mainly concentric.
Thus, emotions of Grief, if dwelt upon, en-
dured, suffered, would lead to gestures with con-
centric motion. But suppose Grief to be accom-
panied with the idea of wrong or injustice; the
gestures, expressive of the active state, would
take on Vital forms and become eccentric.
But suppose the events causing the emotion
are thought upon, passed through the various
mental processes, and, moreover, that this think-
ing is submitted to conscience and to the higher
reason; the gestures indicating this complexity
of thought and emotion would take on bal-
anced or poised forms, -the most expressive
forms that the body or its agents can present.
What a wonderful complexity of psychic states
is revealed by these lines from Shakespeare's
King John, giving us mainly Mental and Emo-
tive composites of Grief : —
"Grief fills the room up of my absent child,
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
Remembers me of all his gracious parts,
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form.”
Here the reflective states suggest concentric
gestures.
Let us formulate the Law of Motion as reveal-
ing inner states of the Being.
Law: I. The Vital nature tends to express
itself through eccentric motion.
II. The Mental nature stills or renders qui-
38
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
escent the body, and tends to express itself
through concentric motion.
III. The Emotive nature reflects both the
Vital and Mental natures; hence, uses both
their forms of motion.
Emotive states manifest
poise.
Thus, our highest
themselves through
When the Being is at its best, and the three
natures act in accord to further some great idea,
practical, ethical, or spiritual, it always tends to
express itself through poise or balance of mo-
tion.
(n.) Feeling and Thought are the opposite poles of our
psychic states. In such broad contrast are they that they
mutually exclude each other in extreme manifestations.
As every one knows who has experienced these states at
their strongest, intense feeling excludes thinking; intense
thinking excludes feeling.
Hence, the normal condition for clear thinking is the qui-
escence of feeling; and it is well known that interest in an-
other's welfare, partisanship, affection, are each and all the
enemies of a judicial frame of mind.
Let us epitomize the Law of Motion of the three natures.
The Vital moves the body, the Mental arrests and stills it,
the Emotive poises it.
Take an illustration: It is related of Socrates that he was
observed by his friends in the early morning facing the east
and looking intently into the blue ether. He was let alone.
At noon he was still there. Not a muscle was in motion.
Men said, "Will he never come in?" At night he was
there, motionless as a statue of Phidias. Then his friends
took their stations and watched. Through the long night.
he stood, still peering into the east, and startling the stars.
As the sun arose he dropped his eyes. His body took on its
!
TRIADS OF EXPRESSION.
39
life again. Drawing up the figure into enlarged form, and
looking around, "The problem is solved!" he said, and
strode away.
We present Delaumosne's Criterion of the
Three Modes of Motion.
CRITERION OF THE THREE MODES OF MOTION.
DELAUMOSNE.¹
Derivatives, Species, or Blends.
Mode of Mo-
tion, as Primary
or Genus.
II.
1.
3.
2.
3-II.
1-II.
Eccentro-Concen- Poise-Concentric.
2-II.
Concentro-Concen-
tric.
Concentric.
tric.
III.
1-III.
3-III.
2-III.
Poise.
Eccentro-Poise.
Poise-Poise.
Concentro-Poise.
I.
1-1.
3-I.
Eccentric.
Eccentro-Eccentric. Poise-Eccentric.
2-I.
Concentro-Eccen-
tric.
The vertical columns are for species, deriva-
tives, or blends.
The horizontal planes are for the genus or pri-
mary.
The name that marks the species comes first;
it is the adjective. The name that marks the
genus comes last; it is the noun.
In the middle horizontal plane we place the
Emotive genus; in the middle vertical column,
the Emotive species.
1 This synthetic table agrees with Delaumosne, except that the au-
thor has used the term "Poise" instead of "Normal."
40
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
(0.) Delaumosne's table presents double blends of motion.
The student will note that in the left vertical column are
found the three primary modes of motion, the Eccentric,
Poise, and Concentric, marked with the Roman numerals
I., III., II.
At the right of this column are the Nine Squares, each
square presenting a "blend" or "composite," consisting of
two elements, a primary as the noun, and a secondary or
assisting mode of motion as the adjective.
These assisting modes of motion are marked with the
Arabic figures, —1. Eccentric. 3. Poise. 2. Concentric.
We diagram three triads of composite modes of motion,
each of the three modes in turn being Primary.
(1)
THE PSYCHIC
AS
UNITY.
Concentro-2.
Poise-3.
Its manifesta-
tions as Motion.
·Eccentric — I.
Eccentro-1.
THE
as
(2)
Concentro-2.
Motion.
PSYCHIC.
THE
(3)
PSYCHIC.
-Poise-III.
Poise-3.
as
Eccentro-1.
Motion.
Concentric — II.
We have thus far attempted to establish the
truth of the following propositions:-
I. The source of all manifestation, both in
the Universe and in its epitome, Man, is Es-
sence, Spirit, or Soul.
There is and can be no manifestation that has
not for its cause Essence, Spirit, or Psychic.
II. That through or by which the Psychic,
whether Infinite or finite, manifests itself is
body, apparition, or phenomenon.
TRIADS OF EXPRESSION.
41
III. The mode of manifestation of the
Psychic, whether in the Universe or in man,
is through Motion.
There are three modes of Motion by which
all manifestation is made apparent. These
three modes are Eccentric, Concentric, and
Poise. And the mode of Motion (Outer) dis-
closes the state of Being (Inner).
(7.) Whatever may be the real, substantial truth or verity,
as apprehended by any higher intelligence than man, of the
problem presented by the Universe, the simple fact remains
that it is impossible to conceive a Kosmos where blind, un-
conscious matter evolves out of itself, by its own potency,
the phenomena of mind.
Human logic as irresistibly leaps to the conclusion that
God is centre and soul of the Universe, as that man is centre
and soul of his own organism.
And this is the conclusion of the greatest English philo-
sophic thinker. Mr. Herbert Spencer says: "The laws of
Nature are the modes of action of the Unknowable." And
Goethe put the same thought into poetic phrase when he
said: "Nature is the garment thou seest Him by!"
How this comes about is quite another matter.
man has seen God is not so very strange; for no man has
seen man.
That no
Show me a soul outside the body, and we may hope to
see with mortal eyes the Soul outside the Kosmos!
No matter, let me again urge, no matter what the real
nature of the phenomena of the Universe, as known to
higher intelligences—our limitations inexorably shut us in
to the conclusion that a spiritual essence is behind all phe-
nomena, both of the Universe and of man.
The Philosophy of Expression, then, is the
Philosophy of Manifestation.
42
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
In its broadest sense it is the Philosophy of
the Infinite, as revealed in the Universe.
In its restricted sense it is the Philosophy of
Man, as revealed through the Organism.
CHAPTER III.
THE THREEFOLD DIVISION OF THE BODY IN
THE LAWS OF GESTURE.
EXPRESSION.
DELSARTE'S DIVISION INTO NINE.
TRUE BASIS.
THEIR
DELSARTE is reported to have made a three-
fold division of the body to correspond with the
threefold division of the Psychic. He divided
the exterior into: (1.) the Head; (2.) the
Torso; (3.) the Limbs. These segments he
called "Agents of the Soul." And not only is
the body, as a whole, expressive of the Psychic;
but to each division of the body is delegated
the office of special manifestation.
Thus we
may indicate broadly the office in expression of
the segments.
I. The Vital nature predominates in the
Limbs, and is manifested through their activi-
ties.
"No grass grows under his feet," we say of
the active, Vital man.
The Romans put wings on the feet of Mer-
cury, the swift messenger of the gods.
III. The Emotive nature is manifested
through gesture and form of the Torso.
44
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
This segment of the body contains the heart
and lungs, the central organs of the blood and
breath. Our most acute pains come from any
disturbance of their action.
So in our subjective states, in great accesses of
passion, the torso writhes and rocks.
II. The Mental nature manifests itself
through gesture and form of the Head.
(a.) It is not without reason, as we shall hope abundantly
to show, that we commonly speak of the heart as the seat of
the Emotions, and the head as the seat of the Intellect.
When it shall be found that all races of men make sub-
stantially the same gestures to express ruling psychic states,
these gestures must have a deeper reason than imitation or
convention.
Again, the limbs are levers and sustain mo-
tion. The head guides; the torso impels. The
legs show Vital health and strength, or the re-
verse; the arms, Mental health and strength.
Into the fingers we put Mental sensitiveness and
finesse. We bite our nails in reverie or vexation,
and we use the tips of our fingers when we would
illustrate fine Mental distinctions, or urge nice
critical points.
Thus the whole body and each of its divisions
become revelations to him who can read their
language.
(b.) Not only did Delsarte make this threefold division
of the exterior to express the three states of the Being,
but each of these divisions was subdivided. Thus the head,
torso, and limbs each have zones or tracts where the Psychic
seems, by preference, to manifest itself as Vital, Mental, or
Emotive.
THREEFOLD DIVISION OF THE BODY. 45
We shall attempt to show that the existence of such zones
or tracts of the expressive regions of the head, face, torso,
and hand is proven by the significance of the gestures of
these several agents.
And we think it will be seen that a material body is an ab-
solute necessity under the conditions imposed by its environ-
ment upon the Soul. Were the roadways between souls open
avenues, there would be no protection for the personality.
Through the body, the individual soul holds itself apart from
other souls, and so maintains its independence and integrity.
Through the body, it both declares its sympathy and masks
its antipathies.
In a body, every human soul dates its appearance upon
the earth. It will limit its stay upon the earth to the con-
tinuance of its body. It seeks new conditions when the body
no longer serves its ends. It as naturally falls off the mor-
tal bough as the fully ripened fruit falls to the ground.
Again, we must strenuously dissent from an opinion held
in some minds, that the soul is degraded by its union with
the body. On the contrary, there is increasing evidence that
it delights in its temporary abode. It delights to appear,
express, and dramatize itself, through its body. It feels no
sense of degradation in this alliance, for it shows its pride in
its recognition of an ancestry of lower material forms, by
many a remnant of serviceable organs which it still retains,
and by many a gesture which it delights to use, and which
has come down the same material path with the cerebral
folds and the added chambers of the heart.
Take a single illustration, in three stages, of
how the body translates the Vital nature.
1st stage. The lowest form of the Vital put to
toil: the plantation slave, or the Mexican peon,
where almost no intelligence is used. He digs,
lifts, hews, draws as an animal. Of such an one
Delaumosne expressively says: "His body is all of
46
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
one piece." There is little mobility or play of
the joints; head and torso stiff; arm and hand
an instrument for shoveling, digging, heaving,
and drawing. Hand attached to arm, arm to
torso, face wooden; movement of the lower limbs.
strong but automatic. It is a human machine,
moved by the Vital Being.
2d stage. A higher form of the Vital. The
slave or serf emancipated. A growing sense of
personal ownership and responsibility. There
now comes an increased freedom of movement, a
crude blending of directive and Vital power.
The torso moves, by play of the shoulders,
without much movement of the head. There is
increased freedom of the arm and hand. The
face is less wooden, the movement less animal-
like.
3d stage. The well-defined Vital, with high
directive powers, put to selfish and aggressive
ends. The higher Emotive does not rule the
conduct. It is the type of the military spirit. It
is he who believes in physical force. Such an
one says: "God is on the side of the strongest
battalions." He believes in the right to conquer,
hold, and rule,
"The good old plan
That he should take who has the power,
And he should keep who can.
""
In a lower form, under the influence of civiliza-
tion, it is the bully, or with training, the prize-
fighter.
THREEFOLD DIVISION OF THE BODY. 47
|
Now head, torso, and shoulders play freely,
for there is high directive power.
And now note, the elbows are emancipated,
and the lower Emotive nature let loose. The
hand becomes the knotted end of a bludgeon.
The Vital in the face makes the firm-set and pro-
truding under jaw.
It is a human correspondence of the bulldog.
Now the passion grasps the larynx, and the voice
takes on the throaty qualities of the carnivora.
These are three illustrations from the lowest
human zone, the Vital.
We might sketch characters all along the
ascent through the Mental and into the realm
where the higher Emotive nature impels man
towards ethical and spiritual ends and purposes,
giving us expressions where the three natures
blend in poise or equilibrium.
Now there is balance and accord of all the out-
ward agents. Head, torso, and limbs move from
liberated centres of motion. The wrist is free.
It communicates its freedom to the hand and
fingers, and at the same moment both faces, the
countenance and the palm, are expressive.
It is three natures moving to the front as
one. The Will lends itself to the central Being.
Conscience allies itself with the ruling motive.
It is man at his best!
The Vital is there to sustain, as Life. The
Mental is there to guide and direct, as Mind.
The Emotive, moving along its highest plane of
48
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
י
the ethical and spiritual, is there to impel, as
Soul.
And these three psychic forces attain to
their highest form of external expression
through that mode of motion which we have
characterized 66
Poise," or equilibrium of
forces.
Let the student ponder deeply these proposi
tions. They will be illustrated, again and
again, as we proceed.
1. The motions of the human body are cor-
respondences of the great law of modern phys-
ics, formulated by Herbert Spencer, as "The
concentration of matter, and the dispersion of
motion."
2. "Poise" of the body is the external form
of the conservation of Energy. Eccentricity
is the external form of its dissipation.
3. So Poise of the body is the external
symbol of the highest moods of the human
Soul: the highest activity without disper-
sion.
If it shall be found that the manifestations
of the Soul through the body come under the
rule of Law, and that the mode of operation of
the law can be ascertained and formulated, it
would seem that the statement of the laws, ar-
rived at through modern scientific and psycho-
logic method, would form a sure foundation for
a Philosophy of Expression.
(c.) It is this attempt to deduce the underlying law from
[
-
THE NINE LAWS OF GESTURE.
49
the complex phenomena presented of a given psychic state,
by hundreds of examples, that gives value to the observa-
tions of Delsarte. He seemed to realize the truth that any
system of laws governing human expression, to have valid-
ity, must be founded upon what is now recognized as the
scientific method," whose weapons of discovery are observa-
tion, experiment, and test. The observation must be exact,
the experiment sufficient, and the tests satisfactory.
66
Whether Delsarte did more than to sketch the outlines
of a Philosophy of Expression, we have no evidence from
authoritative sources. The material presented thus far,
since his death, is empirical rather than philosophic in
form.
Delsarte is reported to have formulated Nine
Laws of Gesture.¹
These Laws are: Motion; Velocity; Direc-
tion and Extension; Reaction; Form; Per-
sonality; Opposition of Agents; Priority or
Sequence; Rhythm.
(d.) The statement of these laws as nine; their limita-
tion to that number; the fact that Delaumosne represents
Delsarte as giving but six, namely: Priority, Retroaction,
Opposition of Agents, Unity, Stability, and Rhythm; and
that Arnaud makes no mention of them; the differences in
the statement of their number and order, both in Europe
and America; and, more than all, Darwin's statement of
but three principles 2 "to cover most of the expressions of
man and animals," led me to doubt whether these laws
were authoritatively stated, and whether Delsarte restricted
the number to nine, and if so why the restriction? And
1 In making this statement we do not claim to represent Delsarte.
We hope not to misrepresent his teachings.
2 These three principles are discussed in a masterly manner in
The Expressions of Man and Animals. They are: (1.) Serviceable
Associated Habit. (2.) Antithesis. (3.) Direct Action of the Nerv-
ous System.
4
50
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
lastly the author was led into grave doubts whether Del-
sarte clearly apprehended the principle upon which all such
categories, if presented as laws governing Expression, must
rest.
The principle by which Delsarte's Nine Laws,
and many other such statements of categories as
laws, can alone be justified is none other than
the great Law of Correspondence, recognized as
the basis of their systems by Plato, Lamarck,
and Oken as Philosophy, Swedenborg as Reli-
gion, Emerson as Ethics, and Goethe and Words-
worth as Poetry.
Oken states this Law so broadly that it may
apply to the two subsistences that make the
Universe. We give the formula of this great
philosophic thinker.
Law: All the phenomena of matter, appar-
ent, real, material, are correspondences of the
Non-apparent, Ideal, Spiritual.
Swedenborg gives a more restricted formula,
that applies to the two subsistences that by their
union make Man.
Law: The human body, with all its parts
and functions, is elaborated from the Soul, its
faculties and powers; and therefore corre-
sponds to it in every particular of structure,
form, and use.
We present a third formula, which lies at the
centre of the Synthetic Philosophy of Expres-
sion, and which, with the two already stated,
we urge the student deeply to ponder. It is
THE NINE LAWS OF GESTURE.
51
the formula of a teacher of the Art of Expres-
sion.
Law: Man expresses his psychic states in
terms of his environment. These terms are re-
lated to, and correspond with, Space, Time,
and Motion.
These formulæ cut the Gordian knot, and
solve the Sphinx-riddle of Delsarte.
His nine laws are laws of Expression only
through their dependence upon the great cen-
tral Law of Correspondence.
They are corollaries of our main proposition.
A little thought will make this plain. Every
psychic mood finds its correspondence in some
appearance of Nature and is interpreted by it.
And we can only describe our psychic mood by
that natural appearance as its picture.
What profound significance in the saying of
Emerson: "The use of Natural History is to
give us aid in Supernatural History!" and in
Hugo's: "Animals are but our vices!" Such
analogies are constant and fixed in the nature
of things.
Read what Science has to say. Said John
Fiske our American Herbert Spencer :
"The earth is suited to its inhabitants because
it produced them, and only such as suit it live.
"It is not that the environment is suited to the
organism, but that the organism is suited to the
environment. Throughout all time, therefore,
since intelligence appeared upon the earth, the
52
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION:
world of conceptions has been maintained in
more or less complete correspondence with the
world of phenomena. And thus the contem-
plating mind and the world contemplated have
become tuned in mysterious unison.'
""
(e.) Do we need illustrations of these correspondences of
Outer and Inner? Our discussion of these nine laws will
be crowded with them.
Take a single illustration, of gesture in correspondence
with Space as expressive of psychic states.
The psychic states which we would illustrate are Haugh-
tiness, Conceit, and Command. The agent is the whole
body. The eye leads in effecting these correspondences.
All three of these passions draw the body upward in
space. (They seem to say: "See how high I am above
you!") but the direction of the eye must determine further
relations with space; and the eye will make different cor-
respondences for each of the three passions. Thus IIaugh-
tiness draws upward the body, throws backward the head,
and at the same time glances downward with the eyes ("The
highest is 'self,' the object below, 'you '").
In Conceit, the eyes stray over the person ("How fine
I am"). They glance about ("I wonder if they see
me?").
In Command, head and torso are drawn upward, and the
glance is open and direct ("I ask you to note that 'I'am
higher in space than 'you' are ").
So in our highest psychic moods the head and torso are
drawn upwards; head and face lifted upwards; glance di-
rected upwards in space.
Thus as the basis of Delsarte's Nine Laws of
Gesture we find the Law of Correspondence.
We will now consider these laws more in detail.
THE LAW OF MOTION.
53
I.
THE LAW OF MOTION.
Definition. Motion is Force expending itself.
Our definition is also a definition of Gesture.
Gesture is the outer (muscular) movement by
which the inner (psychic) force expends itself.
(f.) The student will make careful note that our defini-
tion of a gesture indicates that a conscious centre moves its
mass of matter.
This is the distinguishing characteristic of an organism.
Matter is inert. It is capable of receiving and containing
any amount of mechanical force communicated to it from
the outer, but it cannot originate the smallest increment of
new force.
But wherever we find matter as mass, moved from a
centre, we find the phenomena of Life.
As a problem of pure physics, gesture is an escape of
Energy¹ in form of Motion.
The nerve
Let us attempt to justify our statement.
centres the great centre, the brain, and the smaller cen-
tres, the ganglia are the reservoirs of Psychic Energy.
Now let us suppose a given quantity of this energy has ac-
cumulated at these centres.
By psychic act this energy is transformed into Emotion.
Some part of this energy now discharges itself upon the
muscles, where it appears as Motion, in the form of cries,
gestures, and articulations.
A diagram will make this plain. The Emotion that is to
appear in form of Motion is, we will suppose, Hate.
1 Energy is the term used in modern physics for all the efforts of
Nature, Heat, Light, Electricity, Magnetism, Chemism, forming,
to use Tyndall's apt expression, "So many modes of motion."
But the Psychic Force residing at the centre of an organism is none
of these forms of energy. Its rule over its mass of matter is abso-
lute. It is a unique centre, and commands its periphery. Through
motion of its mass it manifests.
54
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
Let c represent the centre of psychic force, the brain.
Let s s represent sensations of sight and sound, aroused by
the presence of the object of hate o. The sensations of
sight and sound are received at the centre, C, over the nerve
line, s c.
Arrived at the brain the sensations of sight and sound
are transformed into Emotive Energy. Now a part of this
energy escapes along the line c o, toward the object of hate,
and a part goes out along the line c G, where it appears as
gesture.

SS
G
This diagram justifies Mantegazza's definition of gesture
as "One of those centrifugal energies that surge forth from
the great transformers of Force, the Nerve Centres.”
According to Mantegazza, gesture is useful
both in the economy of Life and in the economy
of Art.¹
1
Thus in the economy of Life:-
I. It may defend the nerve centres and other
parts of the body against numberless perils and
enemies.
In the economy of Art:-
II. It may take the place of spoken language,
or it may add to its completeness.
(9.) The student will readily call to mind the great
number of gestures of defence made by animals.
¹ See La Physionomie et l'Expression des Sentiments. Paris, 1885.
Félix Alcan, publisher.
THE LAW OF MOTION.
55
The instinct of self-preservation, we may be allowed to
say, has taught even insects to throw out their limbs in
threatening attitudes. Among birds gestures of attack and
of threatening are frequently made by enlarging their ap-
pearance by spreading their wings, and by screams. The
defensive gestures of the carnivora are full of force and
terror.
We shall find abundant reasons to agree with Mantegazza,
that “Gesture is scarcely inferior to Voice, or Speech, in the
Arts which employ these three agents of Expression."
We apply to gesture the three forms of Mo-
tion as correspondences of the three states of the
Being.
We present the formula of Motion as related
to centres:
I. Motion from a centre outwards is eccentric
(or centrifugal) Motion. It corresponds with
our Vital states.
II. Motion towards a centre inwards is con-
centric (or centripetal) Motion. It corresponds
with our Mental states.
III. Motion centred, namely, held in bal-
ance, is "at Poise." It corresponds with our
highest Emotive states.
(h.) We believe Delsarte to have been the first to apply
the three modes of Motion to the three states of the Be-
ing. This is his great discovery, and is at the centre of the
Delsarte System.
Yet we fancy that a philosophic mind reading Sir Isaac
Newton's "Three Mechanical Axioms will be strongly im-
pressed with the idea that the great French teacher found
the data for his laws of Motion, as applied to Expression, in
the masterly formulæ of the great English thinker.
We present the three familiar axioms laid down by
56
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
Newton, and ask the student to note how often they appear
— and that of necessity as bases of Delsarte's laws gov-
erning Human Expression, as related to the restrictions of
Space and Time:
(1.) Every body continues in its state of rest, or of uni-
form motion in a straight line, except in so far as it may
be compelled by impressed forces to change that state.
(2.) All motion or change of motion must be proportional
to the force impressed in quantity, and must be in the direc
tion of that straight line in which the force is impressed.
(3.) To every action there is always an equal and con-
trary reaction.
We may formulate our conclusions thus far
arrived at-
I. Man is one in consciousness, three in
manifestation.
II. All manifestation is through Motion.
Matter in Form is arrested Motion.
III. The three states of the Being, the
Vital, Emotive, and Mental, manifest them-
selves through three modes of Motion: Eccen-
tric, Concentric, and Poise.
II.
THE LAW OF VELOCITY.
Velocity may be defined as the relation of
Motion to Space and Time.
The units of measurement of velocity adopted
by scientists are a second of time and a foot of
space.
Delsarte's Law: Velocity is in proportion
to the mass moved and the Force moving.
THE LAW OF VELOCITY.
57
(e.) This law is founded upon the principle of the pendu-
lum. The oscillation or swing of a pendulum is the result
of the action of two forces, momentum and gravity.
Hence it is a necessity of physical conditions that a pendu-
lum with a long radius sweeps through more space, and
hence gives slower movement than a pendulum with a shorter
radius.
Now the human body is moved in exact ac-
cordance with the law of the pendulum.
A centrifugal flow of Vital force is the mo-
mentum or energy imparted. Gravity is the
second force.
So we have the body moving along by the
pendulum swing of the legs, and maintaining its
equilibrium by the added and opposite swing of
the arms.
We find the following pendulums as acting
agents in Expression: The Head, the Torso,
the Legs, the Arms, the Hands, the Fingers.
(f.) Let the student note three things which he will ap-
ply in his technical training of the agents of Expression.
1. The point of suspension or centre of motion of the
agent.
2. The momentum or force given the agent.
3. The arc described by the agent under these condi-
tions.
In the play of these human pendulums, those
with short radii move faster and describe smaller
arcs than those with longer radii.
Thus the movement of torso and head as mass,
from the centre of motion at the hips, presents
the longest radius and describes the largest arc.
58
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
Hence, of course, it presents the slowest move-
ment. The head is an agent with a shorter ra-
dius, and the hand shorter than either.
Let us now restate the Law of Velocity, and
see if we can find its reason to be in its applica-
tion to gesture.
The Velocity of any agent is in proportion
to the mass moved and the Force moving.
The mass to be moved may be any agent,
torso, hand, eyelid, voice.
The force that moves the mass is that constant
energy, the psychic element.
So we may say that the amount of Motion
shown by an agent of Expression, in Space and
Time, will be the measure of the amount of
Emotion.
The following propositions will show the rule
of the law of correspondence between the body
and the Psychic.
Prop. I. In proportion to the depth and
majesty of the Emotion will be the deliberate-
ness and slowness of the motion.
(9.) By a law of our Being, a law from which there is
we are compelled to state our feelings in terms
no escape,
of matter.
This is so, because matter and its forces are types or
correspondences of mind and its forces.
So we borrow the restrictions of space and time to say, as
our best way of saying of feelings that stir the soul to its
depths, that they are grand, lofty, deep, weighty, grave,
massive.
And we borrow from that immense reservoir of corre-
spondences, "the nature of things," the fact that bodies with
1
I
}
59
THE LAW OF VELOCITY.
large mass moye slowly, and so state our feelings in the most
exact correspondences of matter which we are able to find.
We do not need to be told how Webster, in this pas-
sage from his greatest oration, made correspondences of
body and Soul. Let the student note the rhythmical tread
of these sentences:
|
I
"When my eyes | shall be turned | to behold | for the
last time the sun in heaven, | may I not see him | shin-
ing | on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once
glorious Union; | on States dissevered, | discordant, | bellig-
erent; | on a land | rent with civil feuds, | or drenched, | it
may be, with fraternal blood."
It is as though the Mount Washington that Daniel Web-
ster as a farmer's boy looked upon had moved from its base,
and was treading across the continent.
Our next proposition will carry its own com-
ment.
Prop. II. In proportion to the superficiality
and explosiveness of the Emotion will be the
velocity of the motion.
Thus, sharp, superficial emotions translate
themselves by quick, sudden motions.
Our vexations, which are to the mind what pin-
thrusts are to the flesh, declare themselves by
such gestures as snapping and tapping with the
fingers, and by other quick, nervous, and incon-
sequent motions.
Prop. III. The longer an agent of Expression
is held at rest, the greater will be its motion
when released.
(h.) It is well known that the suppression of external signs
of feeling makes the feeling more intense. And this is true
of nations as well as individuals. The longer a people is
held in chains the more terrible the outburst.
60
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
What better example than the French Revolution? What
warning more significant than the present attitude of Russia
toward Poland and her own middle classes?
What more ominous than the deep murmurs of discontent
of Ireland?
A single illustration. A widowed mother has lost her
only son. The physician is told that she has shed no tears
since death entered the door.
She sits silent, with impassive face and eyes fixed, in mo-
tionless despair.
The physician shakes his head. He fears insanity.
Twenty-four hours have elapsed. He calls again. He is
told that she is weeping. A smile comes into his face. He
turns away, saying, "I am not needed now.”
Prop. IV. When the Being contemplates, or
is filled with, the majesty and power of a great
cause, as a love of liberty, or of loyalty to
conscience and duty, or of obedience to God,
all the agents of Expression stand in Poise or
equilibrium.
(i.) Let us quote a single short line from history: “While
their flesh crackled, and hissed, and shriveled in the red
flames, their faces glowed with a strange calm, as if their
eyes beheld with open vision the Christ!"
III.
THE LAW OF DIRECTION AND EXTENSION.
These words present to the mind two ideas of
Space. Where a man stands is to him the cen-
tre of the Universe.
It is a primary idea, that Space is illimitable.
We think limits only to find that outside our
last boundaries there is more Space.
THE LAW OF DIRECTION.
61
A line projected from where we stand would
never reach the periphery of the infinite circle
of Space.
It holds all things so far as we know or can
imagine, with room for more.
Our idea of Extension doubtless comes from
our seeing matter filling some portion of Space.
Were there no masses of matter, there would be,
to our consciousness, no Space.
Hence matter is the reality of Space. And
our idea of Direction is the place of an object
relative to ourself. Thus to a man standing on
the shore, the ocean has Extension, and a ship
in view has Direction.
We formulate two laws of Gesture founded
upon our ideas of Direction and Extension.
THE LAW OF DIRECTION.
The lengths are Vital.
The depths and heights are Mental.
The breadths are Emotive.
(j.) Need we refer here to our formula of the Law of
Correspondence? We restate it: Man expresses his psy-
chic states in terms of his environment.
All our lives, from childhood till now, have the relations
and conditions of space impressed us.
What wonder that our expressions continually reproduce
our impressions!
So our Vital nature goes out in lengths, both in idea and
in fact, and through structure.
We strike a vital blow from the shoulder. True as fact,
true as metaphor, picture of the fact.
We push through obstacles in a straight line. Some men
62
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
we say are direct and straightforward. "He never swerved
a hair's breadth from the line of his duty." And for mani-
festations of our Mental states, heights and depths correspond
equally well. We fathom the depths of Philosophy. We
go deep into Science. We climb heights of Knowledge.
The earliest picture the author remembers was on the title-
page of his first spelling-book. It was of a youth of most
determined bearing climbing a particularly steep hill, and
upon the summit of the hill stood the Temple of Knowl-
edge, shaped for all the world like the ornamental pepper-
box that graced his good mother's table!
Politics is a ladder by which to climb into power. Men
swim with the current of affairs, and drift along in the
stream of events.
We
"dive into the bottom of the deep
Where fathom line could never touch the ground,
And pluck up drowned Honor by the locks."
And the breadths are no less happy in expressions of our
ethical or moral states.
We spread abroad good tidings. We are wide in our
benefactions. The death of a great and good man spreads
gloom over half the world.
Law of Extension: Delsarte is reported to
have formulated this idea thus: -
Extension in Gesture is in proportion to our
self-surrender. It will be noted that this for-
mula corresponds a subjective state-that of self-
surrender with the objective idea of the going
out of the body, or some of its agents, into
Space.
Note the strength of this Scripture through
correspondence:
"But when he was yet a great way off, his
father saw him, and had compassion, and ran,
and fell on his neck, and kissed him."
THE LAW OF REACTION.
63
Thus we find that Extension, or going out of
matter into Space, is the physical correspondence
of the going out of ourselves, in surrender to
our highest concepts, to friends, to country, to
the right, to God.
The student will take note that these are ex-
pressions from the higher Emotive nature, and
become true through correspondence with Space.
And we may say, broadly, that the phenom-
ena of the dispersion of matter correspond
with our altruistic states; and the phenomena
of the concentration of matter correspond with
our selfish and egotistic states.
IV.
THE LAW OF REACTION.
We define Reaction as the return of Force.
"Action and reaction are equal," is Newton's
third law of Motion.
In organisms this law might be called the
law of Life. Where there is no return of mo-
tion there is no life. Sentient organisms from
highest to simplest die when they cannot an-
swer solicitations from without.
The Law of Reaction, as applied to our psy-
chic states, has been formulated thus, by Her-
bert Spencer:
"Emotion always tends to produce motion,
and when it becomes extreme always does pro-
duce it."
We may add as corollaries :-
1. Every extreme of Emotion tends to react
64
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
to its opposite. Concentric states tend to ex-
plosion, and explosion tends to prostration.
2. The only passion that does not tend to
its own destruction is that which is poised, or
is in equilibrium.
3. The Soul in its highest moods translates
itself by poising its agents.
Poise the Soul and the whole muscular sys-
tem is in action to poise the body.
Here we state the Law of Climax:-
Law: There should be but one strong climax
in a perfect work of Art.
The artist should
work steadily toward that climax.
(k.) This is a most important law for the reader, actor,
musician, or orator. Anti-climax is fatal in Art.
All should be arranged in reference to the point of high-
est interest, as in painting all is arranged in reference to
the point of highest light. Dramatic Art, in America,
shows an utter defiance of this principle. Our audiences
are so used to the crude exhibitions of the theatre, and
the actors at the theatre so used to their immature au-
diences, that all is overdone, loud, pronounced, startling,
objective, all is climax.
Emotion always tends to move towards a
climax, which it holds for a brief time, and
then subsides.
(7.) This correspondence of our psychic states with the
wave motion of fluids, as made visible in the waves of the
ocean, is a profound one. All the great movements of
Nature illustrate it: the tides with their ebb and flow,
storms rushing on to their highest point of violence and
calm succeeding, fierce heats and cold.
Mountains valleys. The day night. War, with its
THE LAW OF REACTION.
65
H
terrible climax of passion
peace. Life death. And
finally, the latest deductions of modern science lead to the
conclusion that all the great forces of Nature, heat, elec-
tricity, light, magnetism, are but series of climaxes, or wave
motions.
1
Delsarte is credited by Mr. Mackaye ¹ with a character-
istic illustration of the Law of Climax. It is called
The Battle of Reason and Passion.
The thermometers of passion in the face,-the corrugators
(muscles of the Will), the nostrils, and the close-shut canine
teeth (on the left side of the mouth), indicate passion.
The hand contracts, as in less degree does the whole body.
These manifestations, showing the inner struggle, go on
with increasing intensity until the force of Passion exceeds
the force of Reason.
Then comes the explosion of Passion in the sudden
vehement expansion of gesture.
1 A student of Delsarte, who first introduced the ideas of his dis-
tinguished teacher into America.
5
CHAPTER IV.
THE NINE LAWS OF GESTURE (CONCLUDED).
V.
THE LAW OF FORM.
OUR ideas of Form come primarily from mat-
ter. And we may define Form as the figure or
shape of extended Matter.
At first the child separates actual objects by
touch, and later on notes the fact that such and
such objects fill such and such spaces.
After light, form is Nature's first stimulus of
sight. So Astronomy and Geometry are the old-
est of our sciences.
The motion of a point in Space generates a
line. The motion of a line, a surface. Of a
surface, a solid. So a solid is the absolutely
extensive.
Again: take a point of matter, let it expand in
Space on equal radial lines, in all directions, and
we have the globe.
Do you remember, kind reader, the story of
the fisherman, in the world's wonderbook for
children, the Arabian Nights' Entertainments?
How, hauling his nets, he drew from the sea
a casket, rusty, and covered with weeds?
!
THE LAW OF FORM.
67
Led by curiosity, he pries it open. A light
vaporous cloud issues. It expands, takes on first
irregular shape, and as he looks changes into a
terrible genius with uplifted scimitar!
The Spirit of Form with the Greek was Pro-
teus. Now this, now that, before your eyes!
Delsarte is credited with these statements of
the Laws of Form :
I. Forms bounded by straight lines are Vital,
embryonic, plebeian in expression.
II. Forms bounded by curved lines are Men-
tal and Reflective in expression.
III. Spiral forms are Moral, Spiritual,
Mystic, in expression.
A flame is spiral. It is the symbol and corre-
spondence of the mystic in nearly all the ancient
religions of the world.
(a.) Let us examine these three statements of Delsarte.
We think the first can be justified, that "Forms bounded
by straight lines are Vital, embryonic, plebeian.”
In the inorganic world Nature everywhere constructs
with straight lines. She builds her inorganic masses out
of crystals, in straight lines and at fixed angles.
So in the primitive age of the world all was crystallization.
And a mass of crystals bounded by straight lines gives
little suggestion of advance into the realm of organic life,
but suggests through correspondence ideas of inflexibility,
strength, and insensibility, and may be said to be void of
higher mental or emotive expression.
Let us examine the second statement: "Forms bounded
by curved lines are Mental in expression." We think Del-
sarte could not have made this assertion. The Law of
Correspondence would certainly deny it. And besides, he
everywhere allies grace and harmony of gesture with curves.
68
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
We think we may say that forms composed of arranged
lines are Mental. That is, they show that man's, not Na-
ture's, mind arranged them. Arranged lines are unknown
in Nature's disposition of scenic effects.
So, if we were in what we supposed to be an uninhab-
ited country, and should suddenly come to a straight row of
trees, or of plants growing in straight lines, we would know
that the mind of man had ordered the arrangement.
Nature never sent a straight stream of water babbling
down the hillside and through the meadow, with no eddies
or covers for trout.
There is always an intellectual value in the straight line,
and an emotive value in the curved line. Forms bounded
by straight lines tire the eyes. It is well known that curves
rest them.
Thus it happens that the forms of masses of
matter, and the lines which bound them, con-
tinually received by us as sight sensations, and
these sensations heightened by color, are repro-
duced as expressions of our psychic states.
And so our gestures outline forms, describe
lines, trace segments of circles, and apply all the
elements of geometry to the spaces about us.
Indeed, as will be illustrated in our talk upon
the hand and arm, so bound are we to Form
that all our gestures bear relation to the lines,
spaces, and forms of a projected globe.
(b.) Thus it is seen that we seek, in the outer, correspond-
ences for our inner psychic states.
We find it a continual experience that objects bounded
by straight lines are solid, firm, strong.
So primitive man, in strict correspondence with the Vital
age of the world, built the Pyramids, or threw up huge
cubes of stones.
THE LAW OF FORM.
69
And so, too, we find it a continual experience that ob-
jects bounded by curved lines give us a sense of lightness,
beauty, and gracefulness.
But what terrible vitality the zigzag of the lightning dis-
closes, "when in blind rage the crooked red blade springs
from the black sheath and stabs the earth right and left”!
So the arch types both strength and lightness. The strug-
gle in architecture is always between the strong, the solid,
the firm, of straight lines, appealing to our Vital nature,
and the light, the graceful, the tasteful, of curves, appealing
to the æsthetic sense, rooted in the Emotive and Mental.
Note the straight Vital lines of the great Assyrian and
Egyptian temples, in many instances hewn of solid rock.
What a calm solidity and almost conscious strength they
exhibit!
And, in contrast, note the pagodas of the Chinese and
the tea-houses of the Japanese, with their outlines of fan-
ciful curves and grotesque figures. What lightness, gayety,
and insecurity they present!
But the sloping roofs of the huts of the Esquimaux are
symbols of a continuous vital struggle with a terrible en-
vironment of ice, cold, and hunger.
And now, for a closing lesson in the significance of Form,
turn to that marvel of beauty of outline and harmony of
proportion, that even in its ruins charms the world — the
Parthenon.
It is a modern discovery that all the lines of this won-
derful structure are sections of the circle, but the curves
are so delicate as to have escaped notice for centuries.
Conscious of the beautiful, without knowing why or how
beautiful, what a tribute to the perfection of Greek archi-
tecture!
Thus form, color, and motion of objects in
Space, received thousands and thousands of times
as sight sensations, have wrought into the very
fibre of our Being their numberless correspond-
ences.
70
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
So, form of substance corresponds with form
of essence, and the exterior is the visible corre-
spondence of the interior.
of our
There is a wonderful verity in the song
poet Lowell, that even the gross earth crystals
climb to a soul, in the form and perfume of the
flower. And, in the last analysis, outer and in-
ner proclaim their unity. The whole and the
part are one.
The mysticism of Goethe becomes the plain-
est of plain truths, and his poetry prosaic, read
in the light of the new science of Darwin and
Haeckel, Spencer and Fiske.
"We must, in contemplating Nature,
Part as whole give equal heed to;
Naught is inward, naught is outward,
For the Inner is the Outer."
VI.
THE LAW OF THE PERSONALITY.
The Personality is man in his completeness or
wholeness. In other words, it is the Ego, or in-
dividual Soul and its body, with tendencies, char-
acteristics, and energies peculiar to the indi-
vidual.
So the Personality is the element of differ-
ence in a nature common to all men. It is that
which distinguishes the man from men.
Delsarte makes the Will the agent of the Per-
sonality. He says: "Whichever of the three
states of the Being is in action, the Will is its
agent.
!
THE LAW OF THE PERSONALITY.
71
!
Rosmini, the great Italian metaphysician, says,
"The essence of the personality is the Will."
And this agrees with modern definition: "Our
faculty to make effort." "The Will is that by
which the Mind does everything that it does."
Law of the Personality: The conscious ac-
tivities of the Soul express themselves through
motion. These gestures are Attitudes and In-
flections.
The unconscious, constitutional, and heredi-
tary tendencies and activities express themselves
through fixed and permanent form and motion.
These forms and gestures are Bearings.
All gestures belong to one of three classes,—
Bearings, Attitudes, or Inflections.
These terms refer to fixed, permanent, and
habitual; or present, instant, and fleeting, forms
of gesture.
Let us consider each class more in detail.
1. "Bearings," from the Anglo-Saxon word
“beran,” I carry, refers to the habitual carriage
of the body.
Bearings are characteristic of the whole man.
They often sum up the activities of a lifetime in
a single gesture.
Thus Lavater referred to Bearings when he
said: "Every man has his favorite gesture; and
were it possible to surprise him, and to delineate
him while using this gesture, it would furnish the
key to his whole character."
Bearings are ingrained, constitutional, hered-
72
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
itary, repetitious. They come down the long line
of our ancestry.
They are the marks of heredity, - evidences
that the dead still keep their hold upon the liv-
ing, transmitting from generation to generation
some trick of manner, or peculiarity of gesture;
some open mark upon the face; some hidden
fold upon the brain, - a smile, a lifting of
the eyebrow, a curl of the lip, a wrinkle upon
the forehead.
Attentively study the past of your ancestors if
you would forecast your own future.
(a.) These transmitted inheritances make or mar us. It
is as though all our ancestors were represented in a huge
kaleidoscope; each ancestor by a bit of colored glass. One
turn of the instrument, the bits of glass rearrange them-
selves, and there is a birth!
And the new-born babe is a blend, mosaic, or, to use a
happy phrase of Francis Galton, "a composite portraiture
of his ancestors.
So a man's Bearings disclose his past. They
show what manner of race he sprang from; what
he has taken from the old stock; what he has
added to his inheritance by culture and experi-
ence; how habit, good or bad, has made or
marred him.
(b.) The student of Expression must keep in mind the
fact that the central expressions are Bearings, and should be
made the starting-point for critical study.
"Ah! the face is that of your mother, but when you speak
your voice is your father's.
"Just the way he knit his brow, too; and you use the
T
THE LAW OF THE PERSONALITY.
73
same by-word, with just the suspicion of a stammer! A chip
of the old block!"
It was the Bearing from the Vital root that struck Ben-
jamin West, our great American painter, when he exclaimed
at first sight of the Greek Apollo, "By Hercules! A young
Mohawk!" And it was the Bearing, the inherited instinct
of rulership, traces of the old habit of commanding, that in
King Lear survived the terrible seizures of insanity, and at
intervals proclaimed him "every inch a king."
2. Attitudes are arrests of motion.
A gesture held in place is an attitude.
Attitudes are comparatively passive, and show
that some particular mood is dominating con-
sciousness for the time being. An attitude should
not be held too long; only while the mood dom-
inates. And by the law of climax it should
mark the highest point of the domination of the
passion.
(c.) There is a wonderful power in Attitude. It presents
and holds before the eye for the instant a synthesis of the
mood or passion, as a projected picture. It is painting and
living sculpture as one! This unity makes it superior to
speech, which only tells what you see only names the pic-
ture. So Mental men never reach the climax of attitude.
They rarely project a gesture with the long arc of the free
arm.
Their gestures mark relations between ideas; they num-
ber, and tell how high, how deep, how often, how many, and
how much.
They free the Mental agent, the forefinger, and, closing
their eyes, shut out the external world and commune with
themselves.
3. Inflections are fugitive, instant, and
ent forms of gesture.
pres-
74
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
They translate the immediate and transient
moods of consciousness.
They are instant, and disappear.
The face is the special ground of their dis-
play, and next, as an expressive agent, comes the
hand, which is a second face.
ture.
So an arrested inflection becomes an attitude.
A fixed attitude (when held too long), a pos-
An attitude made permanent, a bearing.
An inflection put on is a grimace, and has no
art significance.
(d.) An illustration of the grimace is the familiar one
where one person declaims and a second stands concealed
by a cloak behind him and makes the gestures. It is the ut-
ter incongruity between the words of the one and the ges-
tures of the other that makes the situation so ludicrous.
Note, too, the smirk of the danseuse, and the play of
head and arms when she retires "amid great applause."
Her illustration of the Vito-Vital in Art won the noisy plau-
dits. Her grimace was an entirely fit acknowledgment.
f
VII.
THE LAW OF OPPOSITION.
Opposition is the placing over against one
another of objects or forces.
This law in its broadest application is a state-
ment of the Law of Life. Opposition of forces
distinguishes the living body from the dead.
When the Soul can no longer maintain the bal-
ance and play of forces, its body dies, falls in
P
THE LAW OF OPPOSITION.
75
I
pieces, disintegrates, ceases to be organic, be-
comes dust. Its fluids dissipate, its solids crys-
tallize.
Herbert Spencer defines the process of Life as
"the continuous adjustment of internal relations
to external relations," and Delsarte declares "the
opposition of forces to be an instinct of the
Soul." As though the Soul instinctively feels
that it can maintain its hold upon its body only
by strenuously opposing its forces to the forces.
of Nature, always in arms against organized mat-
ter, and perpetually threatening its destruction.
Hence, Nature's almost brutal unconcern for the
life of the individual.
"Let the race survive," she says; “I have
little heed for the individual."
So with an impartial hand she throws a whole
brood of callow robins out of their nest to per-
ish in the rain, and in the plenitude of gen-
erosity sows the rocky bed of the ocean with
myriad eggs
the living spawn of a single cod-
fish!
Law of Opposition: In the opposition of
the agents of Expression rests the harmony
of Gesture. Therefore oppose the agents in
action, that equilibrium may result.
(a.) The student will note that this law finds its objec-
tive correspondence in the action of the force of gravity
upon bodies. It is Nature's assertion that all the parts of
a mass of matter shall relate themselves to the centre of
that mass.
76
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
When this relation exists
— we feel a sense of security.
once proclaim insecurity.
when the parts thus balance.
Objects out of balance at
Thus, though you know the Leaning Tower of Pisa has
kept its balance for some centuries, if you stand at its base
and look up along its inclined shaft, no amount of reason-
ing can remove the sense of danger that comes over you.
This statement of law, credited to Delsarte,
is but an application to the human body of the
universal Law of Statics, governing mass.
The body must obey this law-must hold it-
self in equilibrium - or nature will perform the
office, and proceed to relate the separated mass
to the greater mass of the earth.
But Expression rests in motion. And nature
is not quite satisfied when she has, through her
static law, balanced the human body. Her
query is, evidently: "How shall I make this
mass, now in equilibrium, move?" Her answer
to her own questioning was an organism (i. e.,
a psychic centre controlling its own mass).
So, we have the human organism, presented
as both static and dynamic.
That is, it has its standing side and its mov-
ing side. It thus makes two presentations.
Its standing presentation is comparatively in-
expressive.
Its dynamic presentation is its expressive side.
Dividing it into back and front, the back is as
a dead wall, against which stands and acts the
expressive front.
We may call the static side passive, and the
dynamic side active.
THE LAW OF OPPOSITION.
77
Or we may say that the static presentation is
negative, and the dynamic presentation positive.
Again: we may say the static presentation gives
Form, the dynamic Motion.
And in Form and Motion rests the whole
of Human Expression.
So we may add a proposition to Delsarte's
Law, deduced from our considerations.
Prop.: The greater the number of agents
that unite in balanced and harmonious oppo-
sition, the higher the form of Expression.
(b.) Let the student contrast the few, simple, and inex-
pressive gestures of children, when "speaking a piece," with
the wealth of expressive play of the trained actor. The Law
of Evolution is as constant in art as it is in nature. The pro-
cedure is from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous. The
whole play of the agents with the child is simple; with the
actor, complex. Our delight is in the surprises which the
actor constantly occasions through complexity. As Emer-
son has somewhere stated it:
Through the stairway of surprise
Mount we into Paradise.
The works of all great artists confirm the Law of Opposi-
tion of Agents, by whose aid gestures attain to complexity,
and so delight us by presenting variety in place of uni-
formity.
Take an example. One day, looking through Gustave
Doré's wonderful art conceptions in Milton's "Paradise
Lost," these lines and their illustration caught my attention:
So parted they: the angel up to heaven
From the thick shade, and Adam to his bower.
Adam is the principal figure. The angel is represented in
the distance as nearing the zenith. I noted the following
oppositions: (1.) The right side of the body is static, the
78
PHILOSOPΗΣ OF EXPRESSION.
left dynamic. (2.) The static side presents the right leg
firm but not stiff; the dynamic side presents the left
leg as free and bent at the knee. (3.) The right arm is
thrown upwards, with the forearm thrown over the head, so
that the hand grasps the left side; the left arm is thrown
outwards from the body, with the palm of the hand turned
towards the ascending form of the angel. (4.) The head
is raised and turned toward the right. Broadly speaking,
Delsarte's statement is justified that in presentations of the
agents of Expression: -
1. In parallelisms of the agents there is a want of grace-
fulness and harmony.
2. In oppositions of the agents there is grace, the highest
form and evidence of harmony.
Delsarte is reported to have thus formulated
the Laws of Opposition in dramatic action:-
I. Oppositions should be simultaneous in
Tragedy and Comedy; they should be succes-
sive in Farce.
(c.) Take a single illustration of this law, in two scenes.
Scene first. Banishing, from a sense of justice, one whom
we have trusted.
Here the agents in opposition we will suppose to be the
head and right hand. These agents move by the same im-
pulse and together. The decision is determined upon; the
psychic mood is single.
The gesture precedes the spoken words. The hand
moves toward the object, with palm open and facing object.
The head moves away from object. Go, and never more
be officer of mine."
66
Scene second. Same words addressed to same person.
The mood is now complex. Justice is opposed by mercy.
So, two sets of agents are called into action. (1.) Head
and right hand. (2.) Head, torso, and left hand. These
agents move simultaneously. The action is: first, eccentric,
head and right hand, and toward the object; second, con-
THE LAW OF OPPOSITION.
79
centric, head and left hand, away from the object. At the
same time the words are spoken the left hand seeks the
torso.
II. Parallel movements should be successive
in Tragedy and Comedy; they should be si-
multaneous in Farce.
(d.) Let us illustrate. Suppose the approach and greet-
ing of an esteemed friend. Note that the parallel move-
ments of the agents are successive. This may be the order
of the gesture (1.) The eye notes the approach. (2.) The
head is raised. (3.) The torso is eccentric. (4.) The fea-
tures of the face expand. (5.) Now, if surprise enters the
mind the brows are raised. (6.) Now the hand is extended.
And (7.) articulate speech follows.
It will be seen that if these gestures should be precipi-
tate and simultaneous, rather than parallel, we should have
the essence of Farce, or Burlesque.
III. It is through the Law of Opposition
that the expression of a passion gains force by
using its contrary sign.
(e.) The smile overspreads the face in moral sadness. We
shed tears of joy. There is a terrible laugh in moments of
helplessness. The mother shakes her head, but at the same
time smiles, when, in words, she denies the request of her
child. The child translates, and, finding that two lan-
guages say "Yes," ravages the sugar-bowl.
Said a friend to me: "I never felt that laughter could be
more pathetic than tears, until I saw Edwin Booth's as-
sumption of Brutus, where the actor plays the idiot, and
covers his terrible passion of grief with the mask of
laughter."
In spoken and written language, antithesis,
the placing over or against one another of ideas,
by opposing the words of sentences, has from
80
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
the earliest times given life to expression through
its sharp contrasts.
VIII.
THE LAW OF SEQUENCE, OR PRIORITY.
The word sequence indicates an order of suc-
cession. This thing, event, or action, first; that,
second; and so on to the end.
(a.) It was a delightful sequence that filled eye and ear
when, as youths, we set on end a number of bricks, and rev-
elled in the regular click of their impact and fall.
And who can forget the solid satisfaction he found in the
sequence of sound that followed him as he ran along, strik-
ing with a lath the spaced boards of the picket-fence?
This law is of vital importance to the orator.
He is a poor speaker who cannot suggest what he
is about to say before he says it.
Great orators know that they must project the
ruling mood before they speak a word.
Not un-
til the picture is seen does the orator name what
it is that is seen.
(b.) It will be noted that the Law of Sequence is founded
in the relation of the nervous system to its environment.
Nothing external is perceived until it first makes an impres-
sion upon an organ of sense.
sion.
Law: Impression always precedes Expres-
We must have before we can give, and
give in the order of having.
Gesture precedes speech, and gestures of the
face precede all others.
THE LAW OF SEQUENCE.
81
}
(c.) In the genesis of gesture, priority in the action of
the agents of expression depends upon priority in ideas. So
we shall have a sequence of the Outer as the correspondence
of a sequence of the Inner. Take the hand and arm as
agent, and we have this sequence.
(1.) Preparation. (2.) Direction. (3.) Stroke of the
agent.
In the face, the sequence is: (1.) The eye. (2.) The
brow. (3.) The lips and nostrils, which usually act to-
gether.
So we may say that our Vital and Emotive natures are
first put into gesture, then the Mental makes its comment,
—that is, put into speech.
In point of time, we put expressions of our
Vital nature into gestures quicker than those of
our Emotive nature; and those of our Emotive
quicker than those of our Mental nature.
(d.) Take a single illustration: A man in a moment of
passion, under the impression that an insult is intended,
puts the Vital impulse into a blow, and knocks down his
opponent. Hardly is he down before the higher Emotive
nature asserts itself, and the striker bends to lift the pros-
And now the Mental nature has time to make
its comment, which it puts into profuse apologies. Let the
student carefully note the rationale of Sequence, or order of
action of the three states of the Being.
trate man.
Our Vital nature is animal, physical, and instinctive.
It springs first into motion with all the lower animals and
with man.
Our Mental nature is rational, reflective, knowing. It
takes time to note relations; it thinks before it acts. If it
thinks twice, and then thinks again, we say it will act
wisely.
Our Emotive nature is closely allied to both the Vital
and the Mental. Its roots are in the soil of sensation, its
branches in the air of thought. So with most persons, "I
6
82
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
feel it is right" goes into act quicker than "I ought to do
right."
Whichever condition of Being dominates con-
sciousness, that side will lead the sequence in
gesture; or, to use Delsarte's empirical but con-
venient phrase, "the Will lends itself to which-
ever side of the Being is in action."
(e.) Take an illustration, founded in fact, of the order or
sequence of expression.
An artist, having taken offence at his aged and wealthy
patron, painted a satirical portrait of him, and invited him
to his studio.
The painter had adroitly introduced into the noble fea-
tures the Darwinian idea of man's descent. The patron ar-
rives. The picture is uncovered. The patron (1.) glances
at the portrait. (2.) He now looks at it critically. (3.) He
steps backward and partly closes his eyes. (4.) He now
steps toward the portrait, and at the same moment there is
a spasmodic closing of both the hands and a firmly set
mouth. (5.) Instantly, now, his face flushes; he glances
rapidly, first at the picture, then at the artist. Now (6.) he
rocks the torso to and fro. A moment only elapses. (7.) He
draws upward the body along the vertical line. He becomes
calm, poises the body, and, turning slowly, (8.) looks at the
portrait with open and level eyes, — they are judicial eyes,
then looks intently for a moment into the eyes of the
painter, and (9.) without a word leaves the studio.
In this case, it is clear that in the first moments the Men-
tal dominated consciousness. Next, the Emotive and the
Vital struggled for supremacy. At last the higher Emotive
(a blend of the Ethical and Reflective elements) dominated,
and we had the calm of conscious control, which we have
called "Poise."
Now it so happens that the son, a young man just fresh
from college, hears of the insult put upon his father. He
strides to the studio; he does not walk. He forgets cere-
THE LAW OF RHYTHM.
83
mony; does not stir the knocker at the outer door; speaks
no "by your leave" at the inner. He seeks out the por-
trait. A glance sets him on fire. He cuts the canvas into
shreds with his knife. He intones, and explodes "radicals"
like bombshells, as outer correspondences of his inner states.
IX.
THE LAW OF RHYTHM.
Rhythm is the measure of Time or Motion
by regularly recurring impulses.
(a.) Modern science has shown that our satisfaction in
rhythmical motion has a physical basis. John Fiske thus
sums up the conclusions of a convincing argument: “In all
cases, whether in masses or molecules, rhythm of motion is
necessitated by the fact that in a multiform universe no
portion of matter can move uninfluenced by some other
portion. Hence, periodicity, rise and fall, recurrence of
maxima and minima, is the law of all motion, whether in
the star rushing through space, the leaf that trembles in
the breeze, or the blood that courses through the arteries."
It seems beyond dispute that our satisfaction
in dancing and in music, in song and in the
cadences of oratory, has for its basis a physical
support. It is through this correspondence that
the Plastic Arts, Architecture, Modelling, and
Sculpture gratify our æsthetic nature by pre-
senting, through proportion and symmetry, the
rhythm of Form. It was this basis, in fact, that
gave immediate currency to the phrase, "archi-
tecture is frozen music.
""
(b.) It was this subtle force in Nature, seen in the vibra-
84
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
this dance and song,
tion of matter,
that the Greek
poets celebrated in the sun god, Orpheus, at whose golden
touch the mountains danced and the trees nodded their
plumes.
"For Orpheus' lute" (the symbol of rhythm in nature)
was strung with poets' sinews;
Whose golden touch could soften steel and stones,
Make tigers tame, and huge leviathans
Forsake unsounded deeps to dance on sands."
Thus we find that the rhythmos of the Greek
philosophers has for its correspondence the wave
motion of modern Physics.
The Law of Rhythm is the Law of Har-
mony, and Harmony is the pervading Law of
the Universe.
(c.) Through the Rev. Wm. R. Alger, Delsarte is cred-
ited with this sublime concept of the Universe:
"The mysteries of God are revealed in Space and Time,
through Form and Motion; they are concentrated in
Rhythm, which is vibration or swing of matter through
equal spaces and in equal times."
And Mr. Steele Mackaye, one of the earliest students of
Delsarte, thus reports the great teacher:
"In the universe God's purpose is shown through the
lapses of Time.
"His design, through the realms of Space.
"His power, through all the forms of Energy that per-
vade the universe."
Do these utterances of Delsarte seem vague, obscure,
mystical? Yet we must admit they find their parallels in
the utterances of Aristotle and Plato, Pythagoras and
Heraclitus, and are again and again reflected in the writ-
ings of Oken and Carus, Goethe and Lamarck, and by
metaphysical thinkers of modern times.
Let it be borne in mind that the Greek philosophers had
no such evidence as modern science presents upon which to
•
THE LAW OF RHYTHM.
85
!
base their conclusions. Their deductions were purely subjec-
tive, and were founded in felt correspondences between the
visible and the invisible, the physical and the metaphysical.
And so the saying of Heraclitus that ceaseless change,
πаντà pêɩ, is the law of all things, and that in nature there
is an endless flux and flow of phenomena, becomes estab-
lished fact in the science of to-day.
The deduction of Pythagoras that the Law of
Harmony rests in numbers, and that everything
resolves itself into numerical relations, reads like
prophecy, when science, after the most exhaust-
ive experiments, declares heat, light, and elec-
tricity to be so many modes of motion, and
that the direction of modern physical science
is toward a generalization which shall express
the fundamental law of all motion by one simple
numerical ratio.
With reason then we may say that our sense
of and delight in Rhythm rest in correspondence
between physical and psychic conditions; and
that our gestures, that gratify the aesthetic
sense, reproduce symmetry and proportion, in
Space and Time, through Motion.
Law: The Vital nature expresses itself
through forms of objective rhythm.
The Mental and Emotive natures find their
correspondences in, and express themselves
through, forms of subjective rhythm.
(d.) Children, savages, and the inferior races everywhere
delight in objective rhythm. The sharper the accent the
higher the enjoyment.
The babe cries to have its cradle rocked accompanied by
86
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
the sway of the nurse's body and the accented song. Sav-
ages beat time furiously in their war dances, and the speech
of primitive man was doubtless filled with alternately re-
curring impulses of Vital sounds.
In all forms of art, as man progresses, undue accent and
emphasis give way to proportioned and harmonious forms.
Subjective forms of rhythm characterize his musical, dra-
matic, and poetic compositions.
His architecture and sculpture become composites and
blends of material, form, and color, rhythmical in their pro-
portions and relations.
Let us see how all this bears upon the expres-
sions of the human organism.
Well, place the finger upon the pulse, at the
wrist, and note the rhythmus of the heart as
it beats. If the body conform itself to this
rhythm, you have the sway and movement of
the dance.
Again, close the mouth and note the inflow
and outflow of the breath through the nostrils.
Here a physiological necessity comes in, and you
must conform your speech to this play of the
lungs.
Thus in speech and song physiological neces-
sity is the basis of rhythm.
(e.) Let it be noted that no great poet ever sang the
songs of the people who did not sing them to the rhythm
of the blood and breath.
This is why Longfellow used the eight-syllable trochaic.
verse in "Hiawatha," and Scott the eight-syllable iambic
verse in "The Lady of the Lake." They literally floated
their songs down the stream of their age and time upon
the blood and breath of the people.
In this physiological necessity rests the secret of the de-
THE LAW OF RHYTHM.
87
light which sailors, soldiers, and peasants take in the rude
ballads which are recited and sung to fill up the hours of
the enforced leisure of ship or barrack life.
The normal rate of breathing is eighteen or twenty
breaths in a minute, and one or more lines of the ballad or
song will use up the air of one natural expiration.
So Nature in the play of her cosmic forces,
and in these organic pulsations of blood and
breath, leads the way, and man, catching the im-
pulse, marches with measured and rhythmical
swing, and adds color and tone to heighten his
enjoyment.
Or he liberates the imprisoned air from an
hundred mechanical instruments, and lifts his
soul upon the wings of music into untold har-
monies of sound.
But for his highest form of expression, Nature
has concentrated the powers of an hundred me-
chanical instruments in one Vital instrument, that
she may
voice the very soul of rhythm. So in
moments of concentrated passion he sings in
speech and speaks in song, in correspondence
with the subtle and all-pervading Law of the
Universe, Rhythm.
(f.) This concludes what the author feels to be an in-
adequate, but he hopes, nevertheless, a suggestive attempt
to establish a true basis "in the very nature and analogy
of things" for Delsarte's empirical statement of "The Nine
Laws of Gesture" that govern human expression.
It will be seen that we have based the whole class of
ideal gestures upon the analogies and correspondences ex-
isting between the subjective and objective relations which
began with our dawning consciousness, and which gather
88
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
strength and impressiveness as the Ego more and more
sees itself symbolized in external nature, and reads the les-
sons, and listens to the voices that, through existing corre-
spondences, proclaim its kinship and its destiny!
That other and better unfolding of these laws may be
made is quite certain.
That more than nine Laws will suggest themselves to
the thoughtful student is probable, but the logic upon which
these laws stand cannot be shaken so long as the present
order and arrangement of things exist: that the forms and
forces of external Nature type, symbolize, and correspond
with the spiritual.
Here we conclude our discussion of general
principles. Of the Universe; its outer forms.
Of the controlling Energy which is behind all
phenomena. Of man conditioned as a Soul in
body, restricted by Space, Time, and Motion,
and manifesting his psychic states in terms of
his environment. From the general we descend
to the particular. We shall consider in succeed-
ing chapters the human form and its fitness for
expression; the expressions of the agents of the
Being, the Head, Torso, and Limbs; and lastly,
the expressions of the separate divisions or zones
of these agents.
..
CHAPTER V.
THE HUMAN FORM.
ITS FITNESS FOR
EXPRESSION.
MAN epitomizes two worlds, -the world of
matter and the world of mind.
He is the apex of organized matter through
his body, and the summit of all earthly manifes-
tation through his soul.
In a word, he is a soul in organic form. He
is the organized unity of Nature.
His body is the extreme upward limit of phys-
ical progress upon the earth.
His soul will yet mark the extreme limit of
psychic progress upon the earth.
The excellence of form now possessed by man
was in the scheme of animal existence long be-
fore he made his appearance upon earth. He is
prefigured through the whole chain of Being.
All organized forms below him predicted him.
The prediction was yet far from its fulfilment.
when, in the course of her creative acts, Nature¹
1 The author wishes it understood that he personifies Nature as act-
ing force, as a convenient term with which to cover all secondary
causes of phenomena.
He adopts Argyll's definition, as given in his recent work, The
Unity of Nature: "A word for the whole sum and system of intelli-
90
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
evolved a line of nerve substance, enclosed it
within a bony case, and fitted an organism to its
environment of water.
Prediction grew into prophecy in the reptiles
and reptilian birds. Prophecy became assurance
in the beasts of the forest, and in the anthropoid
apes. Assurance became fulfilment in man.
The line of nerve substance which Nature
had traced in her simplest vertebrate structure,
through the slow progress of adaptation in great
reaches of time, had now organized itself into a
central mass, with smaller masses at points of the
human territory; and, marvel of creation, the
nerve pulp took hemispheric form, and became
the throne of Reason and the special seat of the
Intellect.
(a.) Do these words read like unsupported prophecy with
poetic coloring? When we wrote these sentences the latest
conclusions of John Fiske had not been given to the world.
We quote from his recent volume, "The Destiny of Man."
Touching man's evolution, Mr. Fiske says: "At length there
came that wonderful moment at which psychical changes be-
gan to be of more use than physical changes to the brute an-
cestor of man. Henceforth the life of the nascent soul came
to be first in importance, and the bodily life became subordi-
nate to it. According to Darwin, it is impossible that any
other creature, zoologically distinct from man and superior
to him, should ever, at any future time, appear upon the
earth. According to Darwin, the creation of man is still
the goal toward which Nature tended from the beginning."
And this is the great scientist's conclusion: "Not the pro-
gible things. The embodiment of all order, the expression of all
truth."
THE HUMAN FORM.
91
duction of any higher creation, but the perfecting of hu-
manity, is to be the glorious consummation of Nature's long
and tedious work."
Thus man stands upon the earth, — a mind en-
cased in matter, a spirit in substance, a soul in
body. This form, an apparition (that which ap-
pears), manifesting (showing its hand), as three
conditions of one Being.
Let us examine this form and its fitness for
Expression.
And first. The human form holds itself against
the downward force of gravity with less expendi-
ture of muscular energy than that of any other
land mammal.
In the human structure all arranges itself with
reference to static equilibrium.
For, note. The whole weight of the mass
stands vertically above the organs of support.
This releases the muscles of the head, torso, and
arms from the downward drag of gravity.
The head, which in all the large four-footed
mammals, as the ox and horse, needs large mus-
cles to hold it against gravity, presses, in man,
directly downwards upon the common centre.
And further, note the disposition of the great
central organs, the lungs, heart, and viscera, in
the cavities of the thorax and pelvis. The whole
mass is balanced along the line of gravity.
The body may be regarded as presenting well-
defined halves, each half jealously guarding the
equilibrium of the whole.
92
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
(b.) The student may easily trace the septum, or dividing
line of these halves, from the double organ, the brain, evenly
balanced in its dome-shaped case, through the cleft of the
hard palate.
Then the lungs and heart keep the poise, and the viscera
maintain it. The arms and legs help the equipoise and be-
come radii, adding new supports in cases of emergency.
Then the more than five hundred muscles, equally disposed
on either side, actively guard the balance of the mass.
The human body fulfils what we may conceive
to be Nature's design:
To place upon earth a being who should hold
its mass along a vertical line against the levelling
force of gravity. Should, in its escape from the
degradation of gravity, avoid friction in move-
ment. Should thus reduce weight and friction
-
the opposing elements of its freedom to
the lowest point consistent with size and strength.
So, as among vertebrates, the reptiles repre-
sent the line of greatest inthralment to gravity
and friction, man represents the line of greatest
enfranchisement.
We may formulate our conclusions regarding
the evolution of animal structure in a law.
The Law of Animal Structure:-
In animal proportions the predominating
mass is disposed along the horizontal line.
In human proportions the predominating
mass is disposed along the vertical line.
(c.) Thus all animal life may be represented as included
within the two lines forming a right angle. The horizontal
line is the line of greatest inthralment; as the animal rises
THE HUMAN FORM.
93
in the scale of being, it approaches the vertical in struc-
ture.
And man, by the law of structure, may be pronounced
the highest earthly organism, and justifies the ancient defini-
tion of him:
66
Man is he of the upturned face."
We
e are indebted to that marvellous race, the
ancient Greeks, for our ideas of proportion and
symmetry of the human form. For nearly three
thousand years the antiques, Apollo and Venus,
have been accepted in the world of art as the
highest ideals of the human form. Esthetic
taste is satisfied when one looks upon these in-
comparable ideals of strength, beauty, and pro-
portioned harmony. Even if one does not rea-
son about it, the feeling is that here is perfection.
of form.
If one stops to analyze his feeling, he discov-
ers that a large part of his satisfaction rests in a
gratified sense of equilibrium or poise; and in the
inference that if the statue could step down from
its pedestal it would move with ease, safety, and
strength.
Delsarte is reported to have used the term
"Grace" to cover a trinity of elements that
must be presented, in a statue or in the human
form, to make a unity or highest form of Expres-
sion.
This is the reported formula : —
Law: The human form has Grace in ex-
pression when it combines, in unity, the three
elements of Ease, Precision, and Harmony.
臂
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PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
In this analysis he made ease to express the
Vital nature, precision the Mental, and harmony
the Emotive.
If either of these three elements is too prom-
inent, the unity of the expression is destroyed.
Thus if (1.) Ease in human gesture be too
prominent, the expression becomes first as-
surance, then familiarity, and at last vul-
garity.
So intoxication is ease let loose.
(2.) If precision be too prominent, there is
pedantry.
Pedantry is precision running in grooves. Ease,
speaking from the Vital Being, would ask with
abruptness, "Who is the young cross-eyed?"
Precision, with definiteness, "Who is the young
person with the slight obliquity of vision?"
(3.) If harmony be too prominent, there is
affectation.
Harmony is too close an addiction to curved
lines. Emotive æstheticism seeks too many lines.
of beauty.
When the three elements, ease, precision, and
harmony, exist in poise, we have the highest
form of expression, Grace.
(d.) It would be strange if the Exterior did not conform
to the Interior. So we find that the body confirms the above
psychological analysis.
Two sets of muscles control all our movements, exten-
sors and flexors. Acting in sympathy, they poise the body,
or place it in stable equilibrium.
Now an excess of either of the three natures, Vital, Emo-
[
THE HUMAN FORM.
95
tive, or Mental, will inevitably manifest itself in the manner
we have indicated.
The student is asked to ponder deeply the significance of
these manifestations of the Being. We have proceeding
from a single undivided essence three forms of expression,
each having its distinctive characteristics, and, as will be
found, each choosing the ground of its display in some tract
or division of the body.
Take an illustration from the pages of the great English
painter of the moods, morals, and manners of his age and
time. Let the student construct the action from the graphic
picture of the Vital nature let loose:
“A big, loud man with a stare and a metallic laugh. A
man made out of coarse material, which seemed to be
stretched, to make so much of him.
"A man who could never sufficiently vaunt himself a
self-made man. Always proclaiming through that brassy
speaking-trumpet of a voice his old ignorance and his old
poverty.
“I had n't a shoe to my foot, sir; as to a stocking, I
didn't know such a thing by name. I passed the day in a
ditch, and the night in a pigsty.
"That's the way I spent my tenth birthday! Not that
a ditch was new to me, for I was born in a ditch!
Take a second illustration. It may be said that all great
orators move out from the psychic centre into the audience
over three divergent lines.
Like generals who hold the reins of three armies, they
have learned that three natures can move along the lines of
attack. The question becomes, then, a matter of forces to be
brought into action. Whether will the general more surely
conquer with one army or with three ?
Both the greatest American preacher, Beecher, and the
greatest English preacher, Spurgeon, are powerful before
the people, because they have control of three well-propor
tioned and generously large natures, with the Emotive lead-
ing, a strong Vital to sustain, and from the Mental side of
1
96
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
the Being, more especially in Beecher, a wonderfully vivid
imagination and conceptive power of the highest order.
Most preachers have but one army to bring into action.
It is an army of syllogisms. The attack is along the frigid
line of the Mental. Two armies are meanwhile idle in their
tents. The attack lacks blood and breath.
Said the great Welsh preacher of the last century, Christ-
mas Evans: "Never raise the voice while the heart is
dry!"
The architecture and sculpture of different
peoples verify these deductions.
Primitive man made the rudest possible resem-
blances of objects, and his forms of architecture
were masses of rocks of irregular shapes, show-
ing that Vital instincts rather than premeditated
design prompted the manifestation.
In Assyrian and Egyptian architecture preci-
sion and strength ruled, and gigantic figures
with Vital calm in the faces, and great temples
hewn out of solid rock, testify to the Mento-Vital
elements which rule these manifestations.
Greek architecture and sculpture present the
highest forms of expression that have yet ap-
peared upon the earth. Greek forms must be
for ages the inspiration of art, for they present
blends of the three elements, ease, precision,
and harmony, in perfect poise of proportion and
symmetry.
(e.) It is a little curious that the drawings of the man
of the quaternary period, of the present races of savages,
and of all civilized children present the same character-
istics of crudeness and want of precision. They are all in
the Vital stage of human progress, and they each would
THE HUMAN FORM.
97
represent, say, the picture of a man in the same crude way,
namely, a circular form for the head, a triangle for the
torso, and straight lines for the arms and legs.
So, in the Vital age of the world, the Assyrians and
Egyptians filled their colossal figures with an intense and
impressive Vital force.
In conclusion, Delsarte affirms an added ele-
ment. He is reported to have said: Perfect
gesture requires Reason, in addition to Grace.
The elements of Reason are Power, Wis-
dom, and Love, and they dwell in perfection
only in the Spiritual.
(f) This conclusion of Delsarte calls to mind an utter-
ance made to the author by Wendell Phillips. Said this
poised orator from the Greek age appearing in our nine-
teenth century in America: "He only is a great orator
who can utter Reason without Passion."
7
UorM
CHAPTER VI.
THE HUMAN FORM:
ACTION AS DETERMINED
FROM THE BASE.
In the Arts of Speech-Reading, Recitation,
Personation, and Oratory- the human form,
whether in poise or in action, has a single office,
namely, to show forth the interplay of soul and
body.
So Delsarte's definition of gesture is essen-
tially an art definition :-
The manifestation of the Being through the
activity of the body.
And this manifestation is always made through
motion; or through form, which is an arrest of
motion.
(a.) The expression which form presents is doubtless due
to the subjective process by which we endow the form with
the attributes of life.
We infer that some mood has just given motion to the
form, and we seem to see the mood through the arrested
form.
It is doubtful whether any other animal than man recog-
nizes life in any other way than through motion.
Thus from Utility -service of the body or
any of its organs in the animal economy Art
Maou
ACTION FROM THE BASE.
99
looks to Expression, the significance of body, or
organ, in the æsthetic economy.
Important as are the sense organs, grouped in
the small space of the face, in the economy of
Life, they become the most expressive agents in
the economy of Art.
A thousand uses has the hand! A coarse
animal tool in the savage, in the civilized man,
tools proceed and arts radiate from the ten sep-
arated fingers.¹ Garth Wilkinson concludes that
the highest use of the body on this earth is to
enable the Soul to personate itself in a world of
dead matter.
And it would seem that Nature has reached
her ultimate goal, spoken her last organic word,
in her presentation upon earth of Expressive
Man.
And we may confidently conclude that the
evolution of man as an expressive being has been
a constant and progressive development along
the three parallels of Structure, Function, and
Utility.
(b.) A diagram may assist the student to gain our idea
of how, in the course of human development, structure,
function, and utility have steadily moved on towards their
culmination in Expression.
Structure.
Function.
Utility.
EXPRESSION.
1 All human art is but an increment of the power of the hand.
Vision and manipulation in their countless and indirect forms are the
two coöperative factors in all intellectual progress. — JOHN EISKE,
The Destiny of Man.
100
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
So far as we know, no life has appeared upon the earth
outside a material form. A structure is essential to the
appearance of life, and always accompanies such appear-
ance.
But appearance is not maintenance. When life has ap-
peared, in order to survive, it must be able to maintain itself
against the forces that would destroy it. Hence the pro-
vision Nature has made of organs. And it is the action of
the organ to maintain life against opposing forces that we
call its function. It is the function of the heart to beat,
the lungs to heave, the stomach to digest, the eye to see.
Both structure and function, in every animal upon earth
save one, completely answer their ends when they give out-
ward expression to life, work in its service, protect it, and
perpetuate it through other similar lives.
This is the perpetual round of structure and function in
all the lower animals. All this adaptation to environment
ends with Utility.
And man is man because in him all the organs of the
animal are lifted into the highest significance. In him
structure, function, and utility serve a Soul.
And so human expression evolves from structure, func-
tion, and utility, as naturally as the flower from root and
branch, stem and bud.
Emerson has somewhere said: "What Nature at one
time provides for use she afterwards turns to ornament;
and Spencer, after quoting these lines of the great idealist,
says: "It has often occurred to me that the same might be
said of the progress of humanity."
Structure, Function, Utility, Expression. In
these terms we quote all the words of Life.
The possibilities of each animal are predicated
along these lines of development; and we may
read the history of man's progress toward the
spiritual in the syntheses presented through the
whole chain of animal existence.
ACTION FROM THE BASE.
101
Hence, Oken has called man the panæsthetic
animal. And we may say without violence that
the animal kingdom is only a dismemberment of
the highest animal, man; and that animals be-
come nobler in rank, the greater the number of
organs that are collectively liberated, or severed,
from the grand animal, man.
(c.) In the vertebrate kingdom there is no change from
the structural type. All changes are made through con-
stant differentiation.
And we may confidently state three things in three prop-
ositions as true of each and every animal upon earth:
I. Structure determines the kind and amount of motion
possible to the animal.
II. Function is determined by the kind of organs pos-
sessed by the animal.
III. Expression is an outgrowth from structure and
function, and appears in no other animal except man as a
conscious act of the Being, and hence is determined by the
kind and amount of the Psychic element.
We trust that the student will be led to ex-
amine the base upon which the human form
stands with a new interest, as we consider its re-
lations through structure, function, and utility,
to expression.
Agassiz defines the foot of a primate, to which
order of the class mammalia man belongs, as a
limb terminated by digits, all on the same level,
and all having the same direction.
But Broca, the French anthropologist, with
more breadth, thus defines the human base:
A foot is an extremity which serves chiefly
102
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
for standing or walking, and a hand is an ex-
tremity which serves chiefly for prehension and
touch.
The foot is perfect when it answers the ends
of standing and walking.
And the hand is perfect when it answers the
ends of prehension and touch.
But to fully discover the functions of either
hand or foot it is necessary to examine the
structures as wholes of which they are parts.
Three conditions of structure fit all land mam-
mals for locomotion.
(1.) A shaft-like bone must be received into
a deep hemispherical cavity looking downwards
and outwards.
This structure allows the limb to move freely
in two directions, from before, backwards, and
from behind, forwards, thus giving the to-and-
fro movement of locomotion.
The legs of animals are vital pendulums; they
mark distances on the dial face of time. At
this point all other movements except the pen-
dulum are very limited.
(2.) Two bones more or less united are jointed
with the shaft-like bone. They act as a single
bone, in order to better sustain the weight of the
body and keep the foot from turning.
(3.) The jointings above the part touching the
ground allow two movements, flexion and ex-
tension,—and should form with the foot a near
approach to a right angle, so as to present a flat
surface to the earth.
ACTION FROM THE BASE.
103
We have thus presented Nature's general plan
of structure to serve locomotion for all land
mammals.
All land mammals, save man, touch the earth
with four shafts, or levers.
In man, two of these shafts are set free. This
fact will be found to have an immense signifi-
cance. It correlates with all the other facts that
mark man's supremacy upon the earth.
It makes possible a new definition of man:
The animal that has both feet and hands.
Through the two only does he attain free-
dom.
(d.) It is not, as has been imagined, the hands, as hands,
that confer nobility upon man. For physically they cause
the loss of half the power of standing and moving.
But in man there are hands and feet, that the two func-
tions of touching and standing may each approach a possible
perfection.
Should both hands and feet exercise the sense of touch,
the motion is impaired. Should both move the body, the
sense suffers.
So the feet support the body, and stand in its service. The
hands are supported by the body, and stand in the service
of the soul.
The four hands of the anthropoids are therefore an
imperfection and a limitation, which we need not envy
them.
If we would represent the ruling proportions
of the animals next man, the quadrupeds, we
project an horizontal line
and imagine
mass disposed along that line.
و
104
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
propor-
and im-
If we would represent the ruling
tions of man, we project a vertical line,
agine mass disposed along that line.
And we can represent all animal life along
the angles made by lifting the horizon-
tal toward the vertical. It is upon the
implications and revelations of devel-
opment along these lines that we find the ration-
ale of Delsarte's
LAW OF RADIATIONS.
Law: Animal Radiations are downwards.
Human Radiations are upwards and out-
wards.
(e.) It is difficult to comprehend the full significance of
this release of the two levers, the arms and hands.
But it seems apparent that he who was to epitomize the
universe, group all its material forms and forces in his body,
reflect and type the spiritual through his soul, must be able
to assume the vertical, and to project radial lines in all di-
rections into the spaces around him.
If, as Oken has somewhere finely said, God thought the
whole thought of creation once more, and that thought was
man, surely this bearer of all dignities must lift his face
from the earth, stand in conscious equilibrium, and realize
all the conditions of movement and balance in the highest
degree.
Let us see how man realizes these conditions
of poise and motion.
We have already considered Nature's general
plan of structure for poise and locomotion in all
mammals. Let us note the significance of the
1
ACTION FROM THE BASE.
105
differentiation in man from this general struc-
tural plan.
(1.) In the human structure, the thigh bone is
a shaft fitted to play easily in its cup-like cavity,
giving considerable freedom of movement at the
hips.
It easily executes the pendulum movement in
walking, and (a high consideration in art) it per-
mits the right and left leg each to describe 180°
of a circle, -a performance impossible to any
other mammal.
(2.) Two bones are jointed at the knee with
the long shaft of the thigh.
These two bones act as one, and form a shorter
second shaft, capable of a quicker pendulum
movement.
(3.) These two bones fall vertically upon the
crown of an elastic arch of wonderful strength
and lightness, forming a loose hinge at the joint-
ings of the ankle, which allows considerable free-
dom of movement.
The arch forming the foot rests upon two
points of support, -the strong, knob-like bone
of the heel, and upon the bones which form the
ball of the foot.
(f.) Thus, together with all the mammals, we find man
bound to the earth. With all other mammals the four shafts
radiate downward, and are Vital in significance. With man,
the two shafts that touch the earth have the same signifi-
cance. They are Vital. Their primary office is locomotion.
But psychic faculty and instrument of faculty keep pace
in development, and the lower limbs are now supports to lift
the expressive body into the vertical.
106
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
We shall find sure and certain evidence that the released
levers, radiating outwards and upwards, become the special
and significant agents of the Mental and Emotive Being.
It was rare insight in Delsarte that put into formulæ these
deductions, based in the revelations of the human structure,
as
THE THREE GRAVITATIONS.
Man gravitates to the Earth through his feet.
To Humanity through the torso.
To the Universe through the eye.
CHAPTER VII.
THE HUMAN FORM CONTINUED. STRUCTURE AS
DETERMINING ACTION.
FEET.
INDICATIONS OF THE
We examined in our last chapter the base
upon which stands the only animal capable of
sustaining the mass of its body along the ver-
tical line.
To hold this mass against the force of gravity
in equilibrium, and in its action to combine the
elements of stability, strength, and freedom, three
difficulties arising from structure must be sur-
mounted.
These difficulties are:-
(1.) The narrowness of the base upon which
the structure stands.
(2.) A formidable difficulty: the height of
the centre of gravity above the base.
(3.) The projection of the parts, above and
away from the line vertical to the centre.
How the genius of a race, through its repre-
sentative artists, overcame these difficulties in
presentations of the human form, the Greek
sculptors have shown the world in their incom-
parable statues, which present to the eye that
108
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
exquisite harmony of form, which we term grace-
ful; that combination of the elements of phys-
ical power and mental strength in poise, which
we call commanding or heroic, and which arises
from a perfection of proportion and symmetry
which takes away all fear of sufficient firmness
of support.
(a.) We present here the technical rule formulated by
Da Vinci for posing statues.
The student will note that
this rule applies to the living static form as well as to its
representations in statues.
"The foot which at any instant sustains the principal
weight of the mass must be so placed that a vertical line
let fall from the middle point between the shoulders, known
as the little well of the neck, shall pass through the heel
of the foot. The other foot acts as a lever to keep the
mass balanced and prevent it from tottering."
The living, moving human form overcomes the
three difficulties mentioned above by a marvel-
lous adaptation and play of vital mechanics; of
levers, blocks, hammers, wedges, of ropes and pul-
leys, of arcs, pillars, cushions, shafts, of the most
ingenious complexity and entire adaptability.
(b.) We may well uncover our heads and stand in awe,
as with the vision of inference we count the steps by which
the spiritual perfected itself in this last appearance upon
earth, Man.
a prone line of
From the simplest vertebrate structure,
bones with an enclosed thread of nerve matter, all parts of
which were bound to earth by equal pressure, through fish,
reptile, bird, and beast, this vertebral column had lifted
itself towards the vertical through long lapses of time and
by constant differentiations.
STRUCTURE AS DETERMINING ACTION. 109
We may imagine that in the dim twilight that pre-
saged the appearance of man Nature paused for a mo-
ment from her creative work to consider; when, one day, an
anthropoid, type and promise of the hair-clad speechless man,
who was to make way for the speaking and knowing man,
threw upwards and backwards his arms, swept with a dazed
look for an instant the circle of the horizon, approached for
a moment the vertical, then fell back on all fours!
Our good earth mother pondered. Then she said: “Let
us stand this column of bones upright. Let us throw out
from this central axis a series of arcs facing backwards and
forming a channel, and let us fill this channel with life or
nerve matter.
66
'Now, we will throw out from our axis a second series of
expanded arcs facing forwards, making a strong bony box,
in which we will place heart and lungs, the organs of blood
and breath.
"And yet a third cavity, let us fashion, at the lower ter-
minus of the column, where we will place the organs for
the sustaining and perpetuating of life, that this being may
not perish from the earth.
"Now, we will surmount this structure with some closed
arcs, taking the form of a sphere, that we may symbolize
the round earth which is to be the theatre of this being's
activities, and which shall teach him many a lesson of cor-
respondence.
“Let us fill the dome of this sphere with white and gray
nerve matter curiously folded, and below let us build seven
gateways, opening outwards, but leading inwards. At the
portals of the gates let us place seven trusty servitors, that
all the appearances of the outer world may become the ex-
periences of the soul, that this, my greatest work on earth,
shall live, know, love, and worship."
Then Infinite Wisdom, Love, and Power breathed upon
this form, and it became Man, the image of the Spiritual:
to rule the world of matter, to organize science, to perfect
art, to extend commerce, to evolve literature, to found com-
munities, to establish morality, to further the humanities, to
worship the Infinite One.
110
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
Let us summarize our deductions drawn from
structure and function, as presented by the land
mammals.
I. In the land mammals, nearest man, the
four lengths, shafts, or limbs have but a single
function, namely, to further the activities of
the animal in the struggle for existence.
Their expression is wholly Vital. Their use
is for locomotion, defence, and occasional pre-
hension.
II. In man, while the two lower limbs retain
their vital function, the two upper limbs are
released. Unlike any other mammal, with man
the two shafts perform the office of locomotion
and hold the mass against the attack of grav-
ity.
III. The two shafts thus released (the hand
and arm) are with man structurally united
with the head, while with all other mammals
they are structurally united with the body.
And most important conclusion this
freedom of the expressive agents, the hand and
arm, unlocks the human face, and makes it the
-highest bodily correspondence of the Emotive
nature.
(c.) It is important here that the student shall recall our
statement of the central law of the Being:
Man is one in consciousness; three in manifestation.
The dominations of the three natures are made visible
through the body by motion and form. Hence the posi-
tions and movements of the feet disclose the ruling states
of the Being.
STRUCTURE AS DETERMINING ACTION. 111
Delsarte divides the foot into three divisions :
front, middle, back.
I. When the Vital nature dominates conscious-
ness, form and motion are eccentric, and the
weight of the mass is thrown upon the front
foot.
II. When the Mental nature dominates con-
sciousness, the motion is concentric, and the
weight of the mass is thrown upon or towards
the back foot.
III. When the higher moods of the Emotive
nature dominate consciousness, there is equilib-
rium or poise of motion, and the mass is dis-
posed along the line of gravity, and is thrown
upon the middle foot.
(d.) It was said of the great naturalist Owens that by
the aid of the fossil bone of an extinct animal he could
construct the entire form as in those dim ages it walked the
earth.
And it was through a like power of inference that Lava-
ter said: “Hide the man all but his feet, and I will dis-
close him to you."
Said Bruyère: "The way a man takes his hat from a
peg shall make him known."
We give a series of nine indications of the
feet as showing ruling conditions of the Being.
I. Feet placed. a little apart and pointing
directly forwards indicate rusticity, boorish-
ness, clownishness.
(e.) Let the student take these positions and construct
the figures¹ that the positions imply. He will find little
difficulty in giving some color of reality to his concepts.
1 Art is constructive. She suits her forms to her premeditated
112
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
Such is the unity of the organism that inference builds a
whole from a part.
Thus in the figure constructed above the feet as placed
in our first example; awkwardness and self-consciousness
arising from the Vital nature must impose awkward form
and awkward gestures; even the voice will reflect awkward-
ness by its coarse quality and clumsy articulations.
And why not, if the body be the visible and actual corre-
spondence of the Soul?
II. Turn one or both feet inwards, and the
awkwardness disappears.
(f.) This position will be instantly recognized as "out
of nature." So the immediate comment is, "Here is phys
ical deformity." And our sympathy robs the indication of
awkwardness.
Besides, Nature delights in her "Law of Compensation."
And she almost always gives brilliant Mental qualities -
though not so uniformly Emotive qualities to her club-
footed and hunch-backed children.
In the old Lyceum days no one thought Henry Giles
awkward, when with his club-foot he stumped about the
platform, with his soul aglow as he discoursed of the char-
acters of Shakespeare's plays.
III. Feet close together, knees slightly bent,
indicate want of assertion, fear of giving of-
fence, self-distrust, timidity.
(g.) The different phases of passion shown by this indi-
cation have been in all ages a fruitful mine of wealth for
dramatic situations.
and selected environment. This is especially true of Dramatic Art.
Thus the impossible (in nature) stage Yankee, or Englishman, or
Irishman, is suited to his environment of canvas, gas light, and em-
phasized scenic effects. So the highest aim and effort of the drama-
tist is to construct, out of a thousand examples of natural display, an
art display in which a vivid sense of reality may pervade the crea-
tion.
STRUCTURE AS DETERMINING ACTION. 113
The amount of "business" that an ingenious actor will
introduce in personating the timid, distrustful lover is some-
thing wonderful.
The novelist delights in such representations as Mr.
Toots, in Dombey and Son, going to propose to Miss Dom-
bey; where the bashful lover's timidity and utter self-dis-
trust is sketched under the figure of continually falling into
and floundering about in a well.
IV. Feet wide apart, weight thrown equally
upon both, or change of weight from one to the
other, indicate pomposity, bluster, bragging,
bravado without bravery.
Add motion, and we have strides, swagger of
head and torso,
Add voice, and we have loud and blustering
tones, with wide slides but without real force.
(h.) We need only refer the student to Shakespeare's
great creation of Falstaff. It is impossible to read the
lines, so perfect is the dramatic unity, without constructing
form, action, and characteristics.
V. Feet considerably separated, weight
thrown on advanced foot, indicate courage,
earnestness, eager attention, listening, desire.
VI. Feet considerably separated, weight
thrown on retired foot, indicate fear, retreat,
defence, preparation for flight, disgust, horror.
VII. Frequent changes of feet indicate psy-
chic disturbance. Light, purposeless, and in-
consequent movements indicate light, purpose-
less, and inconsequent moods.
VIII. Short, tiptoe steps indicate secrecy,
caution. Starting from the base indicates sud-
8
114
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
den fright. Stamping indicates harsh author-
ity.
IX. Feet placed in accordance with Da Vin-
ci's technical rule for posing statues (see page
108), body drawn upward along the vertica.
line, torso advanced and slightly expanded,
indicate that some grand mood is dominat-
ing consciousness, such as a love of justice,
truth, or duty. It is the poise of the outer in-
dicating the highest domination of the Emotive
nature.
(i.) This disposition of the agents gives the grandest ex-
pression possible to man. It indicates the triumph of the
Soul over all opposing forces.
We will add a tenth indication as the antithesis of equi-
librium or poise of the agents.
X. The negation of expression, the language of vacuity.
A human house without a resident, a human form with-
out rectitude. Less than the animal, which is guided by
that inflexible reason which we call instinct.
Sad text,
comment, and illustration of our theory, that the exterior
is type and symbol of the inner. Here all the agents ex-
press nothing! for there is no thing to express.
What Being is this whose indications are negation, va-
cuity, aberration, semblance merely?
It is the idiot. The vacant gaze of matter toward the
Spiritual!
CHAPTER VIII.
THE TORSO AND ITS EXPRESSIONS.
THE term Torso had its origin in the fertile
soil of Greek art, and received emphasis from the
early Italian sculptors, who made their studies of
the human form after the analyses of proportion
and symmetry left by the Greek philosophers and
sculptors.
The root word from which we derive the word
torso signifies "twisted," and the idea doubtless
arose from seeing a tree stripped of its limbs, and
standing, gnarled and twisted, a headless trunk.
(a.) In theoretic art the torso is composed of the body
without head or limbs; but in art representations a part of
one or both arms (not forearms) usually graces the other-
wise inexpressive trunk, and suggests the play of the
shoulders.
The Expression of the torso as a division of
the body is Emotive; as that of the head is
Mental, and that of the limbs is Vital.¹
(b.) It is curious that a similar division of Outer and In-
ner is reflected in Greek art.
The Greek philosophers, Aristotle and Plato, taught a four-
fold nature of man.
1 This is Delsarte's division, as reported by nearly all his represen-
tatives in America. Here, as elsewhere in our treatise, we use the
term Emotive, instead of the confusing and unphilosophic term Moral.
116
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
1. There was the Inner Essence, or Soul, which was in-
destructible.
2. The Animal Soul (also essence), but grosser spirit,
the instincts and passions, as in the brutes.
3. The Physical Nature embodied. An inner form of
matter, not seen by the eyes; sublimated matter. This was
the direct agent between the soul and body.
4. The Outer, Visible, and Sensible Body, or Phenome-
non, composed of gross matter.
The Greek philosophers made the head the
residence of the pure essence or Soul. The torso
was the seat of the grosser spirit, or animal
Soul. The upper part of the torso-the tho-
rax-was the seat of the nobler passions, with
the heart as its centre.
The lower part of the thorax was the seat of
the baser passions, while the abdomen was the
residence of the gross appetites and sensual pas-
sions.
And this philosophy dominated their art
forms.
The gods of the Greek were idealized types of
the human form.
The brow of Great Jove was high, broad, and
with the facial angle brought forward. The fea-
tures were in poise, impassive but full of con-
scious power. The head was an outline of mas-
sive strength. Thus the Greek concept of a god
was an apotheosis of the Vital and Mental natures
of man.
On the other hand, the face and brow of Apollo
are characteristically human. The elements that
THE TORSO AND ITS EXPRESSIONS.
117
marked the head and face of Jove as the features
of a god are modified and humanized. The facial
angle is not brought so far forward, the features
have lost their massiveness, and the impassive
poise has given way to suggestions of motion.
It is the Greek concept of man. Still the Vital
and Mental predominate, with almost no trace of
the higher Emotive.
Note, in the form of the gladiator, the embod-
ied Vital and Mental natures. The thorax, full,
deep, and well set; the muscles like bands of
steel.
Mark, too, the animal significance of the
bloated abdomen and bulging thighs of Bacchus,
and the half-human, half-goat forms of the
Satyrs.
(c.) The Greeks were constantly solicited to the study of
art, especially of form and motion, by the most suggestive and
picturesque aspects of Nature, and by the most perfect types
of the human form, always present to them, and moving
with a freedom and grace unknown to modern times. So
the Greek analyses of proportion and form, more especially
as illustrated in architecture and sculpture, must long con-
tinue to rule in the realm of Art. It would seem the part
of wisdom to accept the keen insight and prophecy of the
most advanced race certainly the most advanced in art
that has yet appeared upon the earth.
So, if we discover in the physiognomists Lavater, Alex.
Walker, Redfield, Huatt, or with the art writers Winckel-
mann, Lübke, Ruskin, or such illustrators as Hogarth and
Doré, or such teachers of Expression as Rimmer and Del-
sarte,¹ an intimate sympathy with Greek ideas, when con-
1 A fragment left by Delsarte, and entitled Episodes in the Life of
118
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
fronted with the problem of human expression as a result of
the mysterious union of spirit and matter, we may recall with
a definite satisfaction the utterance of Paul, the great apostle
of Christianity, that
There is a natural body,
And there is a spiritual body.
The torso is centre of the body, and its centre,
the heart, is popularly considered the centre of
the Affections and deeper Emotions.
(d.) It is not without reason that we speak of the heart
as centre of our deepest Emotions. While as a physical or-
gan it is insensible to the touch, it is so connected with the
nervous system that all our intense physical pains or pleas-
ures increase its action.
Intense psychic states find immediate response in the vio-
lent beating of the heart, and seem to our consciousness to
locate themselves in the organ itself.
We cannot set aside this popular verdict. Such phrases
as "it will break my heart," "my heart leaped into my
mouth," or Shakespeare's reference to Cæsar, "then burst
his mighty heart," show the strength of the popular belief
that the heart is the centre of the Emotive Being.
a Revelator, is a most convincing evidence of his methods of study.
The persistency with which he observed, and the power of analysis
which he brought to bear upon all psychic phenomena show conclu-
sively that he adopted what is now known as "the scientific method.”
His laws were deductions from observed phenomena. In this rests their
value. How it is expressed always preceded the why with him.
So his statements seem empirical and often fanciful. Thus, in stat-
ing how two persons look at a picture, he says (p. 82, Delsarte System,
Werner, Albany, N. Y.):
When a painter examines his work he moves away from it per-
ceptibly.
"The picture dealer examines it closely, and with a magnifying-
glass in hand; but this direct vision is a short and limited vision.
"The painter, by moving away, seizes, by synthetic vision, the har-
monious proportions of his work.”
THE TORSO AND ITS EXPRESSIONS.
119
In Expression, we divide the torso into three
the Upper, Middle, and Lower.
zones,
These zones indicate through form and mo-
tion the state of Being ruling in consciousness.
They are also points of arrival or departure for
gestures of the hand and arm. Let us consider
the language of each zone.
II. The upper torso contains the lungs, the
organ of our breath, as the heart is of our
blood.
Gestures directed towards, or from, this cen-
tre disclose the Mental nature as ruling.
(e.) It will be noticed, as bearing upon Expression, that
while the action of the heart is not in the least degree con-
trolled by the will, our breathing can be instantly controlled.
But the acute physical distress that follows too long a reten-
tion of the breath the sensation of stifling — is one of the
most terrible of our experiences.
It will be readily seen that this control of the act of breath-
ing allies in-breathing and out-breathing with the Mental
nature, as the loss of all control over the action of the heart
allies its motions with the Emotive nature. So the objective
fact that we can control the action of the lungs corresponds
with the subjective fact that our controlled states show them-
selves through form and motion of the upper torso.
So our breathing becomes a representative phenomenon.
It is to our action what words are to our thought. If we
hear the breathing we know the character of the act.
These considerations make credible the affirmations of
Garth Wilkinson, "that our Mental nature walks up and
down through the arches of our respiration," and that
every man requires to educate his breath for his busi-
ness."
66
III. The middle torso is the zone of the
120
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
Emotive nature. It is the seat of the affections
and higher emotions.
Gestures towards or from this centre disclose
the Emotive nature as ruling.
(f) We have already stated, in paragraph (d), our rea-
sons for making the middle zone of the torso the seat of
the Emotive nature. So fixed is the correspondence in
human nature that any other conclusion would be nega-
tived by the gestures of all races of men upon the earth.
I. The lower torso is the zone of the Vital
It is the seat of the appetites and
nature.
lower passions.
Gestures towards or from this centre disclose
the Vital nature as ruling.
(g.) We have the same popular conviction that the ab-
domen is the seat of the grosser appetites and baser pas-
sions that sustains the idea that the heart is the seat of the
affections and higher emotions.
Here are the stomach and other organs of digestion. And
the same reasoning upon the objective facts of structure and
function that brought us to conclude that the middle torso
is the zone of the Emotive nature drives us to the conclu-
sion that the lower torso is the zone of the Vital nature.
Said Broussais: “"The passions are the triumph of the vis-
cera over the brain.”
It is not necessary to locate a residence for a
state of Being in any place or in any organ of
the body. But we can with confidence assert
-and ordinary observation will convince any
one who may doubt that certain states of the
Being manifest themselves, and seem to do so
by preference, through certain divisions or zones
of the human territory.
THE TORSO AND ITS EXPRESSIONS.
121
(h.) This idea accredited to Delsarte will be found to
form the basis of the system of physiognomy of Lavater.
We quote that profound observer :
"These three states of the Soul do not lodge in separate
apartments of the body, but coexist in every point, and
form by their combination one whole. Yet it is true that
each of these principles has its peculiar place of residence
in the body, where it in preference manifests and exerts
itself."
In view of the fact of a general uniformity
of Expression through these zones, common to
all races and to all individuals of any race, as
well as the fact that, through correspondence,
these zones are made points of arrival and de-
parture for a great number of gestures of the
hand and arm, the author feels justified in the
conclusions arrived at, which we will put into
three propositions.
I. We may say, speaking broadly, that the
torso as a whole manifests the Emotive state
of the Being.
II. Each of the three states of the Being
manifests itself, as if by preference, through a
special division or zone of the torso.
III. Each zone speaks its own language, and
not the language of another.
(i.) To the student who accepts the formidable array of
facts, marshaled in such logical order by Darwin in his
great work upon "The Expression of the Emotions in Man
and Animals;" or who has weighed the convincing testi-
mony of Mantegazza, an eye-witness, who has made the
globe his quarry for data of human expression, to such a
student it will seem entirely probable that the great body
122
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
of gestures now used by us to express psychic states were
once of use to our remote ancestors, in the struggle of the
survival of the fittest.
Another great source of our expressions, undoubtedly, is
to be found in the reasonings upon natural phenomena pre-
sented to the undeveloped minds of primitive men. Thus,
primitive man saw that when the breath was out the man
died. So the breath was thought to be the Soul.
He saw
the thorax heave in the last efforts of life to maintain its
hold upon the body, and when motion ceased, and all
was still, the alarming thought came to him that the man
within the body had gone out from his residence. And this
was fair reasoning from the data presented to his undevel-
oped mind. He pushed inference one step further.
"He
will return," he said, “and be hungry; so he put food
upon the hearth-stone, and waited with a weary and pa-
thetic patience.
""
So, too, it was quite in the line of fair inference that the
heart, with its warmth of red blood and stir of life in its
rhythmical pulsations, should be considered the residence of
the warm feelings and generous passions. The affections
judging from outward manifestations seemed to dwell
in the heart.
The grosser offices and functions of the stomach and vis-
ceral organs connected with digestion suggested that the
vulgar appetites and coarse feelings made this zone the seat
of their activities. They were often personified, and dwelt
like real beings in this lower zone of the torso.
And with ourselves of this age and time, these crude and
objective ideas have become subjectively refined and won-
derfully expressive; and through correspondence and anal-
ogy, through heredity and life experience, we emphasize
and repeat our states of feeling by gestures directed to or
from these zones.
What wonder that language, getting its greatest strength
and vigor from objective sources, and never so strong and
vigorous as when it can hold before the mind's eye the
THE TORSO AND ITS EXPRESSIONS.
123
form and motion of the actual object, delights to perpetuate
these correspondences?
The student may well ask, with all sorts of confident sup-
port"in the nature of things," "Does all Expression rest
in Correspondence?" And can we not confidently say that
the sensations of the heart, lungs, and viscera, which are
the seat of our greatest physical pains and pleasures, are
reflected subjectively in voice, gesture, and speech?
We find space for two illustrations of the ex-
pression of the three states of the Being through
the three zones of the torso. In our first illus-
tration the gestures are directed towards or from
the Mental and Emotive zones.
Our first illustration is from Shakespeare's
Henry V., Act II. Scene 2.
The King has discovered the conspiracy of
Cambridge, Scroop and Grey.
Let the student recall the order of action of
the threefold Being. In psychic action the Men-
tal guides, the Emotive impels, the Vital sus-
tains.
Now, let us apply this order of action to the
lines which we quote on the next page.
The Mental takes note of existing relations,
as of king and people, notes consequences to
the state, duty of king as judicial head, dignity
of king as representative head, the enormity of
the crime, the punishment due, etc.
The Emotive gathers its strength from the
instinctive and animal roots of the Vital na-
ture. It becomes impulse to the severity of jus-
tice. As affection it will temper justice with
124
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
mercy. This outflow of feeling invading the
Mental nature will give rise to that sense of
right and wrong which in man has become or-
ganized as conscience.
The Vital sustains all and urges action. The
simplest organism, as the monera or other pro-
tozoan, is always composed of centre, in which re-
sides life, and near environment or body, which
is controlled by its centre. This life element in
man is at the foundation of the psychic struc-
ture.
“K. Hen. God quit you in his mercy! Hear your sentence.
You have conspired against our royal person,
Join'd with an enemy proclaim'd, and from his coffers
Receiv'd the golden earnest of our death.”
Gesture of hand and arm towards the upper
torso upon the words "our royal person."
Gesture of hand and arm towards the middle
torso upon the words "golden earnest of our
death."
Here the state of Being is the higher Emotive
as ruling. The mode of motion is poise for the
whole body, concentric for hand and arm, eccen-
tric for torso.
Take a second illustration. The comment of
the three natures upon a glass of wine.
The Emoto-Mental would hold up the glass;
look at the color and transparency; note the
stir; move the glass to and fro under the nose;
make placid the features; close gently the eyes;
smack the lips with scarcely audible sound; talk
THE TORSO AND ITS EXPRESSIONS.
125
and taste, taste and talk about vintage, age, an-
cestry; call it "rare old Burgundy or royal
Tokay;" sip, taste, and talk, and talk again in
endless disquisition.
The Vital is entirely straightforward in its
manifestations. It takes a tankard in place of
the glass, and the malt delight of Gambrinus
in place of wine. Round and round, with half-
closed eyes, it stirs the foaming beverage.
There is little time wasted in æsthetic observa-
tion of color or motion or bouquet; tasting loses
its finesse in hearty deglutition. So the Vital
drinks for the stomach instead of the palate;
stirs the tankard in Falstaffian rhythm; drinks
"with windy suspiration;" smacks the lips;
strikes with both hands the abdomen; shows
satisfaction in inarticulate and sometimes porcine
sounds.
In noting the expressions of the torso through
form and motion, let us recall the three divisions
which include all gestures, and which the student
will find discussed at length under the Law of
the Personality :
1. Bearings refer to carriage or mien. They
are the result of heredity, or long-continued
habit. They are permanent, and indicate char-
acter.
We grow insensibly into bearings.
2. Attitudes are arrests of motion. They are
comparatively passive, and show that some par-
ticular mood is dominating consciousness.
126
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
We put ourselves into attitudes.
3. Inflections are fugitive, instant, or present
forms of gesture. It is the mood now ruling that
they express.
We are only semi-conscious of our inflec-
tions.
So it will appear that an inflection may show
at any moment through the exterior. One can
throw himself into an attitude. He can fix him-
self in a posture. His bearing, or mien, comes
through repetition of action, his own or that
of his ancestors. The form and motion of the
torso, then, will disclose the state of the Being
dominating consciousness.
We give a series of three attitudes of the torso,
and ask the student to carefully consider their
language:
(1.) Expansion: Here both the form and mo-
tion indicate different degrees of vitality, power,
courage, vehemence. The Will active.
(2.) Contraction: Both form and motion in-
dicate different degrees of struggle, effort, pain,
convulsion. The Will spasmodic.
(3.) Relaxation: Both form and motion indi-
cate different degrees of want of vitality, indo-
lence, prostration. The Will inactive.
We give a series of three Inflections of the
Torso:
(1.) Movement up and down in a vertical
line indicates: Despair of the weak, distracted
grief, loss of courage and hope.
THE TORSO AND ITS EXPRESSIONS.
127
If the voice is used it takes the minor key,
through all animal life the symbol of pain.
(2.) Side to side movement indicates: Happy
innocence, joyousness, carelessness, thoughtless-
ness of childhood.
If the voice is used it takes the major key,-
through all animal life the symbol of pleasure.
(3.) Twisting movements indicate: Childish
impatience of all degrees.
If the voice is used it takes the form of the
vanishing stress.
(c.) It will be noticed that these gestures are correspond-
encies of bodies in unstable equilibrium. Thus, physically,
rocking up and down is a giving up of poise, and regaining
it only to give it up again. What could better type despair
than this loss of bodily control?
In rocking from side to side all the large muscles assist to
balance the body.
In the side to side movement of joyousness there is the
element of control and an example of rhythm; the body we
know is in no danger of falling. It is dancing with rhythm.
How admirably it types the free joyousness of the child's
nature!
The "twisting movement" adds abruptness to slight in-
stability, and shows that the disturbance of equilibrium is
slight. This gesture visibly types irritability. And the van-
ishing stress of the voice in complaint gives an audible sym-
bol of instability.
We give a series of six attitudes of the torso,
showing the relation of subject and object:
(1.) Leaning directly towards the object of
desire indicates: Vital attraction.
(2.) Leaning obliquely towards the object of
128
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
desire indicates: Attraction based on a recogni-
tion of the higher Mental and Emotive quali-
ties.
(3.) Leaning directly from the object indi-
cates: Vital aversion or repulsion.
(4.) Leaning obliquely from the object indi-
cates: Emotive aversion or repulsion.
(5.) Bowing directly before the object indi-
cates: Superstitious reverence and worship.
(6.) Bowing obliquely before the object indi-
cates: Rational reverence and worship.
CHAPTER IX.
THE HEAD AND ITS EXPRESSIONS.
THE naturalist Oken, walking one day in a
forest, came suddenly upon the bleached skull
of a deer.
Holding the skull in his hand, he was exam-
ining, in a meditative mood, its anatomical fea-
tures, when there flashed into his mind an iden-
tity of structure that had never before struck
him.
"This skull," he said, "is the four upper ver-
tebræ of the back-bone, arrested, distorted, fash-
ioned into plates, and put into spherical form,
differentiated for a purpose.
1
Now, what seemed fanciful in Oken and
Goethe agrees with modern research; that of
Owen, and later of Broca, the most eminent of
French anthropologists.
The eight bones that form the human skull,
and the fourteen bones that make the structure.
of the face, are the four upper vertebræ of the
spinal column, differentiated from the structural
1 It is a little curious that Goethe discovered this identity at about
the same time. Eras of discovery are atmospheric. When all the
occult conditions are fulfilled the discovery is made.
9
130
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
type common to all land mammals, to serve most
important ends in man's slow advance from sav-
age to civilized conditions.
Indeed, to fit man, - not alone to rule all other
forms of life upon the earth,
but to make any
advance possible, the nerve substance must be
concentrated, localized, expanded, and protected.
The intent of Nature was made apparent in
structure, when the four upper vertebræ were
differentiated into four enlargements or seg-
ments to localize, hold, and protect the brain
substance.
These segments of bone, thus expanded as
arcs and united to form the skull, are known as
the occipital, parietal, frontal, and nasal seg-
ments.
The fourteen bones of the face form cavities
in which rest the sense organs, or they project
rough points for the attachment of muscles.
(a.) In this spheroidal form of the skull there is to the
philosophic mind abundant promise and prophecy arising
from analogy and correspondence.
A wider vision than ours would be able to plainly see the
unity of the material and spiritual.
So we may without violence imagine a being from an-
other sphere, an older world than ours, with higher ra-
tional and intuitive powers, examining a human skull.
He would say:
"This being who bore upon an upright
column this globe form was easily enough the ruler of the
earth, and bridged the chasm between the animal and the
rational soul."
Let us examine the human structure and mark
its points of superiority :
I
!
}
THE HEAD AND ITS EXPRESSIONS.
131
.
All vertebrates, from lowest to highest,
through the whole chain of fish, reptile, bird,
and beast, are built upon the same general plan.
The structural type is permanent.
This is the general plan of a vertebrate struc-
ture:
(1.) A column of jointed segments or bones.
2.) A line or thread of nerve substance en-
closed within this column.
(3.) Certain arcs thrown out from the central
axis of the column to hold the life organs.
(4.) Certain lines, levers or shafts, four in
number, disposed in pairs, and projected from
the axis of the column to form organs of loco-
motion or prehension.
(5.) And finally, a nervous system, separated
from the body cavity, with its centre located in
the head.
This is Nature's general plan of vertebrate
structure. It is in points of differentiation from
the structural type that we find the key to man's
supremacy.
Let us state the points of structural differen-
tiation:-
(1.) Man stands vertically poised upon two
shafts. He thus escapes the undue thraldom
imposed by gravity upon the other land mam-
mals who are tied to earth by four shafts.
This is the key to his superiority and the visi-
ble sign of his liberation.
Two limbs are now free, and the face is ver-
tical to the line of the horizon.
132
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
:
The sense organs are grouped in close connec-
tion with the great central organ of conscious-
the brain.
ness
(2.) Man has, in proportion to size and weight,
three or four times more brain, three or four times
more thinking matter, than any other of the large
land mammals.
(3.) This thinking matter is convoluted. Like
leaves or plates, the white and gray matter lies
in the brain-case in folds or furrows, the gray
cortex covering the white and dipping down into
the folds.
A brain of few folds is dull and unintelligent.
There seems to be an unexplained correspond-
ence between the number, form, and disposition
of the convolutions and the amount of intelli-
gence.
(b.) Modern research abundantly fortifies these conclu-
sions. Said Broca: "Simple convolutions, developed unin-
terruptedly, and alike in both hemispheres, are character-
istic, in both man and other mammals, of inferiority.”
And John Fiske: "The amount of intelligence is corre-
lated with the number, depth, and irregularity of the fur-
rows. In the brain of a great scholar the furrows are very
deep and crooked, and hundreds of creases appear which
are not found at all in the brain of ordinary men.
27
(4.) And finally, to mark man's preeminence
among his congeners, there is in his brain a lo-
calized seat for the faculty of language.
This faculty, according to Broca, has its resi-
dence in a very small division of the cerebral
hemispheres, particularly of the left hemisphere.
THE HEAD AND ITS EXPRESSIONS.
133
Its location is upon the superior portion of the
fissure of Sylvius, and it occupies the posterior
half or third of the third frontal convolution.
If this part of the brain is seriously injured,
the man can understand but cannot articulate.
(c.) It would seem evident that the being having these
advantages of structure would outstrip the other mammalia
through the evolution of the knowing faculties.
He alone of all the beings upon earth would seek to com-
prehend the relations of things about him. He alone would
question the why, whence, or where of his existence or des-
tiny, or form any conception of the vastness of such sub-
sistences as Time, Space, Force, Spirit, God.
The anthropoids nearest him in structure have never
known even how to use a staff, or build a fence, or plant a
kernel of corn, or kindle a fire, or make a dwelling that can
be dignified by any higher name than “ a nest
the name
given by Livingstone to the tree shelters of the Soko of
Central Africa.
دو
All the evidences of structure, function, and adaptability
show that man's future advance lies along the lines of Men-
tal and Spiritual progress; the emphasized Vital has al-
ready dropped out of the American and English Saxon.
The type of our ancestry has greatly changed. Ten or
twelve centuries ago, rooted near the earth in the Vital, our
ancestors fought like tigers, tooth and nail, — got their name
"Saxon" from the sword with which at a short arm's length
they hacked and hewed their foes. They boasted that their
ancestors drank blood out of human skulls. They were
frightful gluttons and drunkards.
So the type of men who followed Wallace and Bruce, or
fought with main strength at Marston Moor, would be of
little service in modern warfare, where the profound strategy
of military science is complemented by the terrible enginery
of ironclads on the sea and Gatling guns on land.
At the commencement of the struggle for life man is the
134
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
most helpless and defenceless of animals. "Naked and
without weapons" is Linnæus' description of him.
As the babe of the nineteenth century lies in the cradle, it
holds in its little hands the ancestral threads of the race.
And it is soon made evident that the differentiation is to-
ward physical weakness, and toward mental and moral
strength.
The savage Vital has almost died out of modern man.
The keen edge of the senses that serve the animal nature is
blunted. His limbs have lost their greatest activity. The
horse and deer easily outrun him. The dog develops a keener
scent. The eagle's vision is further reaching.
Ah! with feeble limbs to pursue, feeble hands to seize,
feeble teeth to tear, it is evident that the Vital nature must
be complemented by other appliances. So he fits new lenses
to the eye, and counts a million of stars in the golden belt
of the Milky Way where the Greek saw only the glittering
pathway of the gods. He hears with the new ear of Bell or
Dolbear. He binds the wings of Mercury to the locomotive,
and adds to his speed. And, finally, he annihilates space,
and beats Old Chronos himself by sending a message from
London at noon to be read in Boston or New York while
it is yet morning.
We may study the head and its expressions
from two points of view : —
(1.) Through that which is fixed and perma-
nent, and which presents outline and form.
(2.) Through the play of the muscles under
nervous stimulus.
The fixed and permanent expressions of the
head are the result of structure.
So cranioscopy is an open comment upon race,
heredity, and habit.
And no object presents more subtle and perti-
nent correspondences than those prefigured by
•
THE HEAD AND ITS EXPRESSIONS.
135
this aggregation of lime crystals fashioned into
spherical form.
(d.) What a text for the moralist is this hideous colloca-
tion of bones an unclothed skull!
The marvelous organs of sense, the complex network of
muscles, veins, nerves, tissues, and skin have fallen off, and
long ago resolved themselves into dust. The color, the mov-
ing lights and shadows have vanished. Fortunate if this
hollow void and emptiness can revive memories of the illu-
minated face, pulsing with life and aglow with passion!
"First Clo. This same skull, sir, was Yorick's skull, the King's
jester.
"Ham. This ?
"First Clo. E'en that.
"Ham. Let me see. Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio:
a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on
his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred my imagination
is! my gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kiss'd I
know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your
songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on
a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen ?
Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch
thick, to this favour she must come; make her laugh at that.”
In considering the fixed and permanent ex-
pressions of the head, we may say that there is a
pretty general agreement among those who have
given much thought to the subject, that certain
points of structure are indications of the predom-
inance of one or another of the three states of
the Being.
Without any attempt to exhaust the subject,
let us generalize a few principles based upon
structure:
(1.) Among all mammals, the advance of the
lines of the head toward the vertical is the meas-
ure of psychic advance.
136
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
The student can test this law by sketching hu-
man heads, where the forehead, nose, and chin,
each in turn, are made to depart from the ver-
tical.
He will find all forms of animal expression to
rest in the proportions thus sketched. An exam-
ination of classic heads in an art museum, or of
engravings of Greek sculpture, will verify our
proposition.
(e.) Camper's facial angle has long ruled in the world of
art as a measure of the amount of intelligence shown through
the structure of the skull. His method of determining the
angle was to trace a skull, draw a horizontal line, which
should pass through the ball of the ear and the sockets of
the front teeth. Upon this horizontal line raise a vertical
line, touching the teeth and the most prominent point of the
frontal bone.
This idea, it is said, was suggested to Camper while exam-
ining some antique gems.
He observed that there was a great gain in intellectual
expression when the line that touched the forehead and
teeth was nearly vertical. This he conceived to be the key
to the antique head. As the line fell from the vertical, the
head and face lost majesty and dignity of expression. An
angle of 70° gave the head of a negro; of 60°, an orang-
outang; and so on downwards.
A broader generalization will be accepted by
the student of evolution.
(2.) Brain development in man has been con-
stantly progressive, while with the other mam-
malia it has remained comparatively station-
ary.
All the mammals have the cerebellum and spi-
1
THE HEAD AND ITS EXPRESSIONS.
137
to
nal cord well developed. This disposition of
nerve substance serves a predominant Vital
nature. In man there has been a steady growth
of the cerebrum or fore-brain. And it is this fact
of the evolution of upper and fore-brain that
marks his supremacy. Both common and scien-
tific observation agree that we look for intellec-
tual expression in the approach to the vertical of
the forehead.
But we believe Alexander Walker, the Scotch
physiognomist, to have been the first to formulate
the law that, through form, indicates the inten-
sity and permanency of intellectual force.
(3.) Walker's Law: On the length of the cer-
ebral organs depends their intensity.
On their breadth depends their permanency.
(f) We believe this law to be central in fixed expressions
of Form. The student in his study of heads will find abun-
dant proofs of its validity. Thus, the heads of nearly all
the noted poets, artists, actors, orators
the emotive men;
conform
men of quick sensibilities; the men of sentiment
to this law. If the head be measured with tape and line, its
form will verify this observation; that is, the cerebral re-
gion will show more height than breadth.
The heads of Shakespeare, Sir Walter Scott, Lord Byron,
and Burns present notable examples of the rule of this prin-
ciple.
So, too, the heads of great lawyers, shrewd statesmen,
generals, architects, builders of railways - men of judg-
ment; men of practical sense, "of hard common sense
will measure more in breadth than in height.
The heads of Stephenson and Watt among great archi-
tects; of Cromwell, Napoleon, and Grant among generals;
of Girard, Vanderbilt, and Gould among organizers of great
business operations illustrate this law.
138
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
Another statement of Law will include both
forms of Expression, -the permanent as Form,
and the transient as Motion.
Law: The hereditary, habitual, and uncon-
scious activities of the Being disclose them-
selves through fixed and permanent forms.
The transient, immediate, and conscious ac-
tivities through motion.
This Law holds good in the expressions of
the body as a whole, or of any of its agents.
(g.) Take as an illustration one who has made money-
getting the supreme end of his existence. Now, at the age
of sixty, this habitual and ceaseless psychic activity has made
fixed and rigid the muscles of the face; and the lines and
forms presented declare him a miser.
And all the years of his ignoble pursuit he was chiseling,
day by day, a statue of flesh of repulsive aspect, adding to
the expressive lines of head and face by every miserly
thought and act.
We may now state, broadly, the expressions of
the head, presented by the cranium (the fixed
and permanent skull) through outline and form.
II. The expression of form and outline of the
forehead is Mental.
III. Of the arch of the crown of the head, as
far as the roots of the hair, is Emotive.
I. Of the back of the head is Vital.
We think this analysis of the expressions of
the fixed and permanent form of the cranium
will be found to agree with the scientific deduc-
tions of modern anthropology.
It is essentially the analysis of Lavater, and it
THE HEAD AND ITS EXPRESSIONS.
139
agrees with the broad deductions of phrenology
made by Gall and Spurzheim. Whatever differ-
ences of opinion may exist in regard to the empir-
ical conclusions of cranioscopy, which maps out
certain tracts of the skull as the domain of cer-
tain mental faculties, we believe scientific thought
to agree in the main with our conclusions.
1
(h.) Delsarte is credited by Delaumosne ¹ with the divi-
sion of the head, including the face, into five zones.
We present a diagram of his scheme of the cranium and
face.

II
III
III
Each zone speaks its language through external form. In
this scheme I represents Vital, II Mental, III Emotive.
The exact statement of Delaumosne is: "The Life is in the
occiput, the Soul in the parietal, the Mind in the frontal."
These divisions of the head and face, accredited to Del-
sarte, are manifestly taken from Lavater. We think that
they will bear the test of critical observers of human ex-
pression, as well as of scientific deduction.
Let us now consider the gestures of the head
as an agent of expression.
Let us recall three propositions :
1. Each zone of the head speaks its language
of expression through Form.
1 See Delsarte System, p. 169, Edgar S. Werner, New York.
140
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
2. Each zone speaks an expressive language
through Motion.
3. Both Form and Motion may be expres-
sive, as Eccentric, Poise, and Concentric.
When Form is presented, we infer; when Mo-
tion, we know. Thus, given a retreating fore-
head, large cheek bones, and heavy jaws, and we
infer the amount, kind, and quality of intelli-
gence.
Motion, on the other hand, immediately trans-
lates the ruling mood. Thus, when we see the
fist clenched, the brow corrugated, and the jaws
firmly set we know the man to be angry.
We may study the gestures of the head from
two points of view: -
1. As an agent of expression through its un-
assisted movements.
2. As a centre of arrival and departure for the
gestures of the hand and arm.
(h.) In our discussion of the gestures of the hand and
arm, it will appear that our strictly Mental gestures tend to
arrive at, or depart from, the great Mental centre, the head,
and to coördinate the elements of Time and Space with the
motion of the gesture.
The head has three primary modes of mo-
tion to translate the three primary states of the
Being.
The modes of Motion and the states of Being
which correspond in gestures are : —
I. Eccentric Motion: which corresponds
with the Vital nature, and translates its ac-
tivities.
THE HEAD AND ITS EXPRESSIONS.
141
}
II. Concentric Motion: which corresponds
with the Mental nature, and translates its activ-
ities.
III. Poise of Motion: which corresponds
with the higher Emotive nature, and translates
its activities.
We give the three primary attitudes of the
head, and the three states of the Being expressed
by these attitudes :
I. The Eccentric Attitude elevates the head,
carries it high, and a little backwards.
This attitude discloses the Vital state.
(i.) It will be noted that men of fine physique and high
health the head high. Also, that undersized men
carry
little men, who are ambitious thus strive to initiate a vis-
ible correspondence of Outer and Inner.
Soldiers, hunters, and frontiersmen illustrate this attitude.
In such men Life, pure and simple, is strong. The Vital
stream is at its flood.
II. The Concentric Attitude lowers or bows
the head.
This attitude discloses the Mental or Reflec-
tive state.
(j.) Not alone the head but all the agents illustrate reflec-
tion, meditation, absorbed thought through this mode of
motion.
The student may test this by earnestly assuming the mood
of deep reflection. The body will play its part in exact cor-
respondence with the intensity of the mood.
III. The Poised Attitude holds the head,
easily erect, in balance or equilibrium.
This attitude discloses the higher Emotive
Being.
་
142
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
(k.) The student will note that this state of the Being
finds its correspondence in the balance or equilibrium of the
body.
All elevated moods of the Soul tend to equilibrium. The
body is poised with conscious strength in the highest mo-
ments of the Soul.
We present a series of nine inflections of the
head :
1. A forward movement of the body, ending in
throwing the head backwards, indicates interro-
gation, surprise. With the chin forward, admi-
ration, expectation. With the torso forward,
sympathy.
2. The same movement with the chin lowered
indicates doubt, resignation, humility. With the
chin falling towards the chest, confusion, shame,
self-condemnation.
3. A forward, vertical nod of the head is the
sign of affirmation.
The side to side horizontal movement, the sign
of negation.
4. A sudden, oblique, forward movement of
the head indicates the menace of an angry man.
A slow, slightly oblique, forward movement,
starting from poise, is the menace of a resolute
man.
But if the gesture be a sudden oblique move-
ment backwards, it is the threat of a weak man.
5. An inquiry made with slight oblique move-
ment of the head, while slowly folding the arms,
is a menace.
6. The head lifted slowly, along the vertical
-
THE HEAD AND ITS EXPRESSIONS.
143
line, and thrown slightly backward, indicates ex-
altation. Thrown back with lateral to-and-fro
movement, self-esteem, boastfulness, self-suffi-
ciency. Tossed obliquely backward, dissent, de-
preciation.
7. Head thrown obliquely backwards, chin
raised, upper-lip raised -sometimes uncovering
the canine tooth, on the left side indicates
hatred, disdain, contempt.
8. Head erect, then thrown backward with
violence, indicates horror. Thrown back with
slow movement, with eyes turned upwards, ven-
eration, reverence. In melancholy the head in-
clines downward towards the left side. In
malevolence the head moves horizontally to and
fro, the eyes partly closed following the line of
the horizon.
9. Head giving quick rotative movements,
with sudden oblique gestures, indicates impa-
tience, annoyance about little things.
The head and torso move at the same time.
when the Mental and Emotive natures desire to
make one expression, and for the same purpose.
If now we suppose the Vital to invade the Mental
and Emotive zones, three gestures seem to act
in unison, and this with all races of men more
often than any others, and thus disclose the com-
plex psychic state. The Vital shows the high-
est activity through these forms.
clenched fist. (2.) The closed teeth.
(1.) The
(3.) The
corrugated brow.
·
144
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
The hand and arm may emphasize all gestures
of the head and torso.
So, a purely Mental comment would be given
with a gesture of the head, the hand adding its
emphasis, the torso making no movement. But
an Emotive or passional comment would be ini-
tiated from the torso, the hand assisting, and
the gesture from the head coming last.
So, broadly speaking, the science of semiotics¹
founded upon the analysis of Delsarte seems to
be well founded, that the gestures of the head
are Mental, those of the torso Emotive, those of
the limbs Vital.
(m.) The student should bear in mind that in expres-
sions of passion, under the impulse of Nature, no agent is
uninterested in the drama that is being enacted.
its rôle. Each is master of its own effects.
too, how to subordinate its egotism. To the
chief rôle, to the subordinates inferior rôles.
to make the play a sustained, proportioned, and coördinated
whole.
Each has
Each knows,
principals the
All must aid
Art forms its mimic display out of the ample and every-
where present material of natural display, and so it hap-
pens that Art, the most art-full, always affects us as Nature,
the most nature-full.
1 Semiotics is the science of signs. The term is an excellent one in
the technique of expression. It signifies the appropriation of the sign
to the idea. Give the sign and you suggest the mood. This fitting
the gesture to the idea is Delsarte's discovery. Every mood has its
natural sign. To know the sign, to direct the agents to give the sign,
to coördinate nature and art through the sign is to master the science
and art of semiotics.
CHAPTER X.
THE HAND AND ARM IN GESTURE.
ONE day—more years now than the author
cares to be accurate about his revered teacher,
William Russell (who that came under the in-
fluence of this great teacher can ever forget the
charm of his manner!) opened, before his class
of enthusiastic students, a rare old volume dis-
closing a full-page picture of an orator, stand-
ing, to all appearance, inside a globe and point-
ing with extended arm toward some letters (r.
oblq. u.) right, oblique, upwards, inscribed upon
the inner periphery of the projected sphere.
The teacher said to the class: "This is Austin's
Chironomia, and here you will find the best
treatment extant of the subject of gesture.
We attached little meaning to the picture
then, and have since had a suspicion that neither
the eminent teacher nor the author of the rare
volume found any deeper significance in that
pictured globe, inside which stood the orator, as
in a cage, than a convenient way of enforcing
the technique of the hand and arm in gesture.
Some years later we were reading, in an idle
mood, Victor Hugo's "Toilers of the Sea," when
10
146
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
a significant sentence of the great French writer
flashed a correspondence into our mind that had
never occurred to us. The sentence read:
Man stands on one globe and bears another
on his shoulders.
"Are all gestures," we asked ourself, "rooted
in correspondences between this material appear-
ance, our objective world, and our subjective re-
lations to these outer appearances?"
We ask the student to ponder thoughtfully
our query. And as a stimulus to his thought,
let him reflect upon a few propositions.
1. There are three planes of vision. The
plane of Equality, of the Superior, and of the
Inferior.
Two of these planes form divisions or zones
of the visible hemisphere that is arched above
us.
Man alone surveys the three zones of the
sphere. Animals, bound by instinct and with no
conscious centre, see only what is. They survey
only the zone of Equality. Led by their sensa-
tions they live in the kingdom of here and now.
2. If an idea leads you, the eye moves up-
wards in space in pursuit. When you gain the
idea the eye moves downwards.
3. All the phenomena of the imagination are
in the spaces of the imagination.
4. In expression the line of the horizon is the
boundary of the positive and negative zones.
The zone of the positive extends from this line
THE HAND AND ARM IN GESTURE.
147
The zone of the
through 90° to the zenith.
negative through 90° to the nadir.
5. The hemisphere from zenith to nadir which
we face is positive in significance.
The hemis-
phere at our back is negative in significance.
6. It is upon the revelations and implications
of the sphere that the different angles made by
the hand and arm come to have absolute signif-
icance in gesture.
So ascending angles must in the nature of
things express degrees of certainty and affirma-
tion. Descending angles must express degrees of
doubt and negation.
(a.) The diagram will illustrate :
Zone of the Superior.
Evident.
Zone of Equality.-
It is so.
It may be so.
Zone of the Inferior.
Certainty
Doubtful.
No. Not so.
Without a doubt.
Impossible.
Let us reason upon the significance of this fact
that our gestures seem to bear a relation to the
figure of the sphere.
The globe upon which we stand, and its envi-
148
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
ronment, is the world our senses have built for
us.
It is the physical and sensible apparition of the
mental philosopher. A world of matter made
known to us through impressions, received by
special organs of sense, which impressions are co-
ordinated by the central mass of organic nerve
substance, the brain.
Now the testimony, continual and persistent,
of these sense organs, led by the eye, is that we
stand at the centre of a limited and fixed plane,
with a dome of sky above, and shutting down
upon us like a huge inverted bowl.
In vain we argue that these are sense relations
which modern science has dissipated. They re-
main realities to the savage and to the civilized
child.
Reason as we may, our every-day talk and ges-
ture betray us. We are in vernacular and at root
disciples of Ptolemy. Every day the sun rises
and sets, and the willing testimony of our sense
of sight is that the moon is larger than the day
star.
There is a constant tendency in us, which po-
etry and art foster, to revert to that early morn
of the race when appearances were realities and
the testimony of the senses final; when the earth
was the centre, the sun and moon the greater and
lesser lights; when the heavens were the "up-
heaved," and Hades the "cast down."
Thus are we inexorably chained to the rela-
tions of our environment.
THE HAND AND ARM IN GESTURE. 149
(b.) The crude conceptions of the most advanced writers
of the middle ages hardly parallel the concepts of the pres-
ent races of savages and of our children. For two hundred
years, including the sixth and seventh centuries of the Chris-
tian era, the ecclesiastic writers taught that the earth was a
square plain, at whose outer edges rose mountain walls, sup-
porting the dome of heaven.
This dome was a solid crystal roof, wherein the fixed stars
were set, and over which the sun and moon were pulled to
and fro in grooves by the angels.
Above this firmament, which separated the waters above
from the waters below, was the celestial cistern, through
whose windows the rain fell.
Above this was heaven, constructed with seven stories. In
the highest story dwelt Jehovah himself, seated on a dazzling
throne, surrounded by angels and saints.
Thus were the calm and majestic appearances of the o'er-
hanging sky, which everywhere fills the natural man with
awe and wonder, tortured from their sedate and reverent
meaning to light the obscurity of a Hebrew text.
Thus it is a necessity that each man stands
upon the globe, and at the centre of the Uni-
verse, and projects radial lines into the spaces
above and around him, and refers to all objects
as here or there, near or remote, from where he
stands.
But the globe he bears upon his shoulders,
what of that?
It is a world inexorably bound to matter, and
yet the farthest possible remove from it. A
world of concepts, images of the actual, pic-
tures of the real, — projected in some way that
baffles science to explain, form the convoluted
cortex of the brain, every picture being some ka-
150
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
leidoscope re-presentation of the forms, forces,
changes, and interactions of an environment of
matter.
And this is the world that man bears upon his
shoulders.
Let us summarize our conclusions arrived at in
two propositions :
Prop. I. For each human being there always
and ever exists a visible, material, or objective
sphere. He is at its centre, and refers to all ob-
jects as filling its spaces, or as outlined against
its periphery.
Prop. II. Through the operation of psychic
law, and by a subtle process which we may
never fathom, the great knot of nerve matter
that fills the skull projects just such another
sphere; its subjective image, picture, and corre-
spondence, with like periphery, spaces, and ob-
jects.
Now, bearing in mind the interdependences
and correspondences of these two worlds, which
are realities in every one's consciousness, let us
formulate three propositions bearing upon hu-
man expression :-
Prop. I. Man as a sentient being is both Im-
pressive and Expressive.
II. He must have the inward impression be-
fore he can give the outward expression.
III. Impressions always tend to manifest
themselves through some outward form, and,
when strong enough, always do so manifest
themselves.
THE HAND AND ARM IN GESTURE.
151
And, as a corollary from the above proposi-
tions, we add :
Those races, or individuals, have most ex-
pressive power in whom sensations are most
frequent and active.
(c.) This tendency of the Being to reproduce through
form and motion what has been received through the sense
organs is central in expression.
We may say that the Psychic in man seeks expression.
As we have shown, its three forms are voice, gesture, and
articulate speech. Through these forms it seeks to make.
itself objective.
But in the last analysis all is gesture. Voice is the ges-
ture of the larynx. Articulation, gesture of the mouth or-
gans. The face, a moving mirror of gesture.
We may divide all gestures into two classes:
1. Gestures which make reference to objects.
2. Gestures which express the states or con-
ditions of the Being.
In the first class we shall include the two kinds
of objects presented to consciousness: 1. Objects
of matter. 2. Objects of the mind. Or, objects
in real, and objects in ideal. The thing itself;
its picture.
Let us consider the first class of gestures, and
the special instrument by which these gestures
are made.
There are two faces with which we look out-
ward upon the material world and inward upon
the immaterial world.
These faces are our faces and our hands,-
the human face with its mental centre, the eye;
152
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
the human hand with its revealing centre, the
palm.
These two faces are the most active of all the
agents of expression.
(d.) The face leads in expression, and the eye leads the
face. The face more completely manifests the ruling con-
ditions of the Being.
The hand manifests more completely man's comment upon
existing objects. It is an assistant to the expressions the
face has already given.
It does what the face cannot do: it can handle the object,
sketch it, and project it in form into space.
There is a wonderful comity existing between the three
great agents, the Face, Hand, and Voice.
What the face cannot put into gesture is given to the
hand. What the hand cannot express is given to the voice.
These three agents, let it be noted, culminate their forms
of expression in the great songs of Liberty. Said Klopstock:
"The Marseillaise has cost Germany the lives of fifty thou-
sand of the best of her children."
The hand and arm, then, is the bodily agent
by which man makes real and present the objects
filling the spaces of two worlds.
Let us consider its fitness through structure,
function, and utility for its highest use,—that of
Expression.
Comparative anatomy has conclusively demon-
strated that the human hand and arm is the dif-
ferentiated fore-limb of a vertebrate animal.
The great naturalists, Owen, Agassiz, Huxley,
Broca, have demonstrated that essentially the
same structure of the fore-limbs is found in all
vertebrates.
THE HAND AND ARM IN GESTURE.
153
That the same bones which form the hand and
arm of man find their analogues in the fin of the
fish, the paddle of the turtle, the wing of the
bird, the hoof of the horse, the paw of the bear,
and the almost human extremity of the anthro-
poid ape.
In a word, these are, one and all, prophecies
of the human hand and arm.
The perfect differentiation of the fore-limbs
into hand and arm came with the acquisition of
articulate speech, and both kept pace with the
differentiation of the brain.
(e.) Emancipation must have been Nature's purpose long
before it became realization.
And when at last man could assume the vertical and lift
his face above the line of the horizon, and could sweep with
his eyes all the spaces of the visible hemisphere, — when he
began to utter consonant sounds in addition to inarticulate
cries, - the fore-limbs of an essentially anthropoid structure
kept pace with his emancipation, and released themselves
from taking any part in the lower office of the Vital nature,
locomotion, and slowly differentiated a human hand with
five sensitive lengths.
This differentiation of structure to fit a cor-
responding differentiation of brain substance,
and also of the trachea and mouth to fit them
for articulate speech, has kept wide open the
chasm between man and beast a chasm which
it would seem impossible ever to bridge.
Huxley admits that he finds no germ of an
art faculty in brutes. Darwin says that he dis-
covers no sense of humor in the beasts.
154
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
But the Abbé Bourgois finds that the man of
the quaternary period, perhaps even earlier than
that dim era, sketched the hair-clad cave bear
and elephant upon ivory with flint points.
And modern science confirms the saying of
Democritus that all the senses grew out from
the finger-lengths, and were modifications of
touch.
Wonderful prophecy of art attainment written
in structure :
:
The human arm is a thigh turned round!
Technically, in gesture, the arm consists of
three lengths arm, fore-arm, and hand. It is
a flexible lever, or rather a combination of lev-
ers, each with its own centre of motion, and
each capable of moving from another centre
than its own.
This arrangement of three radii and three
centres makes all forms of motion possible.
(f) Professor Benjamin Peirce of Harvard University
has proved, by rigid mathematical process, that if a lever
be made to revolve on a centre, and its free extremity be
made the centre of motion of another lever while the first
is revolving, and if a third lever be attached to the second
in the same way; not only the cycles and epicycles, by which
the old astronomers indicated the wanderings of the planets,
but all curves may be traced.
And if there is added a fourth, fifth, and sixth lever, the
tracing of all forms becomes possible.
Now, this is identically the system of levers and centres
found in the human arm and hand.
The fingers add the fourth, fifth, and sixth levers.
To man, assuming the vertical, with eyes surveying the
THE HAND AND ARM IN GESTURE.
155
1
three zones of Equality, Superior, and Inferior, with the two
fore-limbs differentiated, so that they may project radial
lines in all directions toward the periphery of the sphere,
what measure of progress is not possible?
Let us indicate these three centres of mo-
tion:
(1.) The centre at the shoulder. Here is the
centre of motion for the whole instrument.
The joint helping to form the shoulder is a
ball and socket joint. This arrangement gives
freedom and sweep of movement from this cen-
tre.
(2.) The centre at the elbow. Here is the
centre of motion for the fore-arm and hand.
Here we have the two bones of the fore-arm so
jointed with the bone of the arm as to allow
both a free, revolving motion and an outward
and inward motion.
This arrangement gives the important move-
ments of the hand known as pronation and su-
pination.
(3.) Centre at the wrist. Here we find the
centre of motion for the hand. Here eight
small bones are arranged in two rows, and are
so jointed as to allow two movements, a hinge
movement and a movement from side to side.
The centre of the revolving movement of the
hand is at the elbow.
Thus this instrument of levers and centres
combines all the necessary elements for strength,
ease, and gracefulness of motion.
4
156
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
In directing a gesture outwards the arm ini-
tiates the movement. Then the fore-arm turns
on its centre, the elbow; and last the hand, mov-
ing from its centre, the wrist, concentrates all
this accumulated motion into executive and sig-
nificant gesture. And so the hand climaxes ex-
pression.
(g.) The student will note that in man the evolution of
hand and arm is complete.
The bones increase in length and the muscles in size
from the fingers upwards. The shoulder projects beyond
the side of the body, the muscles of the chest and back aid
the motion.
There is the greatest freedom at the shoulder, the great-
est firmness at the elbow, the greatest strength at the
wrist. The whole instrument is at once a pliant chain and
a bar of steel.
What shall prevent the being with such formidable eman-
cipations from rulership upon the earth? We may well
claim for him the significant term of modern anthropology,
and call him ARCHONT, THE RULER.
In considering the lines of gesture, traced by
the hand and arm, we shall find the instrument
to be limited by two conditions:
(1.) The condition imposed by its structure as
a part of the organism.
(2.) The condition of the restriction imposed
through our ideas of Space, Time, and Motion.
The instrument restricted by structure has its
vertical and horizontal limits.
Let us trace these limitations :
The vertical sweep of the arm is from zenith
to nadir through 180° of a circle.
[
THE HAND AND ARM IN GESTURE.
157
The horizontal sweep of the arm is through
180° of a circle parallel with the line of the
horizon.
The diagram will illustrate the sweep of the
instrument through 180° of the circle.
450
45°
450.
Zenith. 45°
C
Nadir.
450
450
450


450
(7.) We beg the student to pause here and consider the
significance of these lines projected by the vertical and
horizontal sweep of the hand and arm.
Let him note: 1. They are veritable arcs of a circle.
2. Their projection in all directions by the sweep of the
instrument constructs the figure of the globe. 3. Recall
Hugo's lines: “ Man stands on one globe and bears another
on his shoulders."
arm.
Now you are prepared to assist at a new creation. Stand
erect, point to the zenith with the fore-finger of the right
Now give an easy sweep through 180° to the nadir.
You have traced an arc of longitude as upon a globe. Now
sweep the left arm in the same way as you have the right.
You have now traced two arcs and formed the grand circle
of your globe with its 360°. Now carry the right arm
across the chest and sweep through 180°. Face exactly in
the opposite direction and sweep through 180°. You have
traced a second great circle — the equator of your globe.
Now trace the lines of latitude and longitude, and you
158
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
face a hemisphere. It is the hemisphere of the Positive
Zone.
We will suppose these lines of latitude and longitude to
have been traced with electric light, so that your hemisphere
remains visible. Turn right about, face directly opposite,
produce your arcs, both vertical and horizontal. You find
yourself inside a globe. Now, perhaps, you recall the fact
that many great philosophic minds — notably Aristotle and
Plato, Oken and Swedenborg, Goethe and Böhme have
made the globe the symbol of wholeness and entirety.
Let us play, for the nonce, the magician! Expand near
lines into remote, near spaces into distant reaches, and you
find yourself at the centre. The visible hemisphere is above
and around you; you even possess the stars of your new
creation! All objects are filling spaces or are outlined
against the distant periphery.
Is there no prophecy lurking anywhere within the newly
created world you have thus swung out into space ?
The second limitation of the hand and arm
is the condition imposed by our ideas of Space,
Time, and Motion.
The whole class of ideal gestures are rooted
in the correspondences of these three great re-
strictions.
We have shown that Delsarte's Nine Laws of
Gesture can be justified only by reference to this
law. We shall discuss the subject at greater
length in a future chapter upon "The Realm of
Correspondence in Gesture."
We may draw the following conclusions from
our discussion of the relations existing between
the two worlds:
1. That all objects, both of matter and of
mind, fill the spaces or are outlined upon the
inner periphery of a projected sphere.
i
THE HAND AND ARM IN GESTURE.
159
2. That all gestures referring to these ob-
jects will be identical; for the lines and spaces
of the one will be the lines and spaces of the
other.
3. That each line of gesture will have refer-
ence to a radial line projected from a centre
where stands the speaker.
4. Each gesture, referring to objects, will
have the three technical elements of Direction,
Place, and Extension.
(i.) It is not the author's intention to give, in this trea-
tise, the technique of gesture.
He would refer the student to Austin's Chironomia for
an exhaustive treatment of technical gesture. All recent
manuals of gesture are founded upon this admirable trea-
tise.
A definition and illustration of the three technical terms
that indicate the relations of objects to the speaker and his
audience will come within the scope of a philosophic treat-
ment of the subject.
1. Direction refers to some point upon a line traced by
the vertical sweep of the hand and arm through 180° of a
circle.
We name five points of Direction: 1. Horizontal. 2. As-
cending. 3. Zenith. 4. Descending. 5. Nadir (see p. 157
for illustrative diagrams).
2. Place refers to some point upon the line traced by the
horizontal sweep of the hand and arm through 180°.
We name five points of Place: 1. Front. 2. Oblique.
3. Lateral. 4. Oblique backwards. 5. Backwards.
Technically, then, points of Direction are points upwards
or downwards. Points upon lines of longitude. And points
of Place are points in front, at side, or backwards. Points
upon lines of latitude.
3. And the term Extension refers to the outlining, de-
160
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
..
scribing, or emphasizing movement of the hand, by which
the speaker indicates the form, action, or some other prop-
erty of the object.
It will be readily seen that this technique establishes re-
lations of Time, Space, and Motion between the speaker,
his audience, and the objects filling the spaces, or outlined
against the periphery of a projected sphere, from whose
relations and implications there is no escape.
When the orator standing before his audience has given
the object or concept Direction at some point upon a ver-
tical, and Place at some point upon a horizontal line, he fre-
quently adds an outlining or describing gesture of the hand.
And this gesture is usually the climax or most expressive
moment in the Time of the action.
Let the student apply this technique of Direction, Place,
and Extension to the following selection according to our
scheme :
1. Project the subjective sphere. 2. Locate objects in its
spaces, corresponding with like spaces in the objective
sphere. Note carefully the five points of Direction and
Place and the climax of the outlining or expressive action
which we have called Extension.
Scaling yonder peak,
I saw an eagle, wheeling near its brow
Over the abyss; his broad expanded wings
Lay calm and motionless upon the air,
As if he floated there, without their aid,
By the sole act of his unlorded will
That buoyed him proudly up.
The student should mark that in all our ob-
jective gestures of the hand the palm rules. It
is the face of the hand. The palm leads the
wrist.
Whatever gesture traces an object, the palm,
at the most expressive moment, faces or looks at
the object.
THE HAND AND ARM IN GESTURE. 161
This is a courteous law in the etiquette of
gesture. Would
Would you turn your back upon so
august a personage as a cloud-capped mountain?
In technique, the fingers group themselves in
accordance with the analyses of the Greek sculp-
tors and orators, forever models of strength and
gracefulness.
The two middle fingers are held together and
are slightly bent inwards. The index and the
little finger are separated slightly from the two
middle fingers, the index nearly straight, the
little finger slightly curved. The thumb is held
backwards nearly on a line with the index finger.
(j.) A single caution should be whispered in the ear of
the earnest student of technical gesture.
We put our suggestion into two apothegms:
1. Conscious technique kills expression. It is the uncon-
scious that gives life.
2. A gesture put on is a grimace. It has no art expres-
sion.
11
་
CHAPTER XI.
THE GESTURES OF THE HAND AND ARM AS MANI-
FESTING THE STATES OF THE BEING.
In our last chapter we included all gestures
through which man manifests himself in two
classes:
1. Those which refer to objects, whether of
matter or of mind.
2. Those which more directly and intimately
translate or express the states of the Being.
Before we proceed to discuss the gestures of
the second class, let us review in a few proposi-
tions our conclusions of the last chapter:
1. By "the nature of things" man is a being
limited by three great restrictions, Space, Time,
and Motion.
These restrictions are unavoidable, always op-
erative, unchangeably the same.
They are the expression and summary of the
inevitable.
2. Man, as we find him on this earth, is so
conditioned, so bound by what seems to be, that
he, as a necessity of this seeming, projects the
spheres of two worlds and is inexorably bound
to their centres.
7
THE HAND AND ARM IN GESTURE.
163
These two worlds are: The sense world, the
world of matter.
The picture or ideal world, the world of mind.
3. We know of the reality of the world of
matter through the conclusive evidence of our
senses.
And we know of the reality of the world of
mind through the conclusive testimony of our
selves
our souls.
Of these two worlds the world of mind is the
most real, constant, and abiding.
(a.) Reflection will convince the thoughtful mind that it
is only the young to whom the world of matter is most real.
"Old age is our first lesson in living above the air," said
Garth Wilkinson.
Huxley quotes Descartes in justification of this idea.
He says: "The most elementary study of sensation justi-
fies Descartes' position that we know more of mind than we
do of body that the immaterial world is a firmer reality
than the material. So long as a sensation persists, it is a
part of what we call our thinking selves, and its existence
lies beyond the possibility of a doubt. Our sensations and
their relations make up the sum total of the elements of
positive, unquestionable knowledge."
4. The lines of gesture, whether referring to
the objects of matter or of mind, are identical.
These lines have reference to the spaces and lines
of a projected sphere.
With this brief review, we proceed to the con-
sideration of the hand and arm as an agent
through which the Being manifests its three
states or conditions.
164
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
At a recent banquet in New York, complimen-
tary to Salvini, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes thus
recorded the impression made upon him by the
great actor: "You might almost say his body
thought!"
A paraphrase of the genial poet's fit eulogy
removing the element of implied doubt― gives
us the central thought of our Synthetic Philoso-
phy of Expression.
"You may confidently affirm that the body
thinks," in the sense of ready assent and compli-
ance. In this ready response of the whole Outer
to Inner conditions, we find that in pantomimic
action the psychic approach is first shown in the
face, the eye leading the features. The hand be-
comes the agent for bringing all objects into the
field of consciousness that are at such a distance
from speaker and audience as to require pointing
out, or bringing into the field of vision. This
law follows, whether the objects exist in the ma-
terial or the immaterial sphere.
We assert this to be the primary office of the
hand in the Art of Expression.
In the slow process of development, if we con-
sult the facts presented by the theory of evolu-
tion, we find the hand and arm, as an agent,
lending itself to the Vital uses of the animal. So
we shall find this agent, as a structure, has in
long reaches of time adapted itself to its environ-
ment, and has shown (see page 99) a constant
and progressive development along the paral-
THE HAND AND ARM IN GESTURE.
165
lels of Structure, Function, and Utility; un-
til now, in the highest forms of Speech Art, it
becomes, next the face, the most expressive agent
the Soul has at its command.
Primarily, then, the hand and arm is the agent
of the Vital nature. It discloses the activity of
the Vital Being.
The fore-limbs of all the other land mammals
never release themselves from service to the Vital.
Their use is locomotion and occasional prehen-
sion, and their release in man came slowly and
painfully, and in exact correspondence with the
differentiation of the brain.
The story is told with significant force, when
we find that with the other mammals the fore-
limbs are united to the trunk and serve the body,
while with man the fore-limbs are structurally
united with the head and serve the Being.
So we may confidently conclude that the three
natures of man the Vital, Emotive, and Men-
tal will disclose themselves, not alone through
the body as a whole, through its separate agents
as parts, but also through zones of the separate
agents.
As we have shown in our last chapter, the arm
and hand, through structure, has three centres of
motion, — the centres of the shoulder, elbow, and
wrist.
Gestures from these centres translate the states
of the Being.
(b.) It is reported from various sources that Delsarte
166
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
taught the shoulders to be Vital in significance; the elbow,
Emotive; and the wrist, Mental.
The student should bear constantly in mind that such
broad statements, if they were given by Delsarte as a part
of a system of philosophy, must have been founded upon
data carefully observed, duly considered, and at length for-
mulated into conclusions that bear the force of law. Broadly
speaking, it seems true that in the gestures of the shoulders
the Vital nature predominates; in those of the elbow, the
Emotive; in those of the wrist, the Mental.¹
Let the student suspend judgment until he shall have
thought through a great number of analogies and correspon-
dences that lie near the surface of our subject; he will thus
refresh himself for the study of some years that must pre-
cede his enlightenment.
Let us consider each tract or division of this
agent, and see what grounds founded on struc-
ture, function and utility there may be for the
higher use of the instrument in Expression.
OF THE SHOULDERS.
The gestures of the shoulders are Vital in sig-
nificance. It is true that our strongest emotions
also move the shoulders; but the logic of struc-
ture seems here apparent, and if forced to classify
we must decide them to be Vital. The torso and
shoulders are knit together by strong bands of
1 While this treatise is going through the press, Miss Genevieve
Stebbins' Delsarte System of Dramatic Expression (Edgar S. Werner,
New York) is before the author. The lady is supposed to reflect,
mainly, the theories of Delsarte, as held by Mr. Steele Mackaye.
We quote Miss Stebbins (p. 107):
1. The shoulder is the thermometer of sensibility and passion.
2. The elbow is the thermometer of the affections and self-will.
3. The wrist is the thermometer of Vital energy.
T
THE HAND AND ARM IN GESTURE. 167
muscles, and act together in all Vital move-
ments.
When the torso is dilated and pushed forward,
the shoulders accommodate themselves to the
movement and are thrown backward.
The square shoulders, with chest eccentric, are
Vitally aggressive. This is the military attitude.
The shoulders brought forward, with chest con-
centric, are everywhere signs of physical and
psychic weakness and suffering.
With three agents in concentric action, viz.,
the head, torso, and shoulders, we have the lan-
guage of despair.
(c.) The Mental and Emotive blends, or composite ges-
tures, springing from the Vital genus, are full of expres-
sion.
Both Delaumosne and Arnaud have called the shoulders
the thermometer of the passional life.
This seems a happy term. For the shoulders seem to be
a veritable register of the intensity of passion. In the heat
of passion this Vital thermometer marks degrees. Thus,
slight sensibility is indicated by slight shoulder movements.
In great passions the shoulders disclose a wonderful freedom
of gesture; sometimes the shoulders are thrown upwards to
the ears.
Sulky and obstinate children often raise high the shoulders.
This means passionate resistance.
It is a blend of the Emotive and Vital states. In ver-
nacular there is truth. The street gamin's description of
his fight is full of literal and exact truth: "I got my back
up, humped myself, and pitched in!" In Sir Charles Bell's
Anatomy of Expression," the student will note a life-like
figure of a man shrinking back in abject terror from some
fearful danger. His shoulders are lifted to his ears, and the
expression of intensity strikes the observer.
168
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
And Darwin somewhere quotes from that close observer of
human moods, the authoress of "The Brownlows,” this de-
scription of a youth who determines not to obey:
He thrust his hands deep down into his pockets, and set
up his shoulders to his ears, as much as to say, 'Come right,
come wrong, this rock shall fly from its firm base as soon as
Jack would.'” But as soon as the child "got his own
way," he put his shoulders into their natural position.
A blend or composite gesture of the shoulders,
the shrug, has great significance.
Vital at root, it shows an invasion of the Men-
tal nature. The Mental rules in this expression.
It is rarely used in high Emotive states. It al-
most always is used in connection with turning
outwards the hands to show the palms, as much
as to say, "You see I am wholly helpless!" So
this gesture expresses with great force helpless-
ness, inability, impotence.
It presents strongly another Mental phase. It
is, universally among the Latin races, the sym-
bol of patience. Hence the artist's term, "pa-
tience muscles," applied to the muscles which
raise the shoulders.
Shakespeare makes Shylock say :-
66
Signior Antonio, many a time and oft,
In the Rialto you have rated me
About my moneys and my usances;
Still have I borne it with a patient shrug;
For sufferance is the badge of all our tribe."
Reasoning from structure, function, and util-
ity, the primary and natural language of this
agent would seem to be Vital, the Mental and
Emotive natures disclosing themselves through
THE HAND AND ARM IN GESTURE.
169
this agent as blends or composites. So we may
have from the shoulders gestures from the Vital
nature as their natural and primary expression,
and blends or composite gestures showing inva-
sions from the Mental and Emotive into the Vital
Being.
And these gestures, like those of all the agents,
are translated through three primary forms of
motion, — eccentric, concentric, and poise,— and
through the blends or composites of these pri-
mary forms.
OF THE ELBOW.
The gestures of this agent are Emotive in their
significance.
The language of gestures from this second
centre of motion of the fore-limb is, with all
mammals save man, Vital in significance. In all
land mammals it is one remove from the centre
of motion nearest the body, and in most it is the
first free centre, -the centre nearest the body
being bound closely to the side.
In man the assumption of the vertical and the
liberation of the fore-limbs has given three free
centres.
We may formulate this freedom of expressive
man thus:
THE FREEDOM OF THE THREE CENTRES.
I. The Vital moves all parts of the arm from
the centre at the shoulder.
170
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
III. The Emotive from the centre at the el-
bow.
II. The Mental from the centre at the wrist.
So, the Vital nature moves the greatest mass,
and the Mental nature the least mass.
A curious relation of intelligence to mass in
a mammal is seen in the gestures of the ear of
the horse.
(d.) These three centres translate the three states of the
Being. The Emotive is the middle term in the applied
logic of expression. So we repeat our statement that the
shoulder manifests the Vital nature, the wrist the Mental,
and the elbow (the middle centre of motion) the Emotive.
And this agent, as all the other agents, has three primary
motions the eccentric, poise, and concentric and the
blends or composites of these primaries.
We give the language of the three primary
gestures of this agent:
1. The elbow in poise indicates ease, self-
possession, calmness, an equable temper, mod-
esty.
2. The elbow eccentric (turned outwards) in-
dicates strength, audacity, arrogance, abrupt-
ness.
3. The elbow concentric (turned inwards)
indicates impotence, constraint, subordination,
weakness, humility.
(e.) The student will note that these inflections are im-
mediate correspondences and reveal the state of the Being
that dominates consciousness at the instant.
Nor should these gestures be taken alone, for it is
through the aid of assisting agents that the gestures of any
single agent get their highest significance.
THE HAND AND ARM IN GESTURE.
171
Thus, in the instance of a man preparing to fight, the
torso, head, shoulders, fists, as well as the elbows, are ec-
centric in form and motion.
The nature of the fight he is about to enter will inevita-
bly show itself through the comment of assisting agents.
The finest comment from the Mental and higher Emotive
will declare itself through the face, and the comment of the
Vital will be shown through the clenched fist (never absent
in Vital action) and the firm set teeth on the left side of the
mouth.
Bulwer, in "Kenelm Chillingly," has finely made this dis-
tinction between Vital and higher forms of aggressive ac-
tion. He says:
He says: "The natural desire of man in his attri-
bute as fighting animal is to beat his adversary. But the
natural desire of that culmination of man which we call
gentleman is to beat his adversary fairly."
We may then decide that the gestures of the
elbow are at root Emotive in significance, and
that the Vital and Mental natures show them-
selves as blends or composites.
OF THE WRIST.
The wrist is the centre of motion for the
hand. As we have indicated in another part of
this work, its structure conclusively shows that
it is guide and directing agent for the hand.
It accumulates the motion of the two upper
centres and reproduces both the freedom of the
shoulder and the firmness of the elbow. In con-
nection with the rotary motion it makes possi-
ble all forms of presentation of the hand. We
have the implied authority of Mantegazza, that
the language of the wrist is Mental in signifi-
172
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
cance. Indeed, its pliability, its suppleness, its
directive power, its wonderful strength, its rela-
tive position to the elbow and shoulder, all tend
to confirm the conclusion of this profound ob-
server.
(f.) The student hardly needs to be told that the orator
must have great suppleness and freedom at the wrist. An
awkward wrist will spoil a graceful hand. Remember, the
grace of presentation is in the wrist.
OF THE HAND.
Next the face the hand is the most expressive
agent at man's command. It is interpreter of
all languages. It is translator of all tongues.
With the aid of the face it can disclose all
moods of the soul.
And its structure predicts its importance in
the economy of art, as well as its more evident
importance in the economy of life.
Let us formulate these points of structure:
1. The hand is a structure forming the end
of a pliant chain with five sensitive lengths,
and capable of the widest and freest range of
motion.
2. The bones of the arm and hand decrease
in length and size from the shoulder down-
wards. This structure gives an instrument
capable of projecting radial lines; each seg-
ment, from the shoulder downwards to the tips
of the fingers, forming an independent radius.
3. As the bones of the structure decrease
:
THE HAND AND ARM IN GESTURE.
173
in length, size, and strength, the muscles and
nerves increase in complexity and distribution.
Now, given such an instrument— capable of
executing all forms of motion-and endowed by
its nervous structure with a fine sensibility; and
further, set this instrument out and away from
the great centres, the torso and the head, what
would a philosopher from another sphere infer
as to its place among the expressive agents?
"Ah!" he would exclaim, "such a formidable
instrument could only be of service to a being
of high endowments. Such a being would make
a ready acquaintance with its environment, and
would soon outstrip in intelligence all other be-
ings bearing the same general structure."
We may trace man's advance from brute con-
ditions in these successive differentiations of
wrist, palm, thumb, and four sensitive lengths.
No correspondence is plainer than that existing
between the intelligence and the hand. The
kind, quality and amount of intelligence in the
lower animals is plainly indicated by the struc-
ture of the part answering to the human hand.
Anaxagorus said, with wonderful prevision:
"Animals would have been men had they had
hands."
(g.) That the sense of touch should be the measure of
intelligence in the animal is a necessity of a nervous struc-
ture acted upon by an environment of matter and force.
Herbert Spencer has shown, by a wonderful chain of in-
ductive reasoning from natural facts, that in the sense of
touch commenced the evolution of the other senses.
174
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
In touch, we still find our strongest verification for our
other sense impressions.
Take a few examples from the great scientist's illustra-
tions. It will be admitted that, among birds, parrots show
the greatest amount of intelligence. This difference rests
in the greater development of the tactual organs. Few
birds can grasp and lift an object with one foot while stand-
ing upon the other. The parrot does this with ease. The
tongue, too, of the parrot is large, free, and constantly in
use. But, more than all, what it can grasp it can raise
freely to its beak, so it easily touches with beak and tongue
what its hand already grasps.
So among mammals, as a general rule, those whose limbs
terminate in digits are more intelligent than those with
hoofs. Thus the cat, the dog, the fox, show a higher intel-
ligence than the ox, the sheep, the deer.
Five sensitive toes are better than one or two masses of
horn to receive complex impressions. But most conclusive
of all is the hand of the half-reasoning elephant. The
trunk of this animal proclaims its superior sagacity. It
has entire freedom of pliant movement. It can project its
single arm into space, and with its hand touch all parts of
its body. With its hand it acquires a knowledge of form
and weight. It tests the strength of the bridge it must
cross. It gets an idea of motion by fanning itself with
branches of trees it breaks off; of hydrostatics and aero-
statics by raising and throwing water over its back and by
trumpeting forth blasts of air.
In the anthropoids points of structure proclaim the ani-
mal's limitations. In the acts of prehension and locomo-
tion the anthropoid is greatly superior to man. All the
limbs end in Vital hands. And there is no doubt that the
ape has perceptions of size, form, hardness, weight, flexi-
bility, and tenacity. Bound to the Vital zone, its expressions
are Vito-Vital in significance.
We may conclude, then, from our considera-
tion of the structure of the instrument, that the
THE HAND AND ARM IN GESTURE.
175
human hand will disclose a vast number of cor-
respondences existing between the soul, the body,
and the remote environment. Hence Delsarte
said of the hand that it is the intermediate agent
of the Soul.
In disclosing inner states we have called the
language of the shoulder Vital, of the elbow
Emotive, of the wrist Mental.
Which of the three states of the Being does
the hand disclose? We answer, Each and the
three. Like the will it lends itself to the state
of the Being while in action. And we may say
that the hand is the intermediate agent in bodily
movements, as the will is the intermediate agent
of the three states of the Being.
The hand epitomizes the body. Like the body
it has its zones or divisions through which the
states of the Being seem to manifest themselves
by preference.
We may call this preference of the Psychic
for a certain tract of the hand, or of any other
zone of the body, the natural language of that
division. So we may say without violence that
the natural language of the head is Mental, of
the torso Emotive, of the limbs Vital. And we
shall find ample grounds for like conclusions in
regard to the language of the hand.
We make a threefold division. The palm is
Emotive, the thumb is Vital, the forefinger is
Mental; the second and third (the ring finger),
taken together, are Emotive, and the little finger
is sensitively Mental.
176
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
Let us consider these tracts of the hand sepa-
rately. We will make our observations from
three points of view: (1.) Through points of
structure and function. (2.) Through suggested
correspondences. (3.) Through modes of mo-
tion.
OF THE PALM.
We have declared the natural language of the
palm Emotive. Let us see if we can find good
reason for giving this large tract of the hand to
the Emotive Being.
(1.) Structure. The microscope is said to dis-
close the fact that the pores of the skin are more
numerous in the palm than in any other region
of the hand.
Function. Through the pores of the skin a
large amount of waste matter is thrown off.
(2.) Correspondence. These facts of structure
and function would seem to give a physical and
structural basis for the widely entertained idea
that emanations from our affectional or spirit-
ual natures go forth from the palms of the
hands more copiously than from any other part
of the body.
(h.) The student will note how general and wide-spread
are these correspondences, founded in structure and func-
tion. Thus the laying on of hands, to signify the giving of
spiritual force, has been a leading ceremony in all the great
religions of the world. The placing of the palms upon the
head, in blessing, has been the strongest token of affection
with the leading races of mankind. Jacob and Christ
blessed with the hands. The closing exercise in our
THE HAND AND ARM IN GESTURE.
177
churches is not an unmeaning one; the willing of good with
extended arms and open palms upon the whole people is
beneficent giving. Add the outgoing breath to the palm
turned outward, and you have the spiritual blessing the hu-
man.¹
(3.) Motion. The presentation of the palm is
full of significance. Through structure and mo-
tion the palm is enabled to make three presenta-
tions: 1. The palm prone. 2. Supine. 3. Ver-
tical. Each of these presentations speaks its own
language. Each is a revelation of the Psychic.
The natural language of the prone palm is re-
pression; of the supine, releasing or giving; of
the vertical, repelling.
The supine permits. It
It says: "Yes, take, I
give." The prone prohibits. It says: "No, I
forbid." The vertical repels. It says: "Go,
I push you away." Again: the supine is impul-
sive, the prone compulsive, the vertical repel-
ling.
The right hand uplifted, palm vertical, epito-
mizes both body and Being. It represents both
the exterior and the interior as one.
It says:
"I take this oath. I solemnly swear. I call
God to witness and so manifest, or show my hand
1 We find in the most recent treatise upon the Delsarte system,
Miss Genevieve Stebbins' book (see p. 89), that the natural language
of the palm is given as Vital. This is supposed, also, to be Mr. Steele
Mackaye's idea. We quote Miss Stebbins: "The palm is Vital in
nature, revelatory in expression.
From the first part of this statement we feel obliged to dissent for
reasons just stated. With the second part of the proposition we can
agree; if the word “revelatory” (newly introduced into the English
language by the authoress) be a synonym for "revealing.”
12
178
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
openly, to signify that my whole Being is in the
act.'
دو
Thus we conclude the language of the palm to
be Emotive in its significance.
OF THE THUMB.
Structure. A glance at the structure of the
thumb discloses its natural language. It is Vi-
tal. It possesses the strength of all the fingers.
Its bones are larger than those of the other
lengths. It has greater compactness, in that it
has but two lengths and two joints instead of
three. It is bound firmly to the side of the hand,
and receives and communicates the rotary motion
of the elbow. It easily opposes and touches the
extremes of each finger, and can describe two
half circles,
one by a movement from its own
centre, the other by a movement in connection
with the motion from the centre at the elbow.
Its fleshy ball is the distinguishing character-
istic of the human thumb. Indeed, this muscle
may be said to make the extremity human. The
chimpanzee, whose hand is nearest human, is
bound to the Vital by the fatal limitation of a
dwarfed thumb and ball.
Finally, structure indicates that, through posi-
tion, size, free lateral movement, perfect mobility,
power to oppose itself to the more sensitive
lengths, the thumb may be classed as Vital in
significance.
Correspondences. The correspondences that
have crept into language are significant.
THE HAND AND ARM IN GESTURE.
179
:
}
We say of a human tool that he was completely
"under the thumb" of the man who used him.
The Roman nobles, sitting in state at the glad-
iatorial shows, showed mercy by turning the
thumb.
If they decreed the death of the prostrate glad-
iator, they held up their thumbs in the air. The
thumb turned down was the signal to save him.
(i) Shakespeare makes the witches in Macbeth scent evil
through the thumbs : —
"By the pricking of my thumbs
Something wicked this way comes.
""
And so the servants of the two rival houses of Montague
and Capulet showed their vital hatred : —
us?
"Do you bite your thumb at us
'We bite our thumbs!'''
The thumb is the Vital agent of the will.
When the two other agents of the will act with
it, it is well to retire from the contest! For the
corrugators that mark vertical wrinkles upon the
forehead between the eyes is will manifesting
from the Emoto-Mental Being. And now, if the
canine teeth meet with lips tense, we have will
born of the carnivora, the most animal of our
expressions of will. This last expression we may
call Vito-Vital.
OF THE FINGERS.
Structure. We have already indicated, per-
haps at sufficient length, the points of structure
of the fingers. From the shoulder downwards
180
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
the bones have decreased in length, and the mus-
cles and nerves have increased in fineness and
complexity. We have now reached in these five
sensitive lengths, the fingers, a great physical
complexity of bones, muscles, and nerves.
To add to its sensitiveness and delicacy of
discrimination, each finger has a little knot of
nerves upon its inner extremity, fibres of which
intertwine with the fibres of the muscles.
This uniting of the Psychic with matter is not
without significance.
So we unhesitatingly say that while the thumb
is Vital these sensitive lengths will disclose the
Mental and Emotive states of the Being. And
this truth is illustrated by their manifestations.
In gesture, the thumb adds its Vital language to
the Mental and Emotive language of the fingers.
This accounts for the fact that everywhere the
language of the fist means the same thing. It
signifies conflict the world over. For, note, the
thumb, which is Vital, binds the first and second
fingers, which are Mental and Emotive. The
gesture is a reflection from that "early morning
of the race," when disputes sought the ready ar-
bitration of brute and naked force.
(j.) The author of this treatise fancies that Delsarte be-
gan his observations upon human expression by noticing two
gestures so universal in all races of men, more especially
advanced races, as to compel the inference of a determinate
cause underlying the phenomena.
These gestures are: 1. The closing of the lids of the eyes.
2. The use of the forefinger in argumentative states. The
!
THE HAND AND ARM IN GESTURE. 181
1
gestures of the forefinger are Mental in significance. Mark
the disposition of the fingers in this gesture: The thumb
(Vital) bends inwards, and places its sensitive ball upon the
nail of the second finger (Emotive), partly covering it. The
third and fourth fingers bend slightly inwards. But note,
the little finger (Sensitive-Mental) slightly separates itself
from the third finger, and presents itself nearly straight and
parallel with the forefinger.
Thus the Being has manifested its three states,
and in this order: Vital, Mental, Emotive, Sen-
sitive-Mental.
The gesture of the forefinger is the gesture of
the Mental man. The Intellect is in full force
and action. It is analyzing, separating, selecting,
noting resemblances and differences. What the
man feels is held in abeyance. In his gestures
he only frees the forearm; when he feels deeply
he will free the whole arm. When he wills
strongly, and against formidable opposition, he
will knot the thumb and fingers to make the end
of a club with which to strike.
Mental sensitiveness and finesse rest in the
finger-tips. Take an illustration: A great met-
aphysician is arguing and enforcing some nice
point in the philosophy of Kant or Hegel. "Pure
reason," or "The essence of the Being," is his
theme. Note him carefully. See! he uses now
both hands. He applies the sensitive ball of one
finger to the sensitive nerve knot of another, or
he taps the palm of his left hand with the fore-
finger of his right. Note him now! He is sum-
ming up in close logical terms. You observe that
182
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
he links together his fingers in chains. He uses
both hands to make these chains. Now it is fore-
finger and thumb that are linked, now little finger
and thumb. And now, in the refinement of Men-
tal conclusion, he holds up in full view the left
hand, and opposes the tips of the little fingers.
Nothing can be more conclusive than this meet-
ing of correspondences at the finger tips. He
warms to the subject, and, taking the palm as
a tablet, he strikes little blows upon it with the
forefinger in his more forcible moods, and with
his little finger when he would express nice and
critical distinctions. But now he strikes the palm
with his fist, freeing the full arm, and you know
that a blend of the Vital and Emotive natures
has leaped into the saddle and seized, for the in-
stant, the reins of consciousness.
And so this great agent of human expression,
the hand, epitomizes the three natures of man.
Thus the Outer discloses the Inner.
(k.) We cannot leave this great agent of the Soul, the
hand, without some reference to its significance as an art
form; epitomizing the elements of the highest beauty in its
symmetry and proportion, and the harmony of the highest
gracefulness in its motion.
Artists agree that no part of the human body is so diffi-
cult to represent as the hand. Said Grimm: "Nothing
makes us so certain, at the first glance, where an artist stands
as his manner of forming the hands."
The human hand is in form an harmonious whole; for it
presents the two elements of beauty according to the dictum
of Aristotle. It gives (1) Uniformity through its straight
lines, and (2) Diversity through its curves.
THE HAND AND ARM IN GESTURE.
183
The fingers are straight lines, but how easily they glide
into curves! Note a few of the curves: (1.) The curved
line leading from the inner wrist to the first joint of the little
finger. (2.) The curves of the large muscle of the thumb.
(3.) The curves of the hemispheres at the ends of the fingers.
(4.) The curves of the shields, the finger-nails.
Note the element of variety introduced by the difference
in the length of the fingers. These lengths are made sensi-
tive to the highest degree by the knots of nerve matter which
lie underneath the skin of the ball of each finger.
In effect, this little knot of nerves puts the Psychic at the
finger-tips whenever art forms are to be produced. For
there is a systematic arrangement and a sympathetic agree-
ment of parts from the shoulder to the tips of the fingers.
Intensity in the shoulders; firmness in the elbows; strength
in the wrist; finesse in the fingers.
So the hand, with Reason to guide it, makes all mechanics
possible.
We have called attention to its structure of bones, joints,
muscles, and nerves. Strength and solidity characterize the
lower limbs; but twenty-nine bones, arranged in segments,
covered with pliant muscles vitalized by roadways of nerves,
make the most formidable instrument at man's command.
How this wonderful instrument has helped enforce corre-
spondences with the globe we shall attempt to unfold in our
next chapter, to which we ask the student's most serious
attention.
CHAPTER XII.
FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS. THE REALM OF
CORRESPONDENCE IN GESTURE.
THE great masters of primary instruction
founded their methods upon the science of Space,
Geometry.
In this they took the plain road that the nature
of the child pointed out. They taught, first, les-
sons of Form, by letting the child see, handle,
and trace the surfaces of objects.
Froebel used the cube and the ball; Pesta-
lozzi, the square and the circle; Herbart, the
triangle.
And this old method is now again the new
method. It was always Nature's method. Said
these great teachers of children: "Let these lit-
tle ones touch, see, handle, give motion to, test
resistance of, count with, add to, subtract from,
material objects." They placed the ladder on
the earth, and put the child's foot upon the first
rung, and turned his face towards the horizon.
They knew that as surely as the plant grows
toward the light, so surely the Being of the child
would climb towards the spiritual. So Froebel
epitomized his philosophy of education when he
THE REALM OF CORRESPONDENCE.
185
said: "I use these objects, and let the children
have them, that they may become to them, at the
last, forms of life, truth, and beauty." And this
is the most essential service that physical science
can render humanity; to show that, everywhere
and always, the material types the spiritual, and
that no manifestation can be unless a somewhat
manifests. For these forms and forces of matter
lead not to a blank wall! They are the outer
phenomena of the inner life. And could we push
inference that faculty of the
responds with physical seeing
mind which cor-
far enough, we
should see with this wider vision that all Expres-
sion rests in the great Law of Correspondence,
recognized as the foundations of their respective
systems of philosophy by Plato, Oken, Goethe,
Swedenborg, Wordsworth, and Emerson, and
practically applied by such great teachers as
Froebel, Pestalozzi, and Francke.
(a.) We may restate the Law of Correspondence, which
the student will find considered more at length upon p. 50
of this treatise :
Law: Man expresses his psychic states in the terms of his
environment. These terms are related to, and correspond
with, Space, Time, and Motion.
Or we may make another statement of the Law:
The Outer (matter), with its forms and forces, is type
and symbol of the Inner (Psychic), and is its correspond-
ence.
The broadest interpretation of this law is that all forms
of matter, whether organic or inorganic, disclose the Psychic
directly or remotely.
See how far-reaching is our conclusion. The Universe of
?
186
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
matter, presented as phenomena, is Outer; God is Inner.
Behold the Macrocosm!
And by parity of reasoning, justified by deductions from
the most advanced science of to-day, the human body is
Outer, the Psychic is Inner. Behold the Microcosm!
Let us consider, with what degree of definite-
ness we may be able to command, certain corre-
spondences, founded "in the nature of things,"
that go to make the gestures of the hand and
arm so expressive. Let us reiterate what we
have before said, that the Soul finds its direct
and open correspondence in the body; hence, we
have called the body its near environment. It
finds its indirect and more subtle correspondence
in all things else. All things else, then, we have
called its remote environment.
It was a happy phrase of Delsarte, that the
hand is the intermediate agent of the Soul. The
expressions of all the other agents are intensified
through its action. It reinforces their language.
With truth we may say that only as the hand
became human did it begin to be used to inter-
pret remote correspondences. Only nebulous
ideas of what filled the upper and nether voids
crept into the mind of the half-human represen-
tative of the quaternary period.
And the savage of to-day peers into the spaces
above him, and, pointing with his hand, says:
"Up there are the goods and the gods!" And
pointing towards the earth's centre, he says:
"Down there are the evils and the devils!
""
E
THE REALM OF CORRESPONDENCE.
187
Then sweeping the line of the horizon with
eyes and hands, and looking outward from his
body, he says:
66 Here and roundabout are the
things that are, trees, mountains, plains, rivers,
horses, buffaloes, enemies, and myself!" Admi-
rable savage! Admirable philosophy, and most
competent, based as it is upon the universal tes-
timony of the senses! The civilized child agrees
with you; and as we all came along the road of
childhood we all agree with you! For have you
not fixed, inexorably, relations, analogies, and cor-
respondences, so that for all time to come men
shall speak out their Vital survey of things in
your language, — the language of what seems
to be?
In the preceding two chapters we have at-
tempted to give the rationale of this our first
and most persistent correspondence, always and
ever present to us. Let us enforce our argument
by the use of the figure of the globe.
(b.) At the risk of repeating ideas that we have given in
another form, and in another part of our treatise, but to
make plain a central point in our discussion, we ask the stu-
dent's close attention to the following statements:
(1.) It is impossible to give free play in all directions to
the hand and arm without producing a series of curved
lines.
(2.) The widest and freest sweep of the instrument de-
scribes arcs of circles; and these arcs described by both arms
project the figure of a globe.
(3.) Through the limitations, fixed in structure, the hand
and arm projects the globe, and thus becomes the fit instru-
ment of the correspondences of two worlds.
Through the action of the nervous system it becomes in-
188
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
evitable that what we receive as impressions we give forth as
expressions.
The visible hemisphere has most constantly impressed
man's senses. He will therefore state his Vital, Mental,
and Emotive correspondences in terms of the globe.
Head, torso, hand, face, voice, speech, every agent of ex-
pression, must conform to this central law.
It is not without reason that the old metaphysicians made
the globe the symbol of wholeness and entirety. We ask
the student to most carefully ponder the correspondences
existing between the objective and subjective worlds, as illus-
trated by the figure of the globe.
THE LAW OF CORRESPONDENCE ILLUSTRATED BY
THE REVELATIONS AND IMPLICATIONS OF THE
GLOBE.
(a.) Zone of Equality.
(b.) Zone of the
Superior.
Light and Love.
Positive Pole
God.

The abodes of the Bles⋅ Heaven
The swelling place of
The Gods and the goods Liberty
The High and the Good The True and the Beautiful·
Benificence Trustfulness · Faith Duty
Fullness Plenty Material Blessings
Here and Now The Real and Actual. The known and certain⋅ |
The Zone of Sensations • Objects of Matter
The Vague and Uncertain · The Unreal and Doubtful ·
The Visionary Ills.
The region of Fear.
•
The Zone of the Unknown Evils. The Mysterious •
The Occult The Evil Passions Hate Revenge.
Rebellious Malevolence Fury of Hare
(c.) Zone of
The Cast Down⋅
the Inferior.
The Overthrown and
The abode of Satah or Spirit of Evil.
exposed to God of Spirit of Good
Negative Pole
Darkness and Hate.
Diet
THE REALM OF CORRESPONDENCE. 189
EXPLANATORY NOTES.
(a.) THE ZONE OF EQUALITY. Of the three zones of
the subjective world,' man alone inhabits and corresponds
with each. Animals even those nearest him in physical
structure — bound by instinct inhabit only the Zone of
Equality. This zone we might call the zone of the Vital.
Here the body, as organized matter in form, maintains
its equilibrium with its environment. It lives. This zone
is the zone of the objective real, and of its subjective coun-
terpart, the ideal. This is true only with man.
other animal is there a subjective correspondence definite
enough to be called ideal.
To no
Here are the objects that we may know by handling and
by the reports of our other senses.
This is the zone of man's greatest activities connected
with matter.
The spaces above
(b.) THE ZONE OF THE SUPERIOR.
the Zone of Equality, above the tops of the mountains
whither primitive man could climb, are the Zone of the
Superior.
So far as we know, or have any record, there is no race
of men which has not associated, in some dim way, the up-
per spaces with well-being.
""
There, in the upper space, was the "Heofon
(the up-
heaved) of our Saxon ancestors. There, the abode of war-
riors and heroes who had fought well on earth. There,
absence of all ills and discomfiture of all enemies.
When Christianity had leavened this Saxon savage, there
he placed God, the angels, and the saints.
And so strong is this instinctive leading in our natures
that there in the upheaved are the " many mansions" pre-
pared from the foundations of the world. There the loved
and lost with light in their faces await us. Ah! the analo-
gies and correspondences of the Zone of the Superior are
1 The student is referred to page 1 of this treatise for a fuller
discussion of the correspondences of the two worlds.
190
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
pathetic, and how enduring! What wonder that gestures
of face, hand, and voice are so instinctively bound to this
region of the beatitudes!
(c.) THE ZONE OF THE INFERIOR. — To primitive man
what was beneath the surface of the earth was hidden and
unknown. Before he had an idea that he lived upon a
round ball he located the obscure, the harmful, the evil,
downwards in the bowels of the earth. The evil mysterious
dwelt in the nether voids and caves, as the good mysterious
dwelt in the clear light of the upheaved. Doubtless the
darkness of caverns and the smoke and fire from the cra-
ters of volcanoes strongly wrought upon the imagination of
the primitive races of men.
So in the underneath they built the abodes of the evils
and the devils.
Appealing to this crude but universal instinct that builds
objective correspondences of subjective states, Dante con-
structed his Inferno and Milton his Hell.
So the two grandest poems written by man have peopled
the nether spaces with their gigantic imagery! With such
a fearful leading as Nature has given in the apprehensions
of man, is it strange that our gestures should enforce our
darkest passions by correspondences with the Zone of the
Inferior?
We thus see how inevitable it is that man
shall express himself in terms of the globe.
Continually impressed by the visible hemisphere
and by the restrictions of Space, Time, and Mo-
tion, he will inevitably express himself in the
terms of his environment; and if we had the
power to formulate these expressions, we should
reach that ultimate ground upon which a science
and art of expression would securely rest.
We are able, then, to state broadly, and with
all the force of law, that our gestures repro-
THE REALM OF CORRESPONDENCE.
191
duce the elements of Form and Motion in corre-
spondence with Space and Time, and from neces-
sity.
Expressive man reproduces, through form
and motion, correspondences of his psychic
states in exact terms of the globe.¹
We ask attention to a few of the correspond-
ences which root themselves in our ideas of
Space: -
Gestures of the hand and arm sweeping
through wide spaces indicate grandeur, large-
ness, comprehensiveness.
(1.) Through wide spaces of the Zone of
Equality, reference to great material or social
interests.
(2.) Through wide spaces of the Zone of the
Superior, the greatness and grandeur of ethical
and spiritual interests connected with man's
well-being.
(3.) Through wide spaces from the Zone of
the Superior through the Zone of Equality and
ending in the Zone of the Inferior, the rejection
of things that oppress.
Thus the space we sweep through with the
hand and arm becomes a measure of the great-
ness and comprehensiveness of our ideas.
Let us note the correspondences existing from
our ideas of time as indicated by gesture:-
1 How evident the foundation for the Nine Laws of Gesture ac-
credited to Delsarte, how natural the confusion as to their number
and order existing among his disciples!
192
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
(1.) Gestures sweeping through long arcs in
slow time correspond with poise of the Being.
They have dignity, majesty, and strength in
composure.
(2.) Gestures sweeping through long arcs
with quick motion add intensity to majesty
and strength.
They lose in poise and dignity, but gain in
power and strength. They show an invasion
from the Vital side of the Being.
(3.) Gestures sweeping through long arcs,
and ending in attitudes that draw the body
upward along the vertical line, disclose the
Emotive Being manifesting its highest moods
of power and strength.
Thus the Inner corresponds with the Outer.
The physical agents moving through space in
time indicate the quality, amount, and intensity
of the psychic energy.
(c.) The student will note that in the law of correspond-
ence is found the only justification for such empirical state-
ments as are accredited by his followers to Delsarte. Take,
for example, this statement of "The Law of Velocity:
""
The velocity of gesture is in proportion to the mass moved
and the power moving.
Read this in terms of correspondence, and we can readily
see that wide effects of gesture and voice must accompany
grand conceptions.
Here we find the root of the art of burlesque. Bur-
lesque is the art of giving ideas a disproportionate setting
forth, so we have the antithesis of grand gestures with so-
norous voice fitted to a trivial theme, or perhaps a grand
theme treated with trifling and inconsequent voice and ac-
THE REALM OF CORRESPONDENCE.
193
tion. Shakespeare sensed the true law of values and pro-
portions when he wrote : —
"Suit the action to the word,
And the word to the action :"
which was a unique way of enforcing outer correspond-
ences of inner conditions.
The hand and arm, as a necessity of struc-
ture, projects and traces arcs of circles from
three centres of motion. Each of these arcs has
its psychic significance rooted in the correspond-
ences of the sphere, as form, and with the oscil-
lations of the pendulum, as motion. These arcs
may be traced in both vertical and horizontal
directions, and by the sweep of the instrument
from either of the three centres.
The arc
traced by the hand and arm moved from the
centre, at the shoulder, will have the greatest
sweep, and hence will show correspondences with
the grandest moods of the Soul.
Gestures moving through wide spaces and
in slow time express the poise of the Vital,
Emotive, and Mental natures.
The arcs traced from the centre of motion at
the elbow are smaller, as the pendulum sweep is
through less space. As will be inferred, they
express largely blends of Emotive and Mental
states.
Arcs traced from the wrist centre are still
smaller. They express mainly the comment of
the Mental upon things near at hand. They ob-
serve, separate, and discriminate, and by the aid
13
194
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
of the fingers express Mental sensitiveness and
nice discernment.
Thus man, in reproducing in Space and Time,
through nervo-muscular motion, these arcs of
the sphere, prophesies the unrestricted; so, he
allies himself with the Infinite and the Unre-
stricted. Thus is the Hebrew Scripture justi-
fied in its sublime declaration that Man was
made after the likeness of God.
ence
We cannot leave our "Realm of Correspond-
"without reference to the correspondences
wrought into our very Being-to appear through
life as expressions-by the most formidable and
far-reaching of Nature's agencies, itself the cor-
respondence of the constant and the inevitable.
We refer to the great Law of Gravitation.
From earliest childhood we have been impressed
by the phenomena of gravitation. Our childish
comment stopped short at appearances. Things
heavy fell to the ground or were hard to lift
from it. Things light floated in the air. The
heavier the body the quicker it fell, the lighter
the slower its fall.
Now, this lesson of the gravities of things is
straightway and constantly reproduced in ges-
ture. What are these inevitable correspondences
but the effort of the Psychic to give values?
Let us imagine any agent, say hand and arm, or
muscles of the face, set in motion through psy-
chic energy and describing arcs in certain direc-
tions, through certain spaces, and in certain
THE REALM OF CORRESPONDENCE.
195
times, and the following correspondences are in-
evitable :-
(1.) Downward gestures correspond with
our earnest, emphatic, and most important
moods.
The height from which the gesture falls in-
dicates the importance and gravity of the mood.
The swiftness with which it falls—i. e., the time
it takes to fall-indicates the intensity. Com-
bine height and swiftness, and you indicate great
passions in great heat. Combine height and
slowness, and you indicate great passions under
great control.
(2.) Upward gestures correspond with our
light, unemphatic, volatile, and least important
moods.
But the depth from which the gesture pro-
ceeds, the direction in the upper spaces to which
it tends, the time given it, the form of the figure
it describes, the zone of the body, or the agent
from which it proceeds, all these circumstances
are so many comments upon the character and
significance of the upward gesture.
(3.) Poised gestures (i. e., gestures held in
equilibrium) correspond with poise of the
Being.
These gestures are the significant symbols of
the grand moods of the Soul.
The higher Emotive states, in strict accord-
ance with the law of correspondence, draw up-
wards the body in space along the vertical line.
196
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
It is the Outer or apparition projecting itself in
as large a form as possible, as if it would rep-
resent the stability, dignity, and wholeness that
a mountain stands for in a landscape. That was
a happy conceit of correspondence, of the Eng-
lish prelate, who declared Daniel Webster to be
"a walking cathedral."
(d.) The lead given by Nature in her law of gravitation
is wonderfully broad and adequate in its application to ges-
ture.
Let the student note a few correspondences based upon
our sense of gravity : —
(1.) OUTER EXPRESSION. The hand thrown obliquely
upwards accompanied by snapping with the thumb and
second finger-is our action when we throw away (up-
wards) some object of little importance or value.
INNER CORRESPONDENCE. By this gesture we reject
trivial ideas. Hence ideas we scorn, or treat lightly, we
throw into space.
Intense scorn or belittling adds to the gesture of snap-
ping with thumb and finger some play of the face, as an
askance look, or a measuring of the person with the eye
from the feet upwards. We look him over, that is, we quite
over look him, find him trivial and worthless, and say by a
complexity of agents in action, "He's not worth
that!
""
Take the antithesis of this action.
(2.) OUTER EXPRESSION. - Hand thrown obliquely down-
wards and backwards, palm prone, is our gesture when we
throw away things we do not want, things that are in our
way.
INNER CORRESPONDENCE.
from the Zone of Equality
By this gesture—if starting
we throw away ideas that
annoy us, but have not weight enough to oppress us. But
if the gesture starts from the Zone of the Superior, we cast
down ideas that we fear, hate, or that oppress us.
THE REALM OF CORRESPONDENCE.
197
A curious gesture of the deaf and dumb, and one often
used, when they would express their sense of an insignif-
icant or contemptible person, is to roll an imaginary tiny
bit of matter between the thumb and forefinger, and then
flip it upwards.
These correspondences we would argue to be universal.
They are older than spoken language, and are its accom-
paniment and interpreter. Strabo curiously mentions the
sign of "I don't care," or "It is not worth," in use three
thousand years ago.
He wrote: "At Anchiale there is a monument to Sarda-
napalus, a stone statue of him, as if snapping his fingers."
An inscription in Assyrian reads: "Sardanapalus built, in
one day, Anchiale and Tarsus. Eat, drink, and play; the
rest is not worth . . . that!'
The following diagram will represent the sig-
nificance of direct and oblique lines of gesture,
traced by the hand and arm :-

4
3
2
1. The vertical line expresses affirmation.
The correspondence is that of assent, accept-
ance, agreement, certainty.
The height from which the gesture falls in-
dicates the largeness or importance of the accept-
ance, agreement, or affirmation.
198
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
The quickness, or time, of the gesture indi-
cates its heat or intensity. The head uses the
same gesture to express affirmation.
2. The horizontal line expresses negation.
The correspondence is that of denial, non-
agreement, opposition.
In space nothing denies or opposes the vertical
so completely as the horizontal. This gesture of
the head is well-nigh universal for "no," as the
vertical is for "yes."
3. Gestures tracing oblique lines upwards
and outwards express the rejection or throw-
ing aside of light or trivial things.
4. Gestures tracing oblique lines downwards
and outwards express the rejection of heavy or
oppressive things.
In concluding our discussion of gestures of
the hand and arm, it will be seen that they fall
readily into the two classes discussed at length
in Chapter X. of this treatise: (1.) Gestures re-
ferring to objects whether real or ideal. (2.)
Gestures manifesting states of the Being.
To this classification we might add a third:
(3.) Gestures that are composites or blends of
the two classes.
These gestures correspond with complex states
of the Being.
We then shall have all gestures classified as
objective, subjective, and blends or composites.
(e.) The student will note that this classification includes
all possible gestures.
THE REALM OF CORRESPONDENCE.
199
Take an illustration of each of these classes:
1. OBJECTIVE. The comment of the Psychic upon a
distant mountain put into gesture of the hand and arm.
The gesture marks the position of the object in space, and
outlines its main feature of form. We may call this a Vito-
Mental comment of the Being.
2. SUBJECTIVE. The Soul's communion with itself in
view of a dreadful crime. The King in Hamlet:
"But, O, what form of prayer
Can serve my turn? Forgive me my foul murther?
That cannot be; since I am still possess'd
Of those effects for which I did the murther!"
Here the gesture would be concentric. The use of both
hands would show the intensity of feeling. The torso
would be the agent most deeply affected. The face would
show the deep Mental distress. The hand directed towards
upper torso and head, the nature of the remorse. The
whole body would give slow pendulum swing under the
sway of the Emotive nature.
3. BLENDS.-Complex subjective and objective states.
Milton's Satan, cast into Hell, attempts to find a refuge in
Space :
"Which way shall I fly
Infinite wrath and infinite despair?
Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell;
And in the lowest deep, a lower deep
Still threatening to devour me, opens wide,
To which the hell I suffer seems a Heaven!"
Here the gestures would alternate between eccentric and
concentric. The correspondences with space and time, as
will be surmised, would give high and broad action and
slow time, to mark adequately the grandeur of the poet's
imagery.
A few words should be written here, technical
in their significance, based upon our analysis.
Whether a gesture shall be effective before an
200
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
audience depends upon a variety of conditions,
but chiefly upon the condition that it shall cor-
respond with the psychic mood which the orator
would arouse. An effective gesture must insti-
tute the following relations. It must bear refer-
ence to:
1. The zone of the projected globe towards
which it is directed.
2. The zone of the body from which the
gesture proceeds or towards which it is di-
rected.
3. The direction it takes, and the point of
elevation or depression at which it terminates.
4. The time or rate of the gesture, whether
it be slow or fast.
5. The space swept through by the gesture,
whether vertically or horizontally; or if the
gesture be an attitude, the space and time held
by the agent.
6. The kind, proportions, and symmetries
of the figures which are described, whether
by straight lines, curves, or composite lines.
Finally, let the student note the broad corre-
spondence between the higher Emotive nature,
declaring itself through poise, and the globe,
symbol of wholeness and entirety.
Delsarte has been credited with the statement
of the law of poise.
Strength at the centre gives freedom at the
surface.
Let the student bear constantly in mind that
THE REALM OF CORRESPONDENCE.
201
it is always the centred Psychic that declares it-
self as freedom through the poise of the expres-
sive agents. Gesture, without significance, is only
a form of reflex action, an aimless discharge of
vital force. It is grimace in art. But precision,
harmony, gracefulness, find their highest expres-
sions in Poise, which is also the highest form of
freedom.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE HUMAN FACE AS AN AGENT OF EXPRESSION.
WE are all unconscious physiognomists. In-
stinctively we scan the face to know the man.
We say at a glance, without hesitation, and with-
out effort of reasoning, of a stranger: "He is
proud or deceitful;" or, "He is honest and trust-
worthy." When asked what we saw in that in-
stant of time upon which to base so decided
a judgment we are puzzled, and say: "Well, I
don't know that I can give any reason, but I
don't like his face; I am impressed that he is an
unsafe man."
This is common testimony. It cannot easily
be set aside. The art of interpreting the fea-
tures by direct beholding and without conscious
analysis is widely practised, and decisions based
upon it are unhesitatingly pronounced. Said
Darwin: "It has often struck me as a curious
fact that so many shades of expression are in-
stantly recognized without any conscious process
of analysis on our part." So Shakespeare makes
Lady Macbeth read at a glance her husband's dis-
traction of soul :
EXPRESSIONS OF THE FACE.
203
"Your face, my Thane, is as a book where men
May read strange matters."
"As for myself," said an eminent portrait painter,
a close observer of human features, "faces al-
most haunt me; and I am so apt to judge a
man by his face that I am sometimes fatally
tempted to act the police and order an arrest !
The human face presents a complex problem
of resemblances and differences, and it is the dif-
ferences that count; otherwise the marvel would
be still more marvelous that we are able to dis-
tinguish a known face among a thousand stran-
gers, and that, too, after the lapse of years. What
amazing psychic faculty it is that recalls a face
that for years has never once filled our conscious-
ness! "I should have known you if I had met
you in Japan, instead of here on Broadway; and
yet fifteen years have passed since I last set eyes
upon you!"
The problem of reading the countenance in-
creases in difficulty, if we stop to consider the
number of expressions possible to this surface, so
small that its expressive region can be covered
with a single hand. And there is a further in-
crease of difficulty, if we consider that expression
proper rests in motion, and so belongs to the
movable features. The form of the forehead and
chin are elements of proportion only, and with-
out the movable centres of eyes, mouth, and nos-
trils have only the negative value of fixed form.
Delaumosne, student of Delsarte, somewhere
Wor M
204
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
gives eight hundred as the possible expressions of
the eye directed towards the three planes of vis-
ion. This at first blush seems an enormous ex-
aggeration; but if we consider the operation of
the well-known law of permutation it is by no
means incredible.
Think a moment! There are but twenty-six
letters in our alphabet, yet no valuable thought
is in danger of getting lost for want of a sentence
in which to imprison it! Shakespeare used a
wonderful vocabulary of fifteen thousand words,
each word a permutation of these twenty-six let-
ters.
Nearly one hundred thousand words in Web-
ster's Unabridged, and one hundred and thirty
thousand in Ogilvie's Imperial Dictionary, are
permutations of twenty-six letters.
Now, suppose we apply this law to the moving
muscles of the face. According to Moreau, there
are fifty-five muscles that go to make this wonder-
ful organic complex, -the human face. What
wonder that the Soul, alarmed by the problem
presented through this complexity of moving mus-
cle, abandons the slow process of reasoning, cuts
the Gordian knot, and solves the problem by in-
tuition, or instantaneous impression made by the
whole of the moving mass! What delay would
there not be if logic or mathematics should apply
their slow processes?
(a.) We fail to grasp the almost infinite number of new
forms that it is possible to make from a limited number of
lines or objects under the operation of this law.
EXPRESSIONS OF THE FACE.
205
A
Think of the endless combinations of various and novel
forms that Nature presents, fashioned from the two kinds of
lines, straight and curved!
Jevons, in his "Principles of Science," gives an illustra-
tion of the operation of this law in the deals of the fifty-two
cards in whist. The number of distinct hands, in dealing to
four persons, is so vast that twenty-eight figures can alone
express it. If the population of the world, say one hundred
thousand millions, were to deal cards day and night for an
hundred thousand years, they would not exhaust one hundred
thousandth part of the possible deals!
The play of the fifty-five muscles of the human
face presents an intricate and baffling study of
form and motion. And it is the whole tract of
the face that we unconsciously coördinate to ar-
rive at a decision. That physiognomy has not
yet grown into a recognized science is not to be
wondered at. In studies of the human face, there
still exists that first confusion that puzzles the
mind when confronted by a great number of com-
plex phenomena. It is well to remember-if one
is led to despair that such phenomena can ever
be reduced to order-that alchemy led the way
to modern chemistry; that myth and miracle pre-
ceded authentic history; and that the astrologer
abused the silent majesty of the stars to foretell
human destiny long before astronomy had its
birth as science.
At present we have a mass of crude observa-
tions and unrelated deductions, which we cannot
put into statement. Some day a keener vision
will relate fact to fact, and conclusion to conclu-
206
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
sion; and what now seems conjecture will crys-
tallize into certainty.
In our study of form and motion of the human
face, let us recall the fundamental premise upon
which rests all expression :
In all organisms motion is manifestation:
at the base, Life; at the summit, Soul.
. Man is the only being upon the earth whose
manifestations are a synthesis of all form and
motion possible to animal life. He is the only
being whose expressions are the outcome of the
three perfected natures of the Being.
So it is not strange that he is the only animal
on earth that makes a conscious inward gesture;
the only animal who lifts his face to the vertical;
the only being on the earth who can think the
thought, "I ought," -moved by an impulse
higher than instinct. The expressions of all
other animals proceed from the Vital, with only
rudimentary traces from the Emotive and Mental.
And we find in the mammals nearest man - the
dog, horse, and elephant that perception and
memory, as in man, lead the Mental faculties.
So we find the expressions of the lion and the
tiger wonderfully strong, when excited by fear or
hunger, or when defending their young, or tear-
ing the flesh of their prey.
In the truest sense, if we take account of ex-
pressions from the Emotive and Mental, Pliny
wrote: "To man alone is given a face." And
in man alone have face, hand, voice, and articu-
late speech become ultimate and final.
7
EXPRESSIONS OF THE FACE.
207
We state the law which governs all sentient
Being, from the lowest forms of protozoa to man
at the summit of psychic development.
Law: Psychic manifestations are in pro-
portion to, and correspond with, their physical
supports.
Mantegazza thus formulates the law: Wealth
of anatomy and wealth of expression always
correspond.
(b.) No sentient life exists upon the earth outside a body.
The simplest life builds a cell and lives at its centre. The
Psychic thus attempts to realize itself. If the Psychic be
simple and homogeneous, its body will correspond, and the
expressions possible to it will be few and simple. As struc-
ture advances in complexity, expressions become varied
and complex. In the human body, structure has reached its
highest and completest development. And we may confi-
dently say that in the human face we find a structure with
such delicate complexities of nerves, muscles, and membranes
that no emotion is so subtile but that it may find a ground of
display in this living mirror. So we may say, broadly, that
the faces of animals give comparatively few psychic expres-
sions, and these mainly Vital.
Among the mammals, the larger carnivora are wonder-
fully expressive in manifestations of the Vital nature. With
them the muscular system is very large, and almost con-
stantly in action; the respiration and circulation extremely
active. There is a great waste of Vital energy, which must
be reinforced by frequent supplies of flesh. Hence the ex-
pressions of uncovering the teeth in order to tear their prey,
uncovering the eyes in order to see, uncovering the claws to
seize, make the action of the tiger or lion most formidable
Vital expressions.
On the other hand, the graminivorous animals, as the
sheep or ox, present few expressions. The skin of the head
208
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
is closely attached to the skull, and is capable of but little
motion; the lips cover the teeth, the eye has slow movement,
and the expressions are mild and show peaceful intent.
We may state the Law of Expression in animals nearest
man in structure :
The force of the expression is in proportion to the strength
of the principal action of the animal when in search of food,
or when aroused by resistance of its prey, or when acting in
its own defense or that of its offspring.
Of all living structures, the human face pre-
sents the greatest number and complexity of
physical supports for psychic manifestations.
Let us examine these supports, which in the
head and face lie open to our inspection:
(1.) The most remarkable characteristic of the
human head and face, as a structure, is the glob-
ular form of the skull, united as it is with the
prolate spheroidal form of the face. In this com-
bination of curved lines, and in the approxima-
tion of the face to the vertical, lie the highest
possibilities of expression through form.
(c.) The student will note that the curves of the outline
of the head and face give the element of uniformity; while
the broken lines of the face give the element of variety.
It is the union of these opposite elements that gives our
idea of beauty.
The infant's face is an outline made up of curves. The
man's face, an outline made up largely of broken lines.
Hence the infant presents, as the ruling expression, uni-
formity; the man, variety. The Greek face of Apollo ideal-
izes these elements.
In the human face, age lessens uniformity, but increases
variety. Uniformity is allied with monotony; variety with
picturesqueness. Young faces are symmetrical, but weak in
EXPRESSIONS OF THE FACE.
209
expression; old faces are picturesque and strong. Ah! the
rare beauty of some old faces, wrought into harmony by the
chisel of hard experiences, softened now by the mellow glow
of the sunset!
(2.) The solid parts of the skull and bones of
the face form the groundwork for the more ex-
pressive parts.
We look to the forms of the solid parts for in-
dications of character, and to the motions of the
softer parts for indications of present feelings.
The physical supports for facial expression we
may name as :
(1.) The skull and bones of the face.
(2.) The organs of the senses.
(3.) The muscles and tissues.
(4.) The brain and nerves.
(5.) The veins and arteries.
(6.) The beard, and lines of eyebrows and
lashes.
And we may say, speaking broadly, that in the
bones rests our sense of stability; in the muscles
our sense of motion; in the brain and nerves,
ourselves, our souls.
It is through and by physical supports, and in
no other way, that the Psychic manifests. And
this is true alike of the simplest as well as the
most complex organism.
There is no break in Nature's chain of sen-
tient life, and no departure from this central law.
We shall base our considerations of the expres-
sions of the face upon it. Let us particularize.
14
210
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
I. The basis of expression lies in the mus-
cular movement attendant on sensibility.
Experience tells us that wherever there is mo-
tion in an animal there is life. Motion in an or-
ganism is another name for life.
Reflex motions in a babe are assertions of life
before consciousness has been awakened.
II. The face is the primitive and basal agent
for the expression of feeling, and wherever in
the body pain or pleasure may be located, the
centre of expression is the face.
It matters not whether the pain or pleasure be
a sensation or an emotion, the face mirrors it.
So we have called the face the near centre of ex-
pression.
III. The special organs of sense are grouped
in the face, or in close proximity to it.
This is true, with the single exception of the
sense of touch, which is a sensation of the en-
velope or skin, but which is epitomized in the
ends of the fingers and in the lips.
This grouping of highly sensitive organs in a
small space, and surrounding them with a delicate.
network of tissues, easily set in motion, and, more-
over, adding outline and color to her display, we
may without violence declare to be Nature's an-
swer to Art, when she asked for the highest con-
crete expression of Form, Color, and Motion.
1 The author throughout this treatise adopts the nomenclature and
definition of Herbert Spencer in his division of Feeling into Sensation
and Emotion. Sensations are feelings arising in the bodily framework.
Emotions are feelings arising in the mental framework.
EXPRESSIONS OF THE FACE.
211
(d.) "Why," it is sometimes asked, "are there five senses,
and no more?" Simply because there are five states of mat-
ter to be sensed, and no more: solids for touching, liquids
for tasting, fluids for smelling, air-waves for hearing, light
for seeing; and some add a sixth sense, the muscular, and
so add weight for the muscular sense.
With our present organs we cannot sense electricity, mag-
netism, and actinism; and subtler forces, perhaps, even than
these, that may exist unknown to us. But Nature has made
provision for the reception of the strongest possible impres-
sions consistent with organization; hence not one, but five
sense organs. And, curiously enough, she doubles the organ
where a single function is to be exercised, but makes the single
organ do duty where there is a double function. So our most
powerful impressions are received through the double organs.
The ear only hears; it is double. The eye only sees; it is
double. But the nose and mouth are single organs, yet they
perform the double office of speech and smell, and speech
and taste. And these two organs, let it be noted, are two
externally, but are one internally. When they receive im-
pressions, they are two; when they are used to give expres-
sion in voice and speech, they act as one agent of the Being.
IV. The sense organs are in close proxim-
ity to the brain, -the seat of all sensation,
- with which they are connected by large
nerves.
These nerves are direct lines of communication.
They are wonderful physical supports for psychic
manifestations. Stating the problem in terms of
matter, they are direct roadways to and from the
brain. Stating the problem in terms of mind,
they are direct roadways to and from the self,
the Ego.
(e.) Of the sense organs, Luys has graphically said:
212
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
"These are the sole and unique open gates by which all
stimuli from without, destined to serve as pabulum vitæ for
the cortical cells of the brain, pass." Thus these organs
bring to the Soul the whole external world as impressions,
to be returned, through external motion, as expressions.
V. The face is plentifully supplied with
nerves that connect its muscles with the brain.
Relatively to its size, a larger number of nerves
are distributed to the face than to any other ex-
ternal part of the body.
From forehead to chin the whole tract is
closely packed with interlaced nerves and mus-
cles. Around the eye, including those moving
the ball, there are not fewer than ten distinct
muscles, whose innumerable fibres are vitalized
by innumerable nerves.
In connection with the cheek and mouth there
are eleven muscles. Double these figures for
both sides of the face, and apply the rule of per-
mutation to ascertain the number of possible ex-
citations, and it will be readily admitted that the
physical supports Nature has furnished seem ade-
quate to present the nicest shades and gradations
of expression.
(f.) Problem for the student of expression: Given the
highest conceivable intelligence, the finest Emotive impulses,
the most acute sensibility, and tell me what subtle passion
the human face could not portray.¹
1 Let the student of expression not think of the body as a mere
mechanism, or carcass of bone, muscle, and nerves, but as a living
unity of orderly parts, that through differentiation has at last be-
come fitted to give outward expression to the threefold nature of man.
EXPRESSIONS OF THE FACE.
213
We have indicated the physical supports to
psychic expression found in the face.
And we now come to the important question,
How is this delicate complexity of muscles, tis-
sues, and nerves operated?
Three factors are essential to the production of
a gesture: 1. A muscle. 2. A nerve.
expenditure of Vital force.
3. An
It is by this means that an emotion translates
itself as motion. A simple diagram will make
this plain :
Emotion as
a State
of the Psychic.
Muscle
Nerve
-Expenditure.
*
Its appearance
in the
Body as Motion.
Let us attempt a closer analysis. The simplest
motion is a result of the coöperation of these
three agencies. Let us trace the office of each
agent:
1. Muscles are instruments that remain passive
until their power is evoked.
They never move themselves. We may say
that moving muscles are Will made manifest.
In this outward expression the face leads. It is centre, and all else of
the body is periphery.
Swedenborg somewhere pictures a soul just released from its body,
who is about to be examined by "his inquisitors, the angels." They
look into his face, intently scanning its lines. Soon they extend their
examination over the whole body, beginning with the fingers of each
hand. "This was explained to me: 'Every volition and thought
of man is inscribed on his brain. Whatever, therefore, is in the mind
is in the brain; and from the brain is in the body, according to the order
of its parts.'
214
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
2. As structure, and seen fresh from an ani-
mal, muscles are red flesh, or lean meat. Upon
closer examination, a muscle is seen to be com-
posed of fibres, or bundles of fibres; and if ex-
amined by the microscope, each fibre discloses
fibres within fibres. In the last analysis possible
to the most powerful lenses, the ultimate fibres
lie in form of disks, like coins piled one upon
another.
3. The characteristic of a muscle is its power
to contract. To use a figure of speech, contrac-
tility is the soul of the muscle.¹ The fixed end
of the muscle is termed its origin; the movable
end, its insertion.
(g.) It will be well for the student to note that not all
muscles are attached to bones. The tendons of some pass
into soft structures, as, for instance, the orbiculars of the eyes
and the round muscle of the mouth.
4. In the play of the muscles, the larger and
coarser muscles are Vital in their expressions.
The finer and smaller are Emotive and Mental.
The finest and smallest are used to give the del-
icacy and finesse of artistic representation.
And this ratio is constant between the instru-
ment and office to be performed by the instru-
ment. Thus, the legs have large and coarse mus-
cles; their office is locomotion. The hand is a
1 It is a little curious that the creeping motion of the muscle, as if
a live animal were under the skin, should have so impressed the ear-
lier races that they gave a name that marked the appearance. The
Greek, Latin, and German gave the same name to the creeping ap-
pearance under the skin, namely, "a little mouse (Latin, musculus).
:
L
EXPRESSIONS OF THE FACE.
215
complexity of small and fine muscles, and the face
a most delicate net-work of muscular arrange-
ment.
Muscles, then, are our passive "physical sup-
ports," ready for motion when either passion or
will evokes their power.
What incites these muscles to activity? Our
answer leads to a definition :
The nerves are instruments interposed be-
tween the brain (or interior) and the outer world
(or exterior).
1. The nerves have but a single office,
that of receivers and carriers. They originate
nothing. They all have identically the same
composition. They are white cylindrical threads,
of an oily, albuminous appearance; and the ele-
ment phosphorus enters so largely into their
composition that Moleschott, thinking he had
pushed Nature to the wall, and had wrested from
her her greatest secret, cried out when viewing
the results of a subtle physical analysis of nerve
substance: "Ohne Phosphor kein Gedanke"
(without phosphorus, no soul!)
2. If moving muscles are will made manifest,
nerves are lines of communication, or roadways,
over which the will travels.
There are twelve lines of nerves leading from
the brain outwards, and thirty-one pairs, or
double lines, leading from the spinal cord into
the human territory.
3. Nerves are divided into two classes, in ac-
216
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
cordance with the nature of their functions. One
set of nerves carries impressions from without in-
wards; a centripetal wave of motion moves in-
wards. The other set of nerves carries impres-
sions from within outwards; a centrifugal wave
of motion moves outwards.
It was upon this physical fact, open to all
attentive vision, and simple as it may seem
when stated, that Delsarte based his three
modes of motion, eccentric, concentric, and
poise.
And further: it was this physical fact that
led straight to the deduction that the Psychic
uses these three modes of motion to manifest it-
self in three phases of one Being.
Gestures indicating that we are impressed or
affected move from outer towards the inner.
They follow the ingoing nerves.
And gestures made with the intent to impress
or affect others move from inner towards the
outer. They follow the outgoing nerves.
(h.) The student is urged to ponder these statements.
They are the key that unlocks the mystery of Delsarte. It
will appear the more evident the more it is thought upon,
that the outer (the body) is a veritable correspondence of
the inner (the Soul or Being), and that the motive (motif),
or inner desire, and the outer act, or external sign, are one
in expression.
In all mammals, the same relation exists be-
tween the nervous and muscular systems.
We may state the essential condition of mus-
EXPRESSIONS OF THE FACE.
217
cular motion.
pass into direct contact with the muscle substance,
so that the minutest fibres of the one shall closely
interlace and intermingle with the minutest fibres
of the other.
It is essential that the nerve shall
These relations of the two factors, nerve and
muscle, are open to analysis by the physicist.
The third factor essential to motion-an expen-
diture of nerve force, which travels along the
line and summons the muscle to action - baffles
all his search. Aided by the most powerful
lenses, he fails to detect the nature of this subtle
force. No amount of spying, weighing, measur-
ing, finds this psychic factor.
So all ends in an hypothesis. And this hy-
pothesis the physicist calls "freeing the forces."
The nerve irritant is said to set free the muscle
forces, and these liberated forces translate them-
selves as motion.
(i.) The freedom and ease with which our muscles most
frequently used are called into action, and the slight con-
scious effort we make to move them, would suggest that free-
ing the muscle force is made with slight expenditure of nerve
force.
This conclusion is believed to be a correct one. The free-
ing force is small as compared with the force set free. This
freeing of great forces by small forces is only possible in
cases of unstable equilibrium.
Thus, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon may lie in
stable equilibrium for years, side by side; but mingle them
in a certain way, and you have a substance, nitro-glycerine
(C, H, N, O,), which the slightest blow may convert into a
terrible agent of destruction.
3
218
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
So the physicist, Rosenthal, declares that these elements
lie in close proximity in our muscles, and in unstable equi-
librium; and it is the irritant nerve that releases the force
as motion.
But what a mystery of mysteries lies behind this physical
process, when an emotion rises in the psychic framework,
and the Soul rushes along the psychic pathway into the am-
ple region of the face, and moves its pliant muscles into
plastic forms!
And this coming forth of the spiritual into the area of
the face, to greet the material, gives ground for a new defi-
nition of Expression: "Expression is Feature in the mak-
ing!"
How this complexity of human features trans-
lates through its zones the three states of the
Being, and what is the language of these zones
and individual parts, must be left for another
chapter.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE HUMAN FACE AS AN AGENT OF EXPRES-
SION (CONTINUED).
If the human face be examined in profile, or
side view, it will be seen to present three natural
planes or zones.
1. The frontal, or plane of the forehead.
2. The nasal, or plane of the nose and cheeks.
3. The maxillary, or plane of the mouth and
chin.
Now if we examine the profile of an animal
with which man is closely allied in structure, say
the dog or horse, we shall find the same three nat-
ural planes, having the same general structure,
containing the same sense organs, and these or-
gans holding the same relative positions in the
face of the animal as in man.
But note an important point of difference be-
tween the face of the man and the face of the dog
or horse.
In the man the proportions of the face ap-
proach the vertical.
In the dog or horse the proportions of the face
approach the horizontal.
In a profile view of the human face the fore-
head, nose, and chin approach a vertical line.
220
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
Now, if we should sketch in imagination the
outline of the head of the horse, the dots indi-
cating the three planes of the face will show the
approach to the horizontal line.
PLANES OF THE FACE OF THE HORSE.
*
Frontal.
*
Nasal.
*
Maxillary.
Upon this analysis of the faces of man and the
animals nearest him in structure, we formulate a
most important principle as ruling in expres-
sion :
I. The human proportions are the vertical
proportions.
II. The animal proportions are the horizon-
tal proportions.
And as corollaries of the above propositions,
we further state:
1. As the planes of an animal's face ap-
proach the vertical the expression becomes more
human-like.
2. As the planes of the human face ap-
proach the horizontal the expression becomes
more animal-like.
Let the student exercise his imagination, and
apply these principles to the human features.
Take the three planes of the face, and throw
them successively out of the vertical, and note
the effect upon the expression. Take the maxil-
EXPRESSIONS OF THE FACE.
221
lary plane: Project the jaws, and you have ani-
mal expression of the lowest races of men.
(a.) Even at the centres of our highest civilizations, in all
our great cities, types of the carnivora, with heavy and pro-
jecting under-jaws, proclaim the persistency of the survival
of the animal and brutal Vital.
No language in the whole realm of Form speaks' such
wonderful correspondences as are found in the arrangement
of the bones of the face.
The author would refer the student interested in the ex-
pressive language of form and motion to Dr. Rimmer's “Art
Anatomy, "1 the most exhaustive treatment made in modern
times of the application of Anatomy to Art.
Take the nasal plane: The jutting out of the
cheek-bones and the depression of the bridge of
the nose give marked animal expressions.
Take the frontal plane: If we retreat the
forehead away from the vertical, we get decided
expressions of low mental power.
If, on the
other hand, we unduly project and enlarge the
forehead, we get the expression of deformity.
But project the forehead only slightly beyond
the vertical, and proportion the rest of the fea-
tures to this projection, and we get that "poise"
and majesty of form given by the Greek to the
front of Jove, and by Michael Angelo to his con-
cept of God as Creator.
And we may say that ideal perfection of the
human face, given the world by the Greek, de-
creases animal proportions to a minimum, and in-
creases to a maximum the human proportions.
1 Dr. William Rimmer's Art Anatomy, in eighty-one plates from
original drawings. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston.
222
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
Other defects of individual features usually ac-
company a departure from the law of the ver-
tical.
Thus the depression of the bridge of the
nose is accompanied by the forward opening of
the nostrils, with high cheek-bones. The wide
mouth, by thick lips.
So we may define the highest type of the phys-
ical presentation of man as, -
The animal whose face presents proportioned
organs along a line closely approaching the ver-
tical.
And further: that the proportions of the
planes of the face, and of its individual fea-
tures, bear a constant and fixed relation to the
development of the Vital, Emotive, and Mental
states of the Being.
(b.) Reasoning from these correspondences of the outer
features with the inner Being, we adopt the general conclu-
sions, accredited to Delsarte, regarding the expressions of
the three zones of the face:
1. The language of the frontal zone is Men-
tal in significance; of the nasal zone, Emotive;
and of the maxillary zone, Vital.
Thus the human face is the most expressive
summary of the Soul. All psychic motion re-
flects itself in this mirror of flesh. As the burn-
ing-glass, with its double convexity, converges
the sun's rays to a focal point of intense light
and heat, so the face becomes the focal centre of
psychic radiance and clemency, or of psychic heat
and violence.
EXPRESSIONS OF THE FACE.
223
Let us examine the face in motion, and en-
deavor to interpret the language of its three
zones, and of each tract of its territory.
We shall find that the three modes of mo-
tion that interpreted the language of the head,
torso, and limbs, as agents of expression, will
also interpret the play of the features. These
modes of motion are eccentric, concentric, and
poise. And we shall further find that each fea-
ture of the face, as the forehead, nose, cheeks,
mouth, chin, ear, and eye, may reveal some Vital,
Emotive, or Mental state through both form and
motion. And still further: we shall find blends
or composites of psychic conditions expressed by
the coöperative action of two or more of the fea-
tures.
(c.) The modern science of evolution confirms the above
conclusions. It teaches that structure and functions of the
organs of sense in man have been slowly differentiated from
the structural type so common to mammals to meet a similar
differentiation of the inner or psychic structure.
The mouth and nose of man present a most convincing il-
lustration of correspondence. From service in the animal
economy, these organs have been, through progressive stages,
differentiated to serve the purposes of speech. So we can
say, with the utmost confidence, that the speechless man of
the later tertiary or early quaternary period had a progna-
thous face, with undeveloped vocal organs. Before man had
articulate language he bore a muzzle instead of a face.
With this brief examination of the human face
in profile, let us take a front view, that we may
better examine its structure and the disposition
224
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
of the sense organs with their surrounding mus-
cles.
We found it essential to human expression that
the facial outline should approach the vertical.
We shall find it equally essential that the indi-
vidual features of the face shall approach the
horizontal.
This disposition of outline and features, as
structure, presents the highest types of the hu-
man face. It realizes Aristotle's definition of
beauty: "The union of contrary principles hav-
ing a ratio to each other." These contrary prin-
ciples were held to be uniformity and variety.
Their union in the face gave the Greek idea of
its highest expressions of strength and beauty.
So we may state the law of expression, ruling in
human features, as formulated by the greatest
art teacher America has produced. Let us call
this formula
RIMMER'S LAW.1
The highest forms of the human face are
found where the vertical is attained in the fa-
cial outline, and the horizontal is attained in
the disposition of the features.
1 It is but an act of simple justice to say that in the author's opin-
ion Dr. William Rimmer's Art Anatomy is the most perfect compen-
dium of artistic knowledge, practically applied, now extant. This
great teacher and lecturer deserves a statue of purest marble. He is
still held in the memories of those students who listened to his art
lectures with a warmth of regard approaching reverence.
The book contains nearly 900 drawings, illustrating in the fullest
manner the movements and purposes of the human form in the ex-
pressions of the passions. Houghton and Mifflin, Boston, 1884.
EXPRESSIONS OF THE FACE.
225
A few simple lines will illustrate the force of
this law:
PLAN OF THE DISPOSITION OF THE FEATURES IN THE OFFENSIVE PASSIONS.
Arrogance.
Pride.
Contempt.
Hatred.
Malice.
Features
کر
Anger.
Rage.
Revenge.
Jealousy.
towards vertical
PLAN OF THE DISPOSITION OF THE FEATURES IN HARMONIOUS MOODS.
Calmness.
Contentment
Dignity.
Serenity.
Repose.
Features
Benevolence.
Charity.
Wisdom.
Harmony.
horizontal.
(d.) Let the student study critically these lines, for in
their disposition and arrangement lurks the secret of beauty
as defined by Winckelmann. Said this great master of theo-
retic art: " Beauty consists in harmony, unity, and sim-
plicity. All beauty is heightened by unity and simplicity,
as is everything which we do or say.
"If we consider a form in separate pieces, it loses
thereby; when we coördinate all the parts into a whole,
beauty comes into it.
"The forms of a beautiful body are determined by lines,
the centre of which is constantly changing, and which if
continually produced would never describe circles. They
are consequently more simple, but at the same time more
complex, than a circle which, however large or small it may
be, always has the same centre, and either includes others
or is included in others."
15
226
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
In studying the two figures the first will illustrate de-
partures from both Rimmer's and Winckelmann's laws.
It will be seen that eight lines give the key to the expres-
sions of the animal passions. With man these passions find
their root in the Vital Being. Hence savages show their
gross psychic natures through strong Vital gestures of the
features drawn away from the horizontal. As man emerges
from savage conditions the features constantly tend towards
the horizontal.
As an exercise in determining the lines of passion, let
the student pronounce the name of the passion,
as for in-
stance, pride, and then note which of the eight lines are
engaged in the portrayal when he attempts to illustrate by
calling to mind strongly the passion.
We may then conclude, from these considera-
tions, that the highest forms of human expres-
sion those springing from the Mental and
Emotive Being will combine and summarize
the two principles we have stated, namely, the
law governing the outline and the law governing
the disposition of the features.
(e.) The ideal Greek face will best illustrate these two
principles. In faces which we call beautiful we find the
antithesis of all that we pronounce ugly. Let us consider
the separate features presented by the best specimens of
Greek art:
1. A forehead, tracing the line of the vertical, or perhaps
protruding a little beyond the vertical, accompanied by a
slight recession of the jaws. 2. Cheek-bones so small as to
be scarcely traceable. 3. Bridge of nose so high as to be
nearly on a line with the forehead. 4. The alæ of the
nose joining the face with only slight obliquity, and in front.
view the nostrils scarcely seen. 5. Mouth small, upper lip
short and its line bow-shaped. 6. The outer angles of the
eye directed slightly downward from the horizontal.
Well-defined frontal sinuses, but not too large.
7.
EXPRESSIONS OF THE FACE.
227
The antitheses of these points of structure and disposi-
tion of features produce ugliness.
of mental and moral inferiority.
They are as well signs.
They show the sway of
the baser passions, and the descent towards the animal.
The face presents three centres of motion.
The moving agents-the muscles-group
selves around these centres.
group them-
These centres are also the seat of the three
most expressive organs of sense.
These groups of muscles surround the eyes,
the nose, and the mouth.
So, each of the three zones of the face pre-
sents its form and its centre of motion.
Thus the frontal zone presents the forehead
as form, and the eye and brow as motion.
The nasal zone presents the nose as form and
the nostrils as motion.
The maxillary zone presents the jaws as form
and the lips as motion.
The human face is a study of form and mo-
tion. And it is upon our estimate of the sig-
nificance of these two elements that we almost
unconsciously judge the man. In solving the
problem we rapidly coördinate the presentation
made by form and motion :-
1. The whole face is passed in review as at
rest, the relative force and value of the forms
presented are coördinated, and we pronounce
our estimate of the character.
2. The face in motion is scanned, the present
or instant mood is perceived by intuition or "di-
228
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
rect beholding" of certain arrangements of the
moving parts which we coördinate, and we pro-
nounce our estimate of the present feeling.
We find in the face, as in the other agents of
expression, three forms of gesture, namely, bear-
ings, attitudes, and inflections.¹
And three modes of motion, eccentric, concen-
tric, and poise.
Which reveal the three states of the Being,
the Vital, Emotive, and Mental.
Having given in our first chapter upon the
face some account of the physical supports by
the aid of which the Psychic manifests, and in
this chapter having stated two general laws
upon which we conceive expression largely to
rest, we proceed to consider the language of the
separate parts and organs, that through their
relation one to another, and through motion —
make the human face the most expressive agent
man has at his command through which to mani-
fest his complex nature. And as we have found
life, mind, and soul, in each division of the body,
we may reasonably expect to find these three
conditions or phases of the Psychic existing in
their highest activity in the wonderful complex-
ity of form, motion, color, and sensibility-the
human face.
1 For a full discussion of the significance of bearings, attitudes,
and inflections, see pp. 71-74.
יד
EXPRESSIONS OF THE FACE.
229
OF THE FOREHEAD.
The language of the forehead, as form, is
Mental. With this decision all the physiogno-
mists agree. In all the mammals we may divide
the skull into two parts: (1) the brain case, and
(2) the bones of the face. In man we shall find
the organ of the mind, the brain, filling a larger
skull — when compared with the face than in
any of the larger mammals.
(a.) The deductions of the phrenologists Gall and Spurz-
heim, Combe and Fowler, that the Mental faculties occupy
the frontal regions of the brain confirm our decision. So,
common observation and scientific deduction are agreed
that the language of the forehead is Mental. But in further
confirmation of our opinion we add the logic of a structural
law thus formulated by Sir Charles Bell :
Outward forms result from the degree of development of
the contained organs.
We conclude, then, that a well developed and propor-
tioned frontal zone indicates intellectual superiority.
We note certain correspondences of parts of
the face based in structure. These correspond-
ences of the outer declare like correspondences
of the inner :-
1. When the forehead is low and retreating,
the cheekbones are large and projecting.
Here the Vital rules and the expression is ani-
mal-like.
2. A fine forehead seldom accompanies
coarse animal-like jaws. As the jaws advance
the forehead recedes.
230
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
This observation has the force of law in
structural development, both of races and in-
dividuals.
3. A convex or rounded forehead indicates
an undeveloped mind.
All babes have this kind of forehead. The
simplicity of the outward form is an exact cor-
respondence of the simplicity and homogeneity
of the Psychic. Culture the mind, and the
convex disappears, the rounded forehead is in-
vaded by straight lines which indicate Mental
growth. The homogeneous and simple is giving
way to the heterogeneous and complex.
4. The prominence of the forehead in form
of a horizontal ridge, immediately above the
eyebrows, indicates aptitude for long-continued
Mental labor.
(b.) The author finds this observation confirmed by the
most profound physiognomists, by Redfield, Huatt, Lavater,
and Alexander Walker.
We note a few indications of character based
upon the disposition of the muscles of the fore-
head, as shown by the wrinkles:
1. We have the most ancient authority of
Aristotle, that a forehead loaded with wrinkles
indicates a gloomy, morose, and overbearing dis-
position. If these wrinkles are massed over the
eye cruelty is indicated.
2. Deep vertical wrinkles of the forehead
show that the will has been greatly exercised.
If these wrinkles are invaded by horizontal
EXPRESSIONS OF THE FACE.
231
1
lines marking the middle of the forehead, there
is evidence of great Mental pain. Both Darwin'
and Duchenne agree with this observation.
3. Permanent horizontal wrinkles of the fore-
head are indications of clemency, good judg-
ment, and habitual poise of the Being.
(c.) Ah! how time and the experiences of life chisel the
placid faces we brought into the realm of our opening man-
hood! If the higher Emotive has held sway lines of uni-
formity have been invaded by lines of variety. Heredity
has let in our dead ancestors to peep through our living
masks. Our better or baser environment, social or busi-
ness, has helped to make or mar the mirror of flesh. What
an ennoblement of form and feature old age should make
us heirs to!
OF THE EYE.
The eye is the centre of expression both of
the face and of the body. Whatever sensation
or emotion stirs the other centres, some single
muscle, or group of muscles in the face, responds,
and the eye becomes, as it were, the focal point
toward which all the radial lines of feeling con-
verge.
(d.) The movements of the eye are the measure of psy-
chic activity. The student will find that when quick move-
ments of the eye are made from side to side, or up and
¹ Darwin, in his Expressions of the Emotions in Man and Animals,
introduces, on page 180, a copy from a photograph by Duchenne of
a young man simulating the influence of great grief. The expression
is realistic to a degree. The union of the vertical furrows with the
transverse furrows in the middle of the forehead produces a mark on
the forehead like a horseshoe. So good an actor was the young man
that when Darwin showed the photograph to fifteen persons in turn,
fourteen answered, "despairing sorrow," great grief," "suffering,"
66 endurance," etc.
232
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
down and around
even with no mental motive there is
awakened an impulse to psychic activity. So slow move-
ments of the eye lead to psychic inactivity. Few persons
can move the eyes rapidly without a strong impulse to move
the body. So, if the eyes be intensely fixed, the body be-
comes still.
The language of the eye is Mental. It is the
controlling agent in Mental expressions.
The eye and its surroundings are divided into
active and passive agents of expression.
The
The eyeball is passive and receptive.
eyebrow, upper and lower lids are active and ex-
pressive. Passivity and receptivity ally them-
selves with the eyeball and its organized parts.
Activity and hence expression ally them-
selves with the brow and lids.
Oken called this organized structure of pas-
sivity and activity-the eye-"the nervous sys-
tem in a state of purest organization." He said:
"In the eye the brain unfolds itself in order to
turn toward the light."
(e.) The wonderful complexity of arrangement presented
in the mechanism of the eye bears out Oken's seeming ex-
travagance of statement. Note the wealth of adaptation
and contrivance. There are seven matched socket bones.
A self-adjusting curtain with its delicate fringes of hair.
A projecting eyebrow. A ball made up of two segments
of two unequal spheres, one of the segments from a larger
sphere than its companion. Six muscles, one of them
geared through a pulley to aid in the revolutions of the
sphere. Oil and tear glands with an accompanying waste-
pipe. In front a transparent lens, the cornea, and behind
this the crystalline lens for focussing the rays of light. An
>
EXPRESSIONS OF THE FACE.
233
expanding and contracting pupil. An aqueous and vitreous
humor. A sensitive plate, the retina, of the finest and
most delicate texture, with a yellow spot, so called, where
the picture seems centred and where alone it is perfectly
clear to vision, the rest of the picture being sketched in.
Lastly, the minute rods and cones which the microscope
alone discloses, and where at last the known borders upon
the unknown.
In expression the eyeball is an indicator. It
shows the direction and position of objects in
the spaces of two worlds.
It never expresses passion. It simply looks
toward the object that occasions the passion.
(f.) This can easily be shown. If we cover the lower
part of the face, including the mouth and the alæ of the nose,
and then give as full an expression as possible of anger or
rage putting into the look the utmost force and fierceness
the most critical observer cannot tell whether we de-
signed to express anger or rage, or were merely looking in-
tently at some object.
The function of the eye is to look out and to
look at. This is true of all the mammals. With
man alone has it an added function, namely, to
look inwards or in upon.
So the human eye has but two expressions;
but if we combine these two with the expressions
of the fifty-five muscles of the face, we need
many figures to sum up the whole delicate play
of the moving mirror.
The two expressions of the human eye are:
(1.) Attention. (2.) Intention.
The eye is attentive when it looks outward,
towards, or at, an object.
234
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
It is intentive¹ when it looks inwards, or to-
wards the subject or Ego.
(g.) The student will note that these two movements of
the eye, eccentric and concentric, show the relations of the
mind towards object and subject. The mind looks at, and
gets data for reflection; it looks in, and reflects upon the
data it has gathered.
And it is not a forced inference, but one founded in cor-
respondence, that the eye-like the globe which it types-
would make an entire revolution, in our reflective states, and
look in upon its material empire of thought, the brain, did
not its physical limitations forbid.
It does the next best thing. It closes its shutters, shuts
out the light, and gives the Ego a chance to retire that it
may reflect or contemplate!
And we shall find that the amount of closure of the lids
over the globe of the eye corresponds with the amount of
intentive activity.
The structure of the eye discloses its primary
function to be that of outseeing, and that the
function of inseeing came only with the develop-
ment of the Mental nature. In man and all
mammals the eye, in structure, is a camera.
simple fact, it is a box and lenses so arranged as
to take pictures of external objects upon a plate
of sensitive nerve structure, the retina.
In
Its primary function being to let the mind see,
it, of necessity, must face the object, just as if
the photographer wishes to take a picture, he
must place the camera in position to receive the
impression.
1 A word happily used by the old psychologists. It is thus defined
by Locke. Intention is when the mind with great earnestness and of
choice fixes its view on any idea, considers it on every side, and will
not be called off by the ordinary solicitation of other ideas.
EXPRESSIONS OF THE FACE.
235
These two functions, then, of outseeing and
of inseeing, will account for a very large num-
ber of expressions.
(h.) There are clearly two roots from which spring the
large body of gestures that make up human expression :
(a.) The objective. Performing the act because it is of
service in the support of life or some of its interests.
(b.) The subjective. Using the gesture as a symbol or
correspondence of some psychic state.
Exaggerate the act of looking at, or physical
seeing, and you have gestures of perception or
mental seeing.
Note carefully the action of the eye in the
following series:-
1. Interest in an object or subject opens the
eyes to take the impression.
2. Curiosity slightly exaggerates the act of
physical seeing.
3. Surprise adds somewhat more to the strength
of the action.
4. Joy still further exaggerates the action.
5. Hope adds to the action of outseeing.
6. Ecstacy, the sight of the seer, the vision of
the mystic; utmost exaggeration of physical out-
seeing.
And the antithesis of all these acts of out-
seeing holds true in another class of feelings.
Thus, exaggerate the act of physical not-see-
ing and we have gestures of reflection or mental
inseeing:
1. A want of interest in an object or subject
236
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
turns away the eyes, that no impression may be
taken, or,
2. A desire to think about or reflect upon
what has been seen or perceived closes the eyes
that there may be no disturbance of the think-
ing.
We present two series: —
1st Series: Dissent, depreciation, disdain, dis-
gust.
In
Note how the eyes rule the expression!
dissent the head aids the gentle closure of the
eyes by presenting the correspondence of un-
stable equilibrium. The Ego says: "You see I
am out of poise regarding your proposition."
Depreciation. The eyes first look askance at
the object, then are partly closed and turned
away. The head assists by a gesture thrown ob-
liquely upwards.
Disdain adds to the gestures of depreciation
motions of the nose and mouth.
Disgust adds to the gestures of disdain stronger
gestures of nose and mouth, as though the Ego
said: "You are an offense to my eyes, nose, and
stomach."
2d Series: Reflection, meditation, self-exami-
nation, thoughtful consideration.
In this series the eyelids close over the ball.
The amount of closure and the stillness of the
features show the amount of self-introspection.
The Ego retires to its Mental centre, reflects, com-
munes, absorbs itself in thought.
EXPRESSIONS OF THE FACE.
237
This conscious slow movement and approach of
the eyelids to cover the globe of the eye is a
purely human gesture. No animal save man
makes it. The mammals nearest him in struc-
ture close the eyes in fatigue, and sleep, or from
extreme irritation. With man, the slow openings
and closures of the lids are attitudes, and are
vastly significant of reflective states.
(i.) It is a matter of common observation, that round and
open-eyed people see much and live much in the senses, but
think little and reflect less.
Narrow-eyed people, on the contrary, see less objectively,
but vastly more subjectively, and think much. Observe the
eyes of the child, how open and round they are! He lives
to receive impressions. He is full of outseeing impulse and
desire; for curiosity is an inheritance dating back to his ear-
liest ancestors. All the while he is gathering materials,
moved by motives that are a near approach to the instincts
of animals who lay in a store for winter.
all
What shall turn his eyes inward? When will he reflect?
when reason? Fear not; his schoolmaster is as old as Adam,
and always abroad! His name is Experience. He turns
our errors, our neglects, our failures, our ambitions
our shortsightedness and round and open-eyed seeing-to
good account. He compels us to see again, and reflect upon
our seeing.
THE THREE PLANES OF VISION.
It is through the eye that we inhabit space.
The telescope and the microscope are complemen-
tary eyes, through which we discover the infinity
of the great in space and the infinity of the little
in structure.
And we have shown how it is that, through
238
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
correspondences of vision, our gestures bear a
constant and fixed relation to the visible hemi-
sphere.
Hence the three planes which man alone sur-
veys, the planes of Equality, the Inferior, and
the Superior.
The globe of the eye, in outseeing, sweeps
through 180° of a circle. Like the hand, it
traces, by its motion, vertical lines from zenith to
nadir. And it traces lines parallel with the hori-
zon through 180°.
By this means it surveys the three zones of
two spheres,—the objective and the subjective
spheres.
Thus man is conscious that he stands at the
centre of the Universe, and projects radial lines
from where he stands into the infinite spaces.
In his littleness, he is a finite speck of matter
crawling upon the face of a cosmic sphere; in
his greatness, he is a Soul who creates anew the
orderly procedure, unfolding, and continuance of
the Kosmos.
CHAPTER XV.
THE HUMAN FACE AS AN AGENT OF EXPRESSION
(CONCLUDED).
OF THE EYEBROW.
We have found that the globe of the eye,
through structure and function, is an indicator.
The eyebrow is a revelator. The eye without the
brow simply sees. It takes no active part in ex-
pressing passion. With open lids it sees the
outer. It closes the lids when it would see the
inner.
The language of the eyebrow is Mental in sig-
nificance. With primitive man, we may say that
its language was Mento-Vital.
(a.) With primitive man, surrounded by the complex
phenomena of nature, curiosity must have been wonderfully
active. It is so to-day in our present races of savages, and
in all children.
The desire to see a new object leads; the desire to take it
in hand follows. Note the action of the eyebrow.
Says Darwin:¹ "Attention, if sudden and close, gradu-
ates into surprise, and this into astonishment, and this into
stupefied amazement. Attention is shown by the eyebrows.
being slightly raised; and as this state increases into surprise
they are raised to a much greater extent."
1 See Expressions of the Emotions in Man and Animals, p. 279, chap.
xii. D. Appleton & Co., New York.
240
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
The degree of the raising of the eyebrows is a measure of
the degree of the surprise.
Primarily, then, the eyebrow was raised in order more
plainly to see the object, that the Mental nature might draw
its inferences.
But this Mental gesture, growing out from the
root of simple curiosity, coördinates with gestures
of other zones of the face, if the Vital and Emo-
tive natures invade the Mental condition. Thus,
if surprise and astonishment are followed by fear,
terror, and horror, the other muscles of the face
join in forming the expression.¹ From the cen-
tres of the mouth and nose the Vital and Emo-
tive natures would add their expressive gestures.
The whole body would sympathize with these
facial movements. In horror, the platysma would
make the neck rigid and wrinkled, the muscles
of respiration would add their expression, sweat
would exude from the pores of the skin, and trem-
blings shake the bodily frame.
Through the action of the eye and eyebrow,
coördinated with gestures from the other zones of
the face, we have revelations from the Vital and
Emotive natures.
We conclude, then, that reasonable deductions
from both structure and function will declare the
expression of the eyebrow to be Mental.
1 This statement that other muscles must coördinate with the gesture
of the eyebrow is fully justified by the remarkable experiments of Dr.
Duchenne. He has shown in one of his photographs (see Mécanisme
de la physionomie humaine) that a widely-opened mouth, with eyebrows
only slightly raised, results in a meaningless grimace.
EXPRESSIONS OF THE FACE.
241
(b.) Students of Delsarte in America, and Delaumosne
and Arnaud in France, have represented him - the latter
by implication, though nowhere directly as teaching the
following as the language of the active agents of the eye:
In expression, the eyebrow is Mental; the upper lid is
"Moral;
the lower lid is Vital.
The author of this treatise prefers the statement that the
three states of the Being reveal themselves as blends or com-
posites through these active agents. He has not yet found
reason to adopt the division accredited to Delsarte by these
representatives.
By the same authority, Delsarte is represented as giving
the following as the expressions of the organic parts of the
passive agent, the eyeball:-
The white of the eye is Vital in expression; the pupil is
Mental; the iris is "Moral.” ¹
While the firm and tenacious structure of the sclerotic
coat, which covers the posterior four fifths of the eyeball,
may give some ground for the inference that the white of the
eye is Vital in significance, it is extremely hazardous to at-
tempt to connect the pupil with the Mental, or the iris with
the Emotive (Moral) nature. While we can find no satis-
factory basis for these divisions of the eyeball, nearly all
physiognomic authorities agree in regarding the eye as the
centre of Mental expression.
1 While the above lines were being written the author received the
latest contribution to the Delsarte literature, The Delsarte System of
Dramatic Expression, by Miss Genevieve Stebbins, — which is sup-
posed to reflect the teachings of Delsarte through Mr. Steele Mackaye.
We quote Miss Stebbins (p. 138): "The pupil is Mental; the white
is Vital; the iris is 'Moral.'"
We are constrained to ask whether there is any basis, founded in
fact, or in fair inference, for the idea that the pupil is Mental and the
iris "Moral" in expression, except a blind adherence to the univer-
sal formula,” which Delsarte conceived must apply "to all sciences, to
all things possible,' the formula of the Trinity? This unsupported
inference may some day be proven to be fact. We submit whether
there be at present sufficient data for its application to the organic
structure, the eyeball?
16
242
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
We cannot leave this part of our subject with-
out making an observation of value in determin-
ing many complex expressions in which the eye
leads.
It will furnish the key to a large number of
complex psychic states.
The corrugators (muscles that knit the brows)
are muscles of the will.
If now we accept the empirical statement of
Delsarte, that the will lends itself to whichever
state of the Being dominates consciousness, we
shall find that the surrounding muscles of the
eyes in connection with the corrugators give ex-
pressions in which we may detect blends or com-
posite states of the Being.
Let us illustrate by first naming the objective
and subjective elements that must enter into our
problem :
1. The three sides or phases of the Being,
Vital, Emotive, and Mental.
2. The three modes of motion, eccentric, con-
centric, and poise.
3. The agents of the Being, the eyes, the eye-
brows, lids, and corrugators.
4. The determining power or will, the imme-
diate agent of the Ego.
Of these agencies, the first and fourth are in-
terior. The second and third are exterior.
The motion of the exterior agencies in space
and time corresponds with the quality, amount,
and intensity of the passion.
EXPRESSIONS OF THE FACE.
243
Take one of the primitive passions, that of
astonishment; and note the action of the external
agents.
1. Astonishment: Presented through the ac-
tive agents of the eye as a composite or blend of
the three states of the Psychic.
The eyes in astonishment are wide open, the
eyeballs are parallel, the lids and brows are
raised. The motion is first eccentric, and then
poised.
We quote Darwin: "Astonishment is ex-
pressed the world over with remarkable uniform-
ity." The Vital act is that of trying hard to
see a material object. The Mental and Emotive
acts are those of trying hard to see a mental ob-
ject. So, we find the Vital nature leading the
expression in beasts, -more especially with
the carnivora,
in savages, and in all children.
It is the Mental blend, Mento-Vital, in civilized
children that gives the peculiar round-eyed ex-
pression of wonder.
In intense astonishment these expressions of
the eyes are assisted by other agents. The whole
body is stilled. There is a cessation of breath-
ing. The lower jaw falls and the mouth is wide
open. It is curious, too, that several races of
men in astonishment give a prolonged whistle.
This whistling sound is often condensed into the
interjection whew!
Note, too, the correspondence which astonish-
ment makes with space. We again quote Dar-
244
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
win: "A surprised person often raises his opened
hands high above his head, or by bending his
arms only to the level of his face. The flat
palms are directed toward the person who causes
the surprise, and the straightened fingers are
separated."
If the student would reflect through gesture
the astonishment of primitive man, when con-
fronted by something unusually startling and
unexpected, let him with a single impulse give
the following action :-
(a.) Open eyes and mouth very widely. (b.)
Draw in forcibly the breath. (c.) Throw both
arms above the head. (d.) React with the whole
body.
2. Firmness: In astonishment, or in lighter
manifestations of the same emotion, as wonder,
curiosity, or admiration,—it will be noticed that
the corrugator muscles were not called into ac-
tion. But firmness is so nearly allied to the will
that we may define it as "will in action.'
Now, in the knitting of the brow, by the ac-
tion of the corrugators, we have the external
sign which the eyes give of all the emotions that
ally themselves with firmness. All the aggres-
sive gestures of whatever agent of the body are
accompanied by the action of these muscles of
the will.
(c.) Dr. Duchenne, in his "Mécanisme de la physionomie
humaine," calls the corrugator the muscle of reflection.
This is only true when in our reflective moods we meet with
EXPRESSIONS OF THE FACE.
245
opposition. Thinking, pure and simple, stills the face; the
brow remains smooth until some obstacle in our thinking
arises, then a frown passes over the forehead. The frown
is the outer correspondence of "force in will." No gesture
of the face is truer to its office. Says Darwin: "Men of
all races frown when they are in any way perplexed in
thinking." And Sir Charles Bell ranks the corrugator as
"the most remarkable muscle of the human face," and
says:
"When the eyebrows are knit energy of mind is ap-
parent.”
If firmness as a Mental condition is strongly
invaded by the Vital and Emotive natures, we
find added to the gesture we have already given
-the knitting of the brow-strong gestures of
the mouth and clenched fists, showing a tend-
ency to revert to the savage and Vital rage of
our remote ancestors.
3. Stupor: Nothing could be adduced that
more strongly argues the immanence of the Soul
in the body than the appearance of the external
in stupor. In this state the Mental and Emotive
are paralyzed. The Vital makes an instinctive
effort to restore order in the physical realm.
But the will lends no assistance. This condi-
tion of affairs leads to the following gestures of
the face.
There is first a struggle of the Vital to com-
pass the act of seeing; so the eyebrows are raised
and the lids lifted. The eyeballs, unable to ad-
just themselves so as to take an impression, are
slightly turned upwards. All the muscles of the
face are relaxed and the jaw drops. It is clear
246
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
that for the time the Mental and Emotive na-
tures are helpless. And if the most persistent
psychic force the life element-cannot restore
force—the
order in the physical realm, so that the Mental
rule may be established, the phenomena called
death will ring down the curtain and close the
drama.
(d.) No matter what estimate may be given as to the
purely philosophic value of the division of the Psychic into
the three natures, Vital, Emotive, and Mental, the teacher
will find the division of great practical value in his work
with students. So definite and clearly marked are the ex-
ternal gestures of each of these three states of the Being
that the student soon comes to regard them as three person-
alities, each ready, in turn and on occasion, to invade con-
sciousness and to assume the rôle of chief actor.
The author is confident that the expression of whatever
passion, based upon such an analysis, will attain a degree
of definiteness and clearness of outline impossible to be at-
tained under the old systems.¹
And why not, if manifestations clearly show that the
three phases of the Psychic can seize the body and express
themselves through it?
We therefore postulate, with Hermann Lotze, the exist-
ence of an entity called the Soul, which inhabits and mani-
fests through its body.
The greatest of purely subjective thinkers, Hegel, has
given such a wonderful analysis of the passions that we
may be excused if we quote him.
Like Oken, he connects expression intimately with “the
entity called the Soul." To read his realistic sketches is
1 The author of this treatise may be excused, perhaps, by teachers
of expression, if he emphasize the value of the method above named.
He has taught the large classes of the Boston School of Oratory by its
use, and with a degree of success which he is certain could not result
from purely abstract methods.
EXPRESSIONS OF THE FACE.
247
good medicine to one sick with the miasma of materialism.
He thus graphically describes grief as "that powerless self-
interment of the Soul." What could better describe the con-
centric motion of the return of the Being to its centre?
Terror "is the collapse of the Soul before a seemingly
unconquerable antagonist."
Shame "is an anger of man against himself, a reaction
against the contradiction between what he ought to be and
what he is, a defence of the Inner against the Outer."
Laughter "results from the perception of a sudden in-
troversion or immediate contradiction, either physical or
psychical. We feel our substantial poise or balance, the in-
substantial balance of another amuses us. So the Inner
immediately suffuses the smiling countenance, while the
Ego's repulsion of the ridiculous is expressed through the
voice by repeated sudden explosions of sound - ha ha!
ha!"
OF THE NOSE AND CHEEKS.
In our examination of the frontal zone of the
face we found form in the outlines of the fore-
head, and motion in the gestures of the eye and
its surrounding muscles.
So, in the nasal zone we shall find form in
the outline of the nose and cheeks, and motion
in the alæ of the nostrils.
We may state, in the language of two great
observers, the principle ruling the expressions of
this zone.
Dr. Rimmer thus formulates :
When the nose attains its highest develop-
ment the Vital or animal ceases to rule the ex-
pression.
And Oken: The human face approaches per-
248
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
fection when the nose is parallel with the
spinal column.
(a.) To these conclusions of a great teacher of art an-
atomy, and of a great philosophic observer, we may add
that of a great artist, Michael Angelo: "The stronger the
deviation of the nose from the vertical, the further the face
deviates from a perfect form."
The Greek nose is the most ideally human of all the fea-
tures; all other noses are a compromise with animalism.
There is a substantial agreement among close
observers that the form of the nose is an index of
character. Thus, Lavater, Redfield, Alexander
Walker, Gratiolet, and physiognomists generally,
agree that large hooked noses indicate a love of
power, desire to rule, acquisitiveness, aggressive-
ness; while the opposite type- the thin, straight,
and finely-fashioned nose-indicates sensitive-
ness, delicacy, a retiring and unaggressive char-
acter, and decided æsthetic tastes.
(b.) A study of the nose in the accredited busts or por-
traits of Cæsar or Napoleon will reveal in every line the vast
ambitions of these colossal characters.
The depression of the bridge of the nose and
the forward opening of the nostrils are allied
with animal features; and wide-spread nostrils,
opening outwards, usually accompany staring
eyes, and denote "frog-like stupidity."
1
(c.) Dr. Rimmer declares that a high nose is seldom found
in a face of the animal type.
1 Let a beginner, says Le Brun, draw a head, and the face will al-
ways bear an expression of stupidity, never one of malignity. Is not
this an important fact? Stupidity is incongruity.
EXPRESSIONS OF THE FACE.
249
The phrenologist, Gall, associated sensuality
with a flat nose.
(d.) It is related of Socrates that Zophyrus told this wisest
of the Greeks that the shape of his nose indicated a tendency
to drunkenness, theft, brutality, and lasciviousness; to which
the great philosopher replied that such were his natural dis-
positions, which he had striven to conquer.
Stated broadly, we may conclude that the lan-
guage of the nasal zone is Emotive in expres-
sion. The nostrils are Vital, as primary expres-
sion, but their gestures, in our present civilization,
show blends of the Mental and Emotive.
(e.) That the nostrils are Vital as their primary expres-
sion both structure and function seem to confirm. As struc-
ture, they are cartilages moved by muscles and excited by
motor nerves proceeding from the fifth pair.
These same nerves also excite the lungs to action. In
function, the nostrils are connected with the Vital act of
breathing, and they pulsate with the outgoing and incoming
breath in animal excitement. Shakespeare, in "King Henry
V.," allies their action with the Vital:
"Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide;
Hold hard the breath." ACT III. Sc. I.
So both structure and function seem to pro-
nounce the language of the nostrils to be Vital,
though fine Mental and Emotive blends arise from
this gross animal root.
OF THE EAR.
Oken has somewhere said: "Seeing gives us a
consciousness of the universe; hearing, a con-
sciousness of self."
250
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
The anatomist divides the human ear into three
divisions,— the external, middle, and internal.
It is in the inner ear that the process of hearing
completes itself. There, hidden in the deep cav-
ity of the skull, securely locked in a bony case,
are the complicated terminal organs of the ear.
It is here that the auditory nerve penetrates the
solid structure of the skull, and embraces with its
minute filaments the wonderfully delicate and
sensitive organs found in the labyrinth. What
must be the subtlety of that essence that trans-
lates the tremblings of these minute terminal
points into that form of consciousness which we
call hearing! What wonderful power of analysis
in these terminal organs, where the spiritual
comes out to make such subtle contact with the
material!
The organ of Corti - the nerve key-board of
the ear, according to Helmholtz-is a minute
instrument with about three thousand sensitive
strings. What wonder that Music is a universal
language, which every one has learned he knows
not where, that every one understands he knows
not why? Music is consciousness communing
with itself. And in some moods, listening to
music, we hear our whole Being discourse. In
such moments the soul pours forth a flood of rem-
iniscences, which we fail to account for as belong-
ing wholly to our mundane existence. Indeed,
the author calls to mind a sensitive soul, who de-
clared: "I never listen to the dreamy tone-fanta-
EXPRESSIONS OF THE FACE.
251
sies of Chopin but I am convinced that I have
heard those strains in another and previous exist-
ence. Ah! that the breath and haze of an at-
mosphere of music can so sense and type the
spiritual!
If, then, we consider the inner ear in its inti-
macy with the Soul, we must pronounce its strong-
est alliance to be with the higher Emotive na-
ture.
(a.) The power of music to stir the emotions seems to be
universally acknowledged. But not until the amazing re-
searches of Helmholtz was it conjectured that music had its
physical basis in the wave-motion of fluids, and in the pulsa-
tions of the forms of energy which we cover with the term
"natural forces."
It would seem that everything moves to measure. In the
Universe this orderly principle swings to and fro like the
shuttle of a great loom, and the soul of man finds the high-
est correspondence of this gigantic rhythm in the tone pulses
of music.
We can without violence say of the senses that
they make strong alliances with the Psychic. Thus
we may say that the sense of seeing is allied with
the Mental nature, the sense of hearing with the
Emotive nature, and that the senses of touch
and taste, and the muscular sense, make strong
alliance with the Vital nature.
Delsarte is reported by Delaumosne to make
the language of the external ear Mental in sig-
nificance.
Lavater declares that a finely formed and deli-
cately shaped ear indicates Mental sensitiveness
252
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
}
and æsthetic tastes, and says: "Nature has di-
vested it of ornaments; its dress is simplicity,
delicacy, and completeness."
Dr. Rimmer remarks: "A coarse ear accom-
panies coarse hands and feet; if the ear be well
made, hands and feet will be well made."
(b.) An argument deduced from the admitted physio-
logic truth, that organs develop in proportion to the amount
of their use, would argue that the ears of primitive man were
Vital in expression.
"If," says Darwin, "our ears had remained movable, their
gestures would have been highly expressive in rage, as is the
case with all animals that fight with the teeth.”
According to modern conclusions of the evolutionists, the
ear is an atrophied organ. In primitive man, say even so
recent as the glacial period, it was larger than now and
easily movable.
The atrophied ear of to-day has lost motion. Its Vital
significance has gone. As form, its Mental and Emotive.
significance is an element of considerable strength when co-
ordinated with the moving features.
OF THE MOUTH.
We have passed in review two planes or zones
of the face, the frontal and the nasal, and have
stated the reasons for our inferences that the
Psychic manifests -as if by preference its
Mental nature through form and motion of the
frontal zone, and its Emotive nature through the
form and motion of the nasal zone.
If we accept the essential expressions of these
zones as Mental and Emotive, we shall find very
strong evidence, in structure, function, and corre-
EXPRESSIONS OF THE FACE.
253
spondence, that the expression of the third zone
the maxillary -is Vital.
In all land mammals, except man, the jaws are
used for seizing, turning, and placing food un-
der the action of the teeth. This Vital act was
also largely an action of primitive man. And we
may say confidently that if with man these or-
gans had held their primitive function, the
higher office of speech, through their differentia-
tion, would have been an impossibility.
(c.) That the European of to-day is quite another being
from the quaternary man the most modern discoveries con-
firm.
"The
Quatrefages, speaking of this far-distant era, says:
climate was that of the glacial period, — ice covered Europe
as far south as France. Man contended with the fury of
the elements and with the fury of the carnivora.”
Of the Cronstadt race, he says: "The cranium and face
must have presented a strangely savage aspect. The face
was prognathous, rude, and massive; the bones of the limbs,
thick and protuberant, must have sustained great muscles.
This being disputed the earth with the great mammals now
extinct."
And of the skull of the Neanderthal man, discovered near
Düsseldorf in 1857, he says: "The frontal sinuses have an
exceptional development, like the anthropoid apes."
With the evolution of the Mental faculties
came a corresponding differentiation of organs
and functions to suit the advance.
And if we ask ourselves what most distin-
guishes man from the beasts, the answer will lead
us back to the operative causes that have at last
released the human mouth from its primitive ani-
mal office. The distinguishing cause is speech.
254
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
The speechless man of perhaps as far back as
the close of the tertiary era- -hair-clad, large-
muscled, heavy-jawed, with coarse lips easily re-
tracted from his canine teeth-used the mouth
for tearing flesh and for fighting.
But along with speech-development came a
gradual refinement of the features: the jaws be-
gan to release themselves; the lips became more
mobile, and assumed a curve; the chin rounded
itself; the cheek-bones retreated; the forehead
advanced towards the vertical; and soon there
lurked in the upward turn of the angle of the
mouth, and the raising of the inner extremity of
the eyebrow, the first outward signs of a sense of
humor, that purely human sense that came in
with speech.
Thus the differentiation of the mouth kept
pace with, and became the visible correspondence
of, man's release from the Vital, and advance
toward the heights of the Mental and Emotive.
Thus at last he has become the animal of pro-
portioned features.
We conclude, then, that structure, function,
and utility show that the primary expressions of
the maxillary zone were Vito-Vital; and further,
that the civilized man of this nineteenth century
still gives, through the play of the mouth, rudi-
ments and faint reflections- echoes, we may call
them of the animal gestures of his savage pro-
genitors.
(d.) Darwin, in his masterly treatise, to which we have so
EXPRESSIONS OF THE FACE.
255
often referred the student, "The Expressions of Man and
Animals," gives illustrations of these rudimentary or reflected
gestures, which, as he remarks, are intelligible, if we admit
that the structure and habits of all animals have been grad-
ually evolved. Thus, in sneering or defiance, the upper lip
is lifted and retracted in such a manner that the canine tooth
on one side of the face¹ alone is shown, the face being up-
turned and half averted from the person causing offence.
Darwin pertinently remarks that it is a surprising fact
that man should possess this power to uncover the canine
tooth, or exhibit any tendency to its use. To account for
this civilized gesture, he goes on to say: "We may readily
believe that our male semi-human progenitors uncovered
their canine teeth when prepared for battle, as we still do
when feeling ferocious, or when merely sueering at or defy-
ing some one, without any intention of making a real attack
with our teeth."
OF THE LIPS AND CHIN.
As structure, the lips are formed by a circular
muscle, which entirely surrounds the mouth. This
single muscle closes and purses the mouth by an
inward motion. This motion is opposed by ten
muscles, which have their origin in prominent
points of the bones of the face, and converge to-
wards the mouth, opening it, and moving the lips
in various directions.
We find, then, eleven muscles giving form and
motion to the lips. Five muscles surround each
eye, and four give play to the nostrils.
Here are twenty-five elements that enter into
1 Usually the left canine tooth is uncovered. With primitive man
this gave freedom of action to the right hand in striking, and to the
mouth in tearing with the formidable canine tooth.
256
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
the problem of the moving display of the chief
agent of expression. Add to these twenty-five
elements the form, motion, and color of the two
globes of the eye, and the texture of the skin in-
vaded by the blood. Now recall the Law of Op-
position of agents in gesture, and consider the
possible permutations of these elements at play
in a space easily covered by the hand, and we can
conceive that Nature has finished her work in
presenting the human face as an epitome of the
proportioned harmonies of form, color, and mo-
tion.
We ask the mathematician, fond of the exact
logic of numbers, to apply the Law of Permuta-
tion to these combinations of agencies. At the
conclusion of his computation he will attain to a
profound respect for an utterance of Swedenborg,
picturing faces released from earthly limitations:
"To the illumined, no speech is necessary; the
Soul shines through the face. All its affections
appear visible in a natural form."
Ah, if the human face had never been taught
to dissemble!
Delsarte was surely right in declaring the un-
der jaw¹ to be Vital in significance.
Large and prominent jaws, the world over, ac-
company a strong Vital nature.
Stiffen the lips and erase their curves, and
have the mouth of the beasts.
you
1 The word "jaw" is a corruption of the Old English "chaw,"
that which "chaws" or "chews."
EXPRESSIONS OF THE FACE.
257
(e.) Among the disciples of Delsarte there is a difference
of opinion regarding the language of the lips and chin. That
the upper lip is Vital, the lower lip Emotive, and the chin
Mental seems to find the greater number of supporters. This
empirical division is not entirely without reason, if based in
function and correspondence.
As we have elsewhere said, most people when sneering
lift the upper lip from the canine teeth on one side of the
face. This is a rudiment from man's Vital era. Among
animals, no correspondence of a human sneer is stronger
than the action of uncovering the teeth by the carnivora.
Indeed, the word "sneer," according to Wedgewood, is the
same as "snarl," which was originally "snar," the "1" being
merely an element implying continuance of action.
Lavater declares that the upper lip, by its upward gesture,
is a universal sign of menace and effrontery.
The lower lip moves much more freely than the upper.
This mobility is seen in the acts of laughing and crying in
young children. Children preparing to cry tremble the un-
der lip before the burst of feeling.
The connection of the lips with speech and with ready ex-
pressions of feeling makes blends of these agents proceeding
from the Mental and Emotive natures difficult to classify.
That these agents, through form and contour, express men-
tal delicacy and beauty of moral character, no close observer
can doubt. That they make ready response to instant moods
is a matter of common observation.
Speaking broadly, we may say: The upper lip
is more expressive through form and contour.
The under lip is more expressive through mo-
tion.
The chin rounds off the ellipse of the face.
Lavater truly remarks that deformity here is
hideous.
(f) The chin is the more remarkable as a feature of ex-
17
258
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
pression since its forward projection is distinctive of the
higher races of man.
The lower animals can truly be said to have scarcely
more than a vestige of the human chin.
Curiously enough, the muscles which render the chin so
prominently a human feature are the same that by their ac-
tion give the human expression of a resolution to resist op-
pression, as also the expression of the assertion of supe-
riority.
We cannot close our comments upon this expressive region
of the face without reference to the half-poetic and half-
scientific deductions of the quaint old physiognomist Carus.
With entire gravity of conviction he has mapped out the
territory of the mouth and chin, and has given a local habi-
tation to Mental and Emotive qualities. Love is given the
entire rule of the under lip, while in the narrow dell be-
tween the mouth and chin dwell four of his relatives, Clem-
ency, Pity, Sympathy, Benevolence. Five qualities group
themselves along the contour of the upper lip and spaces
below the nose, while Cheerfulness peeps out from the cor-
ners of the mouth.
We conclude our analysis of the expressions
of the separate features with a confirmatory gen-
eralization of Lavater: The upper part of the
face down to the root of the nose is the seat
of thought; it is the region where our projects
and resolutions are formed. It is the office of
the middle and lower zones to unfold them.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE HUMAN VOICE AND ITS EXPRESSIONS.
THE great naturalist Agassiz, in speaking of
voice as a correspondence of the nature of ani-
mals, said: "Voice is a fundamental character-
istic of the animal, adhering to the nature of the
being, and incapable of disappearing while the
animal lives."
Oken declares "the cry of an animal to be
an expression of its innermost.'
Thus, everywhere lions roar, wolves howl,
horses neigh, savages cry. In a word, through
its voice the animal expresses and epitomizes its
being. Its voice is as unmistakable as its ges-
tures, and always corresponds with them. The
stealthy glide of the carnivora and their gesture
of striking-swift as a beam of light — are not
more characteristic than is the ferocious blend
of radical and vanish in the stress of the voice.
We may state with confidence that in expres-
sion the language of voice-pure and simple
-is Vital.
In man, and the land mammals to which he is
allied through structure, voice has the same sig-
nificance. It is the expression of the Vital or
instinctive nature given to the ear as sound.
260
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
In the cries of all land mammals are detected
modulated sounds, sometimes approaching mu-
sical intonations. With man these sounds be-
come conscious modulations and intonations,
made expressive by the use of musical tech-
nique.
No other animal attains the inflected voice,
which is used alone by the thinking animal, man,
to accompany articulations and to mark the rela-
tions of ideas. And the simple and homoge-
neous being of the animal finds in sound and its
modulations a sufficient vehicle of expression.
It is because of the wonderful complexity and
heterogeneity of the Being that man has such
an unswerving complexity of agents through
which to manifest. Of the three bodily agents
we may say, speaking broadly, that the voice
reveals his Vital, gesture his Emotive, and ar-
ticulate speech his Mental nature.
And all these forms of expression
except
cries of animal pleasure and pain- -and reflex
motion came as man assumed the vertical and
gained the use of the released fore limbs.
The development of faculty and the use of
faculty still keep equal pace in man's advance.
(a.) Gustave Jaeger has clearly pointed out the intimate
relation between the vertical position and the production of
voice sounds. He shows that there are two indispensable
physical conditions to the production of the modulated voice
in mammals. These conditions are: first, the ability to ex-
pel the air from the lungs with a sustained effusive outgo;
and second, the ability to give a slight pressure or stroke,
THE HUMAN VOICE.
261
so as to break the outgoing breath into impulses or separate
sounds.
Now, the having these two conditions of phonation would.
give the mammal possessing them a superiority over his
congeners. In man these conditions exist in their highest
perfection. On the other hand, the quadrupeds, bound to
earth by four tethers, find great physical difficulty in giving
free motion to the horizontal lungs. So, it is a noticeable
fact that when our large quadrupeds, deer or cattle, call
loudly or continuously, they halt, stand still while so doing,
showing that the fore limbs must rest in the act of calling.
The structure of the instrument of the voice
is essentially the same in all land mammals, and
is connected with the respiratory act. Every-
where animals breathe to live. So the human
instrument of the voice is the differentiated end
of the breathing-tube. This differentiation is ac-
companied by a further differentiation of mouth,
tongue, lips, and nose. So that a statement of
the progressive functions of the mouth is also a
statement of the progressive evolution of the
Psychic, and marks the stages of human prog-
ress.
Man, in his Vito-Vital state, fed and fought
with the mouth. He uttered significant cries
through the mouth, and began to connect sounds
with ideas of things, as he advanced toward the
Mental. He now reveals through the mouth the
highest moods of his Emotive and Mental na-
ture, by the use of perfected musical and speech
forms. So, we may define the human voice as
the audible correspondence of the Being.
262
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
And we may add to our psychological defini-
tion the admirable technical definition of the
eminent American philologist, Professor Whit-
"Voice is the audible result of a column
of air, sent from the lungs, stamped with so-
nancy and variety of pitch by the larynx, and
individualized by the mouth."
ney:
Let us first examine this instrument as a struc-
ture, and then its outcome or play as recognized
by the ear.
OF THE ORGAN OF THE VOICE.
The instrument of the human voice is most
nearly represented by the church organ. Mu-
sically speaking, it is a reed instrument. It con-
sists of the lungs, the air chest or bellows,
capable of sending through the wind-pipe a cur-
rent of air, which vibrates the natural reeds or
lips of the tone box or larynx. These vibrations
from the lips of the larynx pass into the variable
cavity above it, which consists of the pharynx,
mouth, and nose. The current of air is forced
from the lungs by the action of a powerful mus-
cle, the diaphragm.'
The result of the play of this instrument is
the human voice. We introduce a diagram to
show the relative positions of the parts that go
to make this complex organ.
1 This word still holds its early signification, a partition wall.”
Voice proper came in with the diaphragm. Only in the mammalia is
there a complete diaphragm. Only in man are the lungs placed ver-
tically above the diaphragm.
THE HUMAN VOICE.
263
Now, as this instrument is a musical
instrument, the result of its play should
be musical.
Variable
Cavity.
Larynx.
Wind-pipe.
And being a living entity in struc-
ture, fashioned by the plastic hand of
Nature, while all other musical instru-
ments are made by the hand of man,
its music, by parity of reasoning, should Diaphragm.
give forth elements not found in dead
Lungs.
structures. That it does so is a recognized fact.
Beyond a doubt, the success of the vocal artist
depends upon his power to give forth qualities
from his instrument which we recognize as dis-
tinctively psychological.
The Soul must attune the instrument to the
theme.
(b.) Nothing is so utterly unsatisfactory in the whole
realm of art as the human voice with a perfected technique,
and no soul behind it! If the artist cannot inform his tech-
nique with psychic force, no grimace of mechanical forms
of time, force, and movement can save him! The music-
box may be absolutely accurate in time, force, and move-
ment; it is only when technique is a vehicle in which rides
the Being that it becomes of value in any high sense.
The vocal instrument, if we admit it to be a
musical instrument, must combine the parts of
a musical instrument.
No instrument can give forth musical sounds
unless it combines in its construction three ele-
ments. These three essential elements are: 1. A
motor element. 2. A resonant element. 3. A
vibratory element.
264
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
(c.) Take as illustration of the combination of these es-
sentials the most primitive of musical instruments, the
drum. The motor element is the drumstick; the vibra-
tory, the tense membrane that forms the head of the drum ;
the resonant element, the body or cavity. So, in the more
complex instrument, the piano, the keys, or inner hammers
moved by the keys, are the motor element, the strings the
vibratory, the body and inclosed space the resonant.
These same elements enter into the living structure of
the organ of the human voice. The diaphragm is the motor
element; it acts upon the bellows, the lungs, and sends a
column of air through the wind-pipe into the larynx, which
holds, protects, and favorably presents the glottal lips to
the outgoing air. These lips of the glottis are the vibratory
element. The pharynx, the mouth with its arch, the nasal
cavities, the bones of the face, are the resonators.
Without doing violence to the facts presented to our rea-
son facts of structure and function
we may fairly infer
Nature's purpose held from the beginning to the consum-
mated end. All this complex structure was evolved that
two lips of the glottis might present their sensitive and
parallel edges to the outgoing stream of air.
Such is the instrument of the human voice.
Clearly a Vital structure at its root. Its out-
come and product the audible symbol of life.
He who doubts should study attentively that
epitome of the human race, the babe, a constant
witness that organic sensibility to pain first gave
impulse to voice with primitive man, and was
the first step in the evolution of language.¹ The
1 The author is aware that Darwin has argued that the vocal organ
was developed through the force of sexual impulse, in order that one
sex might call or charm the other.
Is it not more probable that a greater nervous excitement would
come from the intense pain consequent upon the laceration of the
body in the fierce contests to which primitive man was exposed ?
THE HUMAN VOICE.
265
startled cry of the new-born babe is an echo of
the Vital cry of the race. Nothing is so fine a
correspondence as this purely animal cry of the
babe. Through the cry he announces his sub-
jugation to organic want. He lives, eats, sleeps,
cries, and wails. This is the Vital round of his
existence.
"We come crying hither.
Thou knowest the first time that we smell the air
-I
We wawl and cry: - I will preach to thee: mark
When we are born, we cry that we are come
To this great stage of fools!'
But what other elements shall we find in the
human voice besides this persistent Vital, which
allies itself so unmistakably with our animal
and instinctive Being?
organs is es-
These organs
Nature's laws
The coördinated action of two
sential to the production of voice.
are: 1. The larynx. 2. The ear.
governing sounds are fixed and invariable. So
we have, as the constant physical factors in our
problem, the ear, the larynx, and invariable Na-
ture.
Let us examine the outcome from the action
of these three factors: -
At first thought, a sound of the voice reaching
the ear seems very simple; but if we should
stop to analyze it, we should find it to be quite
complex, and when analyzed by a trained and
expert ear, aided by the delicate and exact me-
chanical instruments now in use by physicists,
it yields to persistent solicitation its wonderful
properties.
266
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
The exhaustive researches of the German
physicist, Helmholtz, have reduced the phenom-
ena of sound to an exact and intensely inter-
esting science. And what does experimental
science say about the sounds of the human
voice? Upon analysis, all sounds that reach
our consciousness, as voice, are found to have
three properties : —
1. We recognize that a given sound is louder,
or less loud, than some other sound with which
we compare it; and we say of it that it has the
property of intensity, force, loudness.
2. We recognize that it has a higher or lower
place on the musical scale than some other
sounds we have heard; and we say of it that it
has pitch or position, high or low, upon an ar-
ranged scale of sounds.
If we
3. We recognize one other property.
ask each one of a half score of persons to give
separately the same sound, with the same degree
of loudness and with the same pitch, we find
that each person gives forth a different kind of
voice from any one of the others. We find
each one to have his own voice as distinctively
as his own face. So we say of the voice that
it has a third property, - timbre, quality, or
Tonfarbe.
1
When we have found these three elements we
1 Neither the French nor the English word is so finely descriptive
of this subtle element of the voice as is the German Tonfarbe, tone
color.
THE HUMAN VOICE.
267
have found all that a physical analysis yields.
We know all that is ascertainable at this stage
of scientific progress.
""
(d.) At present neither physical nor psychological science
can give any adequate account of the subtle element which
we all recognize in the human voice, and which, for the want
of a better term, we speak of as "magnetic. Of an hun-
dred readers, actors, or singers, one only may possess this
power. But the voice that thrills, arouses, electrifies, yields
nothing to physical analysis. Does law govern here, or is
all caprice?
Three elements determine the voice as the
three lines determine the triangle. We diagram
these elements: -
Force.
Pitch.
Quality.
Two conditions of voice are frequently spoken
of in books of elocution as properties of the voice.
These are Time or Duration, and Distancing or
Reach.
It will be readily seen that the continuance for
a longer or shorter time of a tone can only be a
condition of the tone, and no part of the sound
presented to consciousness, — just as a year of
one's life is no part of the essence itself.
So of reach of voice, which may be defined as
an inherent power by which the voice penetrates
space, and is heard above other sounds or con-
fused noises.
This carrying power we conjecture to be in some
268
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
way dependent upon the elements that go to make
the composite tone sent forth by an accurate ad-
justment of the vocal organs. It is always an
accompaniment of the poise of the Being, and
those who use it to cover distances declare that it
is not by using high degrees of force that they
accomplish it. They often describe it as "pla-
cing or throwing the voice."
(e.) The author of this treatise has taught, successfully,
as a part of vocal technique, “carrying power of voice,” un-
der the term "Distancing."
So far as he has been able to analyze, the process is both
physiological and psychological. There is (1) the purely
physiological process of taking, holding, and giving out the
breath, the one thing that can never be neglected; and
(2) the physiological process of opening the organs of the
throat and nostrils.¹
Now comes the psychological process, which we may state
briefly as (1) poise, (2) think distance, (3) throw the voice,
as the hand would a ball, to a distant ear.
These outer and inner processes fulfil the best conditions.
Let the student remember that to depend upon force or loud-
ness will be to court defeat! Musical tones travel; noises
disintegrate, and go to pieces. It is the "poised" voice
that holds the subtle elements which are presented as phe-
nomena of “distancing."
> 2
1 Open the throat and nostrils, as if about to gape; this action gives
freedom to the larynx, and resonance from the mouth and surrounding
cavities. No part of vocal technique is more important.
2 To the technique of distancing should be added frequent practice
in sustained increase of force, called in Music "crescendo." This move-
ment is the vocal correspondence of enlargement. The object grows
larger and larger as one looks. This crescendo movement is a power-
ful element in vocal expression. The following passage from Othello
will suggest the use of these two technical artifices:
"Roderigo.
I'll call aloud.
Iago. Do, with like timorous accent and dire yell
As when, by night and negligence, the fire
Is spied in populous cities."
THE HUMAN VOICE.
269
Miss Anna Dickinson, then reigning queen of the lyceum
platform, was once asked how she was able to be heard so
distinctly in Music Hall, Boston. This great audience-room
seats nearly three thousand people. The platform is large,
and the benign bronze Beethoven stands behind the speaker.
At the extreme opposite, high above the audience, is the fig-
ure of Apollo, the gift of the great actress, Charlotte Cush-
man, to the city of Boston. Miss Dickinson's answer epito-
mizes our processes of distancing:
When I come on to the
platform, and find myself facing the great audience, I make
a full pause, then take a good ready, and speak to Apollo!"
As the human larynx is the differentiated end
of the breathing-tube, we should expect the act
of breathing and of voice production to be in
some way connected. And so intimate are their
relations that Oken has, in happy phrase, called
speech "gentle respiration."
Life demands for its continuance two move-
ments, followed by an interval of silence. These
movements are involuntary as a life process, and
occur in the following order: 1. Inspiration. 2.
Expiration. 3. Silence. As an art process, the
movements are under control of the will, and
occur in the following order: 1. Inspiration. 2.
Silence. 3. Voice, or audible expiration.
These three movements regulate the play of
the instrument. And silence is by no means the
least of the three in importance. He who has
not learned the art significance of moments of
silence has studied to little purpose. In expres-
sion, silence is indeed golden.
(f.) Technically, in expression, silence is termed Ellip-
270
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
sis. The word signifies "to leave out; " hence, a space, a
chasm. Delaumosne reports Delsarte as saying: "Gesture
is an elliptical language." The space covered and the time
taken by an agent in these moments of silence in the midst
of a discourse give the artist his greatest opportunity; his
ellipses must be filled with expressive gesture, the face lead-
ing all the other agents.
The strength of the ellipses will be readily surmised in
the following sentences from Shakespeare:-
"Not on thy sole, || but on thy soul, false Jew! "
"Put out the light, and then
→
I put out the light!"
Ellipses are ruling artifices of the Emotive nature. Hence,
in our highest moods of passion, we make little of words, but
much of the tones, ellipses, and gestures which accompany
the words. Grammatical and logical relations give way to
musical treatment, until tones and gestures find their climax
in stress and rhythm.
Sterne thus satirizes the critic who would bind Emotive
expression by logical and grammatical rules: "How did
Garrick speak the soliloquy last night?' 'Oh, against all
rule, my Lord, most ungrammatically! Betwixt the substan-
tive and the adjective, which should agree together in num-
ber, case, and gender, he made a breach || stopping as if the
point wanted settling. And after the nominative, which
your lordship knows should govern the verb, he suspended
his voice in the epilogue a dozen times, three seconds and
three fifths by a stop-watch, my Lord, each time!'
mirable grammarian! But in suspending his voice, was the
sense suspended likewise? Did no expression of attitude or
countenance fill up the chasm? Was the eye silent? Did
you narrowly look?' 'I looked only at the stop-watch, my
Lord!' 'Excellent observer!''
· Ad-
Thus respiration becomes representative phe-
nomena of the Being. It is to our actions what
words are to our thoughts, or tones to our emo-
tions. If we hear the breath we know the mo-
THE HUMAN VOICE.
271
tive behind it! Physical and psychic strength
both lean upon our respiration.
Note how our breathing illustrates the three
states of the Being:
The Vital predominating, respiration is quick,
strong, and sustained.
The Mental predominating, respiration is
slow, interrupted, and often suddenly ar-
rested.
The Emotive predominating, respiration is
deep, sustained, and poised.
Note the order of action as each of the three
natures in turn dominates consciousness.
1. THE VITAL IN ACTION.
We are out walking along a narrow, pleasant
country road. The sights and sounds of sum-
mer are full of delight, and we are full of the
glow and exhilaration of Life. Our breathing is
quick, strong, and sustained. Walk, breath, and
heart-beats pulse in rhythm. Suddenly, without
a moment's warning, a carriage with two fright-
ened horses appears. What happens? The Men-
tal immediately arrests the body; a sudden inspi-
ration, almost a gasp, then a cessation of
breathing!
2. THE MENTAL IN ACTION.
The Mental is now in action. It stopped the
breath and stilled the body, but at the same in-
stant seized the eyes; the motions of the two
272
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
globes are like two flashes of lightning from two
near clouds, the wrinkled eyebrows. In the
moment of swift glancing, the Mental observes,
compares, concludes! The breathing is resumed.
3. THE EMOTIVE IN ACTION.
The Emotive now poises, and balances the
body. What ought to be done is recognized,
and the three natures - the whole Psychic
blend in the act of arresting the horses.
Thus the body, in all its acts, is seen to be the
outer correspondence of the Psychic.
OF TONES.
There is a propriety in classifying the ear as
an organ of voice.
So thoroughly is it auxiliary to speech that no
ear literally signifies no speech.
As we have shown in another part of this trea-
tise, the structure of the human ear and its inti-
mate physical connection with the brain declare
it to be an instrument for the reception, analy-
sis, and presentation to our consciousness, of
sounds.
Upon the sensibilities of the ear rests the sci-
ence of music.
Helmholtz relates the power which music has
over our feelings to motion. So music is the sub-
jective correspondence of matter in motion. It
expresses our psychic moods, because we seem to
see with the eye of the ear the dance of objects
THE HUMAN VOICE.
273
in space.
that the Greek philosophers called rhythm. In
a word, we execute in idea a dance of tones in
time and space. And we are entirely justified in
saying that the tones of the human voice are
audible correspondences of the subtle law of the
universe, rhythm.
We thus translate the subtle force
From the animal cry of primitive man have
arisen the perfected arts of Music, Poetry, and
Oratory. The crude, monotonous, but rhythmi-
cal sing-song of the savage has given way to an
idealized language of wonderful complexity and
significance. And this development is a result,
and not a cause. It is as inevitable a result of
evolution from the Vital root as the ripened grain
from seed and blade.
We may summarize our conclusions:
I. Primitive voice was the crude and Vital
language of the sensations.
III. The modulated and intoned voice is the
language of the Emotive nature.
II. The inflected voice, accompanied by artic-
ulated or jointed sounds, is the language of the
Mental nature.
(g.) That the human voice was primarily a reflex gesture
from the animal root, and was the outcome of sensations of
pain and pleasure, both structure and function of the instru-
ment still continue to testify in the utterances of sounds
heard wherever man is in the savage condition, or wherever
in civilization there is a momentary "reversion" to the sav-
age instincts of our earliest progenitors.
So the novelist of two hundred years ago might picture in
18
274
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
a single sentence the raucous voice of his age and time:
"The jeers of the theatre, the pillory, and the whipping-post
are very near akin." Even in our advanced civilization, in
intense excitement of the nervous system, caused by an over-
whelming access of rage or terror, there comes back into the
voice the echo of a far-distant age of savagery! Hence, hu-
man cries of terror, rage, alarm, fear, cries of pursuit and
of flight, cries of hunger, cold, and thirst, rooted in organic
want, all tell of the animal that still lurks in ambush, ready
to spring forth !
Hugo, in his novel "Ninety-Three," sketches in a few
lines a peasant mother's cry when she sees her three chil-
dren in the burning tower of La Tourge
"The mother recognized her children. She uttered a
fearful cry. That cry of indescribable agony is only given
to mothers. No sound at once so savage and so touching!
When a woman utters it, you seem to hear the yell of a she-
wolf; when the she-wolf cries thus, you seem to hear the cry
of a woman.
In technical training for a superior voice, all
the elocutionist's artifices are founded upon the
three essential properties of the voice, — Force,
Pitch, and Quality or Tone Color. Each of these
essential properties we shall find to have a physi-
cal basis. Let us consider, briefly, what scientific
investigation reports regarding the phenomena
presented.
THE ELEMENTS OF FORCE AND PITCH.
The sensation of strength or loudness (tech-
nically, "force"), as a physical fact, depends
upon the extent, swing, reach, or amplitude of
the air-waves set in motion by some mass of mat-
ter in vibration. The larger the waves, the louder
the sound.
THE HUMAN VOICE
275
(h.) A simple illustration, addressed to the eye, will make
this plain. Suppose we throw into the still water of a lake,
each in its turn, a marble, a stone the size of a base-ball, and
a cannon-ball. As each of these objects strikes the water
there is formed a ring, which, moving outwards, spreads in
all directions over the surface in a continually enlarging
circle. The weight of the stone determines the size and ex-
tent of the wave.
As a
Now what is seen to take place upon the surface of the
water takes place in the air, with this difference: the air-
waves spread outwards like a globe from the point of agi-
tation, in the spacious sea of air, in all directions.
physical fact, then, loudness or force depends upon the am-
plitude, reach, or extent of the air-waves proceeding from
the vibrating bodies.
The sensation of pitch, as a physical fact, de-
pends upon the number of vibrations given forth
in a second of time. The fewer the vibrations,
the lower the pitch of the sound; the greater the
number of vibrations in each second, the higher
the pitch.
(i.) Let us take an illustration from the piano. If we
should strike the lowest "C," and immediately after the
highest "C," and mark the number of vibrations sent forth,
as did Helmholtz by delicate instruments, we should find for
the lowest "C" 32 vibrations in a second, and for the high-
est "C" 4,096.
So we find that the pitch of a sound depends entirely upon
the number of vibrations in a second, and not at all upon
the body set in vibration. It is quite indifferent whether
these vibrations come from the strings of the violin or piano,
the vocal lips of the human larynx or the metal tongues of
the harmonicon, the trembling lips of the trumpeter or the
reeds of the organ; any sound from any instrument that is
a result of the same number of vibrations in a second of
time has always the same pitch.
276
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
THE ELEMENT OF TONE COLOR.
The sensation of quality or timbre, as a phys-
ical fact, depends upon the forms of the air-waves
sent out from the vibrating body. As a purely
physical fact, the conditions of a harsh or of a
harmonious sound are impressed upon the air.
(j.) The student will note that none of the early books
upon elocution gave any account of the phenomena of qual-
ity. The solving of the mystery is an achievement of mod-
ern science, largely due to the genius of Helmholtz. This
great scientist reasoned that, as force was due to the ampli-
tude of the air-waves, pitch to their number in a second,
quality might be due to their form. An exceedingly exhaust-
ive and interesting series of investigations and experiments
ended with the throwing upon a white screen, for the eye to
see, the actual forms of these waves. And, curiously enough,
soft, melodious, smooth, and agreeable tones gave rounded
curves of waves, while sharp, harsh, grating sounds gave an-
gular and irregular forms. Tuning-forks traced Hogarth's
line of beauty, while some harsh notes from the strings of a
violin gave sharp angles, for all the world like a schoolboy's.
first attempt at writing. The variety and beauty of these
wave-forms Helmholtz found to be beyond computation.
We must mention one other discovery of Helmholtz bear-
ing upon tone color. It had long been known to musicians
that when a tone was given from a musical instrument a cer-
tain number of both higher and lower tones accompanied it.
These accompanying tones were weaker and fainter than the
tone struck out upon the instrument.
Helmholtz called these accompanying tones, overtones.
The tone which the ear recognized he called the fundamen-
tal tone.¹
1 It is impossible for an untrained ear to perceive these overtones.
So accustomed is the ear to receive the tone as a whole, and the fun-
damental tone so overbears the overtones, that, though they exist
THE HUMAN VOICE.
277
We
may state, briefly, the conclusions arrived at by Helm-
holtz bearing upon quality. These conclusions are the re-
sult of the most critical, patient, and exhaustive anal-
ysis :
1. There is no musical instrument whose fundamental tone
is not accompanied by overtones.
2. The number, kind, and intensity of the overtones differ
in different instruments; and it is this difference that causes
the characteristic quality of any instrument.
3. The fundamental tone, if accompanied by consonant
overtones, gives to the ear harmonious, agreeable, and pleas-
ing qualities. If accompanied by dissonant overtones, it
gives to the ear harsh, unpleasant, unmusical qualities.
As physical phenomena, we may formulate the law for
quality or tone color:
Law: The timbre, tone color, or quality of tones depends
upon the form of the fundamental sound-wave as modified
by its accompanying overtone waves.
Thus it will be readily inferred that the qual-
ity or color of each voice is entirely personal and
characteristic. Each one's voice is his voice just
as truly as each one's face is his face. Each hu-
man voice is a differentiated product of an instru-
ment alike in structure with all races of men upon
the earth.
We may make a division of expressive quali-
ties of the voice into (1) Natural and (2) Acquired
or Modified.
Natural qualities are the result of inheritance,
normal growth, and a healthy condition of the
vocal organ. These qualities are fixed and per-
manent, and undergo but slight change even un-
der the persistent drill of the elocutionist.
above and below the fundamental tone, only expert and musically
trained specialists can detect these blends or composites of sound.
278
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
Modified qualities are largely the result of im-
itation, and are acquired by art study and prac-
tice. They must have their bases in structure
and inheritance, are to a certain degree under
command, and can be consciously employed by
the speaker as art elements in expression.
-
In conclusion, the elements of force, pitch, and
tone color found in our analysis of sound, to-
gether with the two elements of time and rhythm,
-not found by analysis, but always accompany-
ing the voice, give all the elements of voice
that we use when we sing, recite a poem, or speak
as orators or actors. And if we were told that
our every-day talk was a series of tunes we should
be incredulous. Yet
Yet every affirmation we make,
every question we ask, and, more especially, all
our enthusiasms of expression are set to music.
More than this is true: the shades of meaning,
the amount, intensity, and freedom of the emo-
tion, are told by the tune. So the sentence means
one thing if we sing it to one tune, and quite
another thing if sung to another tune.
So we have tunes into which we project our
humor, our rage, our grief, satire, petulance,
prayer! Life is so complex that words alone
cannot serve us. If we could not sing tunes of
our feelings set to these words, how often we
should be dumb!
Each of the essential properties of the voice
force, pitch, and quality - we shall find to be
variously modified by the action of another in-
THE HUMAN VOICE.
279
strument. The double play of two instruments
acting as one gives as outcome ---- - Speech.
To the instrument of articulate language we
shall devote the concluding chapter of this trea-
tise; for, if our views be correct, the long chain
of organic events upon the earth ends with man;
and through speech man best realizes the full
correspondence of his threefold and proportioned
Being.
CHAPTER XVII.
ARTICULATE SPEECH AS AN ELEMENT OF
EXPRESSION.
IN considering in the preceding chapter the
outcome of the human vocal instrument, we
came to the conclusion that voice was primarily
a manifestation of the sensitive or Vital nature,
and that tones or modulated voice were mani-
festations of the Emotive nature. What shall
manifest the third or Mental state of the Being?
Let us consider the intellect or Mental nature
as wanting to manifest itself. And for conven-
ience let us separate the inseparable in fact, the
knowing nature from the feeling nature. Let
that state of the Being which perceives, memo-
rizes, makes pictures, thinks, reasons, general-
izes, desire to express itself. How can it do so?
What means, what instrument, has it? Let us
see. A professor of geology has brought into
the class-room a stone as large as one's fist. He
lays it upon the table in view of a class of twenty
students. Now, what the intellect can know
about this stone is its relations as shown by
points of resemblance and difference to all else
in the range of its knowing.
of its knowing. If it could know
SPEECH AS AN ELEMENT OF EXPRESSION. 281
all its possible relations to other things, it would
know all possible to be known about the stone.
Suppose it to know many of these relations,
founded in identity and diversity, how is it to
tell to the twenty students any part of what it
knows?
Its entirely adequate instrument is articulate
speech. Give the intellect gesture, -it fails.
Give it voice, —it is inadequate. Through speech
alone can it reveal itself.
(a.) Through spoken and written language man recre-
ates the past. Let the language of a people be entirely
lost, and a reconstruction of any age or time of that people
becomes impossible. The written remains of a language
are, in a psychological sense, fossils imbedded in the banks
and drift of the period. One day there comes along an
archeologist who shall breathe life into these dry bones,
clothe this exhumed skeleton with flesh, and lead back into
the present the long-buried past.¹ Sayce has justly said:
"One might be tempted to call language a kind of picture
of the universe, where words are figures and images of all
particulars."
But let us approach nearer the heart of our
subject and examine it more closely.
Spoken language is sound made significant.
That is, back of the sound there is a thought.
Articulated sound, then, is thought outwardly
embodied. Historically, the sentence, and not
the word, comes first. The sentence is the unit
of thought.
1 As a most notable instance of the reconstruction of a great era in
Roman history, through an exhaustive study of "fossil" language,
the student is referred to Froude's Cæsar. The age, time, pressure of
events, the customs, religion, ambitions of an era, environ the colossal
proportions of imperial Cæsar.
282
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
(b.) It is a mistake to call the word the unit of thought.
As a psychic experience easily tested by any one-the
thought greatly precedes the construction of the sentence.
We may say that the thought comes as a whole and in-
stantly. We never think first the subject, then the predi-
cate, but we relate subject and object by a simultaneous
psychic act, and then we make it objective in a spoken sen-
tence. We think in flashes, we construct with words.
So the sentence consists of two factors, one
the external sound, the other the internal
thought.
When, however, a thought which, again and
again, had taken a whole sentence to express it
becomes familiar and in every-day use, conven-
ience urges condensation, and we make a single
word stand as the sign of the sentence. And
this labor-saving process, by which an abstract
stands for many words, is as much an evidence
of an advanced civilization as is a modern Ames
plough over the primitive plough -
-a crooked
limb of a tree drawn by cattle to scratch the earth.
"The number of abstracts," says Sayce, "pos-
sessed by a language is a gauge of its develop-
ment;" and he adds, "We cannot realize the
mental struggles primitive man made to gain
ideas now so familiar to us."
Oken called a word a crystalized thought. If
our thoughts upon a given subject are not
clearly held, not well defined, we are apt "to
talk all around it," when a few well-chosen
words, with much thinking, would as surely con-
dense values for us as a single gold eagle con-
denses the value of ten silver dollars.
SPEECH AS AN ELEMENT OF EXPRESSION. 283
As an illustration take the concept "man."
It is expressed by a monosyllabic word, spoken
by a single impulse of the voice. And yet it
covers each one of the millions of human beings
upon the earth.
the earth. But when a race of undersized
men is discovered in the heart of Africa, no one
word can, at first, cover the new concept. A
man of this race is called "the short man with a
large head;" after a while he is called "dwarf."
That a child or savage could have called, at first
sight, the object that draws the train of cars
over the rails an engine, would be possible only
upon the supposition that he held in mind the
idea of the Latin word ingenium,-inborn. So
the child calls the locomotive engine the "puff,
puff," and the savage calls it "the swift horse
that breathes fire." 1
We find speech to be a complex physiological
process, which answers to a complex psycholog-
ical process.
A threefold objective presenta-
tion of a threefold Being. The spoken word
alone is the whole word. It presents to the ear
a triple blend or composite, and one may detect
the whole Being in a finely spoken sentence: in
1 That the savage, upon first sight of the locomotive engine, en-
tertains the idea that the object is alive, and like himself can dictate
its motions and scream with its voice, there can be no doubt. Hence,
with the savage, the sight of, and the sound made by the object would
give it a name of more than one word. But the word "engine" dis-
closes the fact that he who called the marvelous machinery, moving
as if by an inner impulse, "the engine," held the full significance
of the Latin ingenium: innate spirit, soul, or life. (From in and gen,
root of gignere, to beget.)
284
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
sonancy we may detect the correspondence of
the Vital nature; in intonation, the correspond-
ence of the Emotive; and in articulation, the
correspondence of the Mental.
(c.) Whitney declares the term "articulation" (jointed)
to be "precisely and in the highest degree descriptive of hu-
man speech utterance, as distinguished from the utterances
produced by the organs of the lower animals." He adds:
"The term 'articulation' is one of the happiest hits ever
made in the way of nomenclature by the ancient founders
of our civilization and science."
One might say that articulation is a succession of joints
or segments by the aid of which thought walks.¹
The printed word is the symbol of the real
word, but the spoken word plus gesture is the
real word. It is an accord of three. It presents
to ear and eye a triple blend.
Thus the whole Being externalizes itself
through voice, gesture, and articulation. Hence,
the difference between reading an essay to an
audience and speaking it from three centres.
Mathematically it is the difference between one
and three. Psychologically it is the difference
between giving your thought and giving your
soul! Practically this difference represents the
wide chasm between success and failure as an
orator.
1 The analysis of an author's thought can be best taught by slow
pronunciation. By this means the pupil thinks the separate elements,
and gives them oral expression while he is thinking.
SPEECH AS AN ELEMENT OF EXPRESSION. 285
OF THE ORGAN OF ARTICULATION.
In our last chapter we described the structure
and operation of the instrument whose outcome
or play is voice.
We found the organ of the voice to be the
differentiated end of the breathing-tube, and
that its primitive office was connected with the
life process. It was evident that if, by any con-
siderable differentiation of this breathing-tube,
it became capable of giving forth a variety of
sounds, those sounds would be correspondences
of the Vital nature.
(d.) This correspondence of the Being with the physical
organ which serves it seems to have suggested to Delsarte a
twofold division of the voice into vocal and dynamic. He
said: "There are two kinds of loud voices, - the vocally
loud and the dynamically loud." This accords with his the-
ory that voice is primarily the language of our sensations,
and is rooted in the Vital nature, while that in the voice
which expresses the conscious forces of the Being, he would
term dynamic.
Another statement seems to make clear this twofold divi-
sion: "A voice, however powerful it may be, should be infe-
rior to the power which animates it.” ¹
The articulatory organ is the differentiated
mouth with its enclosed and surrounding parts.
To him who weighs impartially the constantly
accumulating evidence, it will seem that this is
the final differentiation upon earth, both of the
race and of the individual. And this view is
1 See Delsarte System of Oratory. Pub. by Edgar S. Werner, No. 48
University Place, New York.
286
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
fortified by the discoveries of modern anthropol-
ogy. Vogt, Bouillaud, Ferrier, and Darwin had
reasoned that there must be a seat in the brain.
for the faculty of articulation.
To the researches of Broca, Nature yielded the
secret which she had so long and so jealously
guarded. The great French anthropologist de-
monstrated the existence of a special seat of the
faculty of articulate speech, localized in the pos-
terior extremity of the third frontal convolution,
especially on the left side of the brain.¹ When
this tract is injured the man is still able to think
and to connect his ideas, but cannot summon the
muscles into action for articulation.
(e.) The remarkable experiments of Hitzig and Fritsch
upon the cortex tended to show the existence of centres in
the brain which govern definite groups of muscles; but it
was left for Ferrier to demonstrate the exact position of
these centres. He has shown that all the muscles of the
body have their tracts in the cortex of the brain. He has
accounted for all the muscles of the body, and finds that
their centres in the cortex are arranged in their order from
below upwards, face, arm, leg, torso. And this order
agrees with the progressive evolution of our sense faculties.
Dr. Lauder Brunton finds that the lowest tract upon the cor-
tex is that which controls the muscles of the face. So we
find the lowest animals seize food with the mouth. We next
find the arm tract developed, next the tract that controls the
legs, and lastly the tract that controls the muscles of the
torso.
1 It is not by accident that we are right-handed. Modern research
has disclosed that the left hemisphere of the brain presides over the
movements of the right side of the body. Heredity has given, by con-
stant transmission of faculty, a greater amount of activity to the left
hemisphere of the brain than to the right.
SPEECH AS AN ELEMENT OF EXPRESSION. 287
And one point deserves special note. The higher and
the nearer to the fore-brain these centres, the more they re-
quire education. Thus, the articulatory centre requires long
practice to perform its exalted service. So all our art forms,
to be of highest value in after life, must have their founda-
tion laid in childhood.
The act of articulation is an organic result of
three factors: -
1. A material seat in the brain of a psychic
faculty, that strives to express itself by the use
of jointed sounds.
2. A specialized organ to serve this faculty.
3. Motor agents between the brain seat and
the special organ.
The result of the play of this organic instru-
ment is articulate speech. Through articulate
speech the Mental nature manifests itself in com-
pleteness. Said Oken: "When conversing, man
is a self-manifestation unto self." By the act he
makes that exterior which a moment before was
interior. So "to utter" is to put outside one's
self, — to make outer." In deep thought we
carry a world within us; we project a world into
the outer when we speak.
66
The action of three material agents gives, as a
result, articulation. These three agents are the
tongue, the lips, and the lower jaw.
Let us examine the structures that go to form
the articulatory organ.
The mouth cavity is situated above the larynx,
and receives the sound struck out by the lips of
that instrument. The ceiling of the mouth is
288
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
the hard palate. This ceiling has the form of
an arch. The floor of the mouth is the lower
jaw. Its sides are the cheeks. At its back is
the muscular enlargement of the oesophagus, -
the pharynx. It is nearly filled by the tongue,
the synonym of speech. It can be lengthened.
by the protrusion of the lips. It is made vari-
able—that is, longer or shorter, closer or opener
by the play of its parts.
We may find the happiest correspondence of
the play of this complex instrument in the action
of the human hand, and so may say that it ma-
nipulates the tone sent to it. And we do no vio-
lence to the exact facts when we say of one who
has a finished articulation that he is dextrous
through the mouth.
Three movements control the size of the mouth
cavity. In speaking, these movements are acts
of intelligence, and are dictated from the speech
centre of the brain. And we may conclude
articulation to be purely an act of the Mental
nature.
(f.) Two great discoveries of the functions of inner or-
gans go far toward determining a Philosophy of Expression.
These discoveries are, first, that of Corti, of the delicate
organ in the cochlea of the ear, which the microscope dis-
closes as literally a harp with three thousand minute strings,
with nerve fibres reaching each string, and whose office is to
respond to the most delicate variations of tone.
And the second is that of Broca, already described. The
small tract of the brain the seat of articulate speech
should be named the organ of Broca, after its great dis-
coverer.
SPEECH AS AN ELEMENT OF EXPRESSION. 289
The three movements that control the size of
the variable cavity are, —
1. The movements of the lower jaw.
2. The play of the tongue, towards or touch-
ing any part of the walls of the mouth.
3. The play of the lips, by loosening, tighten-
ing, or protruding them.
(g.) We give in diagram the arrangement of both the
voice and articulatory organs:
(1.)
THE ORGAN OF VOICE.
Variable cavity.
Reed.
(2.)
THE ORGAN OF ARTICULATION.
The Mouth cavity, Passive agent.
Wind-pipe.
Lower Jaw,
Active
Tongue,
agents.
Lips,
The Lungs.
Diaphragm.
We shall now readily comprehend that spoken language,
as it reaches the ear, is a complexity of sounds made by the
action of two organs.
We have presented as a whole to consciousness a com-
plexity of sounds arising from the simultaneous play of the
voice organ and the say of the articulatory organ.
Let the student bear in mind that the ear is an indispensa-
ble ally of the voice organ, and the organ of Broca of the
articulatory organ. We may now let this complex organ
play and say. The play of the voice organ has projected
voice into the variable cavity. Here it is jointed, moulded,
or segmented by the action of the lower jaw, tongue, and
lips. If we observe the process of the formation of these
jointed sounds as they issue from the mouth, we shall find
that sometimes the mouth channel is open and free from all
obstruction, from the vibrating lips of the glottis to the outer
air.
19
290
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
Sometimes we find the channel contracted and narrowed,
but nowhere entirely closed. Again, it is partly obstructed;
and once more, it is entirely closed against the outflowing
stream.
Now it is this issuing stream of sound poured through
an open or narrow mouth - channel, through a partly ob-
structed channel, or breaking through an entirely obstructed
channel, that gives to the ear all the elements that enter into
speech. And when, by an act of intelligence, trains of these
segmented sounds become significant of ideas, we have
spoken language.
OF THE ELEMENTS OF SPEECH.
All spoken language is made up of the sounds
of two organs acting with a common impulse.
The sounds are tones and articulations. As they
are organic, they are essentially the same the
world over.
The human organs of speech have
the same general structure, and hence give forth
the same sounds.
As all violins give forth the sounds of the vio-
lin, so all human speech organs, of whatever race,
age, or sex, give forth the sounds of the human
instrument of speech.
A universal language, to be read and spoken
by men of all races and tongues, must be repre-
sented by symbols which shall show to the eye
the positions and motions of the organs when in
the act of speaking.
(h.) Such a diagram alphabet of organic symbols has been
given to the world by A. Graham Bell.¹ These symbols rep-
1 Visible Speech. Published by Cowperthwait & Co., Philadelphia.
SPEECH AS AN ELEMENT OF EXPRESSION. 291
resent the positions and actions of the organs, and thus make
speech visible.
The written language, composed of these diagram letters,
is easily learned, and children of whatever race can be taught
to read and speak the sounds indicated by the letters.
Its adoption would give the same tongue to all the nations
of the earth.
With the deaf and dumb, two senses sight and touch
supply the want of hearing and speaking. The eye of the
deaf mute sees an organic position. A sensation of touch
feels this position and locates it, say in the throat or palate,
or on the tongue or lips. The result of the most patient
teaching is that the dumb speak through the education of
the sense of touch. They literally feel their way into
speaking!
Let us examine a little more closely these
sounds or elements of spoken language. All
sounds reported by our ears are either tones or
noises. The whistling of the wind, the rattling
of a wagon, the scraping of the feet on the sanded
floor, the filing of a saw, all the puffs, hisses,
buzzes, clicks, that reach our ears are noises.
Tones are the products of musical instruments.
The piano, the violin, the flute, give forth tones.
If this division of sounds be correct, the
sounds we make in speaking are also tones and
noises. We call the tones vowels, and the noises
consonants.
The peculiarity of the vowels is that they are
sounds resulting from an open channel outward
from the lips of the glottis. There is no ob-
struction to the outgoing sound.
In all consonants there is obstruction. The
292
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
active organs in some way obstruct the vocal
channel.
In organic positions and actions of and within
the variable cavity of the mouth the cavity
extending from the soft palate to the protruded
lips — we shall find all possible sounds of the
complex organ, from the purest musical tones.
due to structure, use, and training, to the clicks,
buzzes, puffs, hisses, and gutturals due to some
form of partial or entire closure. We diagram
the extremes of vowel sounds. Between these
limits lie all possible vowels.
ä
A as in father is the funda-
mental tone of the instrument,
⁰⁰ the purest outcome from the
lungs, throat, and variable cavity.
00
The human instrument tuned to ä always
gives this fundamental tone, and can give no
other. If we open the throat naturally and
without effort, as in the act of gaping, getting
everything out of the way of the issuing stream,
-the teeth out of the way, the lips and tongue
out of the way,-ä as in father will be the sound
given, whether by Saxon or Celt, by African,
Chinese, Esquimo, Indian, or Hottentot, by every
man, woman, or child, of whatever race.
starting-point established, it becomes a necessity
of structure that if we narrow the oral cavity at
different points and by different degrees, all the
vowels will be sounded in their turn.
This
Tuning the instrument for its fundamental
SPEECH AS AN ELEMENT OF EXPRESSION. 293
sound, the vocal ä as in father, and proceeding
towards closure, we form a triple series of vowel
sounds along three lines of closure.
1st Series: along the line from ä to ē.
This series is due to the action of the tongue,
which marks intervals or spaces in the mouth
cavity, the largest space giving ä, the narrow-
est ē.
This series of vowels is called the lingual se-
ries.
2d Series: along the line from a to oo, as
in ooze.
This series is due to the pushing forwards and
rounding the lips, which lengthens the mouth
cavity and thus creates new resonant spaces.
The series of vowels thus formed is called the
labial series.
3d Series: along the line from a to various
closures made by the combined action of the
tongue and lips.
This series is due to the coördinate action of
the tongue and lips. The vowels thus formed
are called glides. They are composites or
blended sounds.
Along these three lines of closure the vowel
sounds of all languages must be found.¹
If we regard the vowels as musical tones, all
the articulations must be ranked as noises. But
1 The student is referred to Professor Whitney's Growth of Lan-
guage and Bell's Visible Speech for an exhaustive treatment of this
subject. Both these authorities found their scheme of vowel sounds
upon organic structure, and can be profitably studied together.
294
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
the ear easily marks a distinction between these
noises. It divides them into two classes: -
1. Those in which it recognizes a considerable
basis of tone, and which are not decidedly un-
pleasant or inharmonious, - such composites as
b, d, l, m, n, r, ng, v, th (as in then), z, zh.
These elements form the class of sub-vocals.
2. Those in which the ear recognizes the
slightest basis of tone or none at all, and which
are, for the most part, unpleasant, inharmonious,
and to be avoided, such noises as p, t, k, s, f,
sh, th (as in thin), ch.
class of aspirates.
These elements form the
Now, our speech is made up of these three
classes of sounds. And the delight the Psychic
finds in tone and rhythm and in dramatic pre-
sentation is evident from the way it realizes it-
self by using the three kinds of sounds. So
we may say that the Psychic expresses its mu-
sical states through the vowels, its passionate
states through the sub-vocals, and that it uses
the aspirates to form the boundaries or outlines
of the projected tones.
And through correspondence, these blends or
composites of three kinds of sounds present to
the ear what graceful forms present to the eye,
namely, the elements of the beautiful, — uniform-
ity and variety.
(i.) Tennyson has given a fine illustration of the value
of vowel sounds in the art of poetry. In the lines we
quote, he speaks of the inscription upon the cenotaph of
Sir John Franklin in Westminster Abbey:
SPEECH AS AN ELEMENT OF EXPRESSION. 295
"Not here! The white north has thy bones;
And thou, heroic sailor soul,
Art passing on thy happier voyage now,
Toward no earthly pole."
66
0
وو
Note how these vowels are attuned to gratify the sense
of tone and rhythm. The poet begins with the short sound
of "o." This sound must be struck with the radical stress;
it will not admit of quantity. But the purely English “o
in "north," modified by "r," is a most musical element;
next comes the complex "i" in "white" and the long
in "bones,” which could be sung rather than spoken. But
the whole series of sounds find their climax in the resonant
march of tone upon the words "thou, heroic sailor soul.'
The vowel long "o" is the proudest and “ a the most mu-
sical of the English vowels. What poise, dignity, strength,
and harmony of grateful sounds the above lines present to
the ear!
We cannot refrain from another quotation from a poem
on the death of Princess Alice, where he makes a climax of
vowel sounds that are richer through speech than any set
musical treatment could give:
"Thou England's England-loving daughter,
Dying so English thou wouldst have her flag
Borne on thy coffin."
These lines seem cast in the most suggestive form for
treatment by values, tone color, and rhythm.
Now, the sub-vocals are equally expressive when depth of
passion rules the utterance. The correspondence for the
inflections of voice in our deepest Emotive states is with
the force of gravity. And the sub-vocals lend themselves
to this downward movement more readily than the vowels.
The author had said this much to a student one day.
She was reading the play of Julius Cæsar. These lines oc-
curred:
"Cassius.
Age, thou art shamed!
Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods!
When went there by an age, since the great flood,
But it was famed with more than with one man!
296
PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION.
My student read these lines with great force, but with
shallow downward inflections. When told to give the deep-
est possible downward slide upon the sub-vocal "g" in
"age," upon
“m’d” in “shamed,” upon
“ "m" in "Rome,"
and to give three successive deep falling slides upon the
sub-vocals in the words "more," "one," and "man," she
met with most gratifying success.
Of one thing we may be entirely certain: that
the spoken language of to-day, in this advanced
civilization, is not the language of the England
of a century ago, nor is that of the era of Shake-
speare the language of Chaucer, nor is that of
Chaucer the language of our earlier Saxon an-
cestors, nor did theirs bear a very close resem-
blance to the Aryan or race language.
Whitney says that the primitive language of
our family had not half the sounds heard to-day.
Spoken language is a living tree.
In the lapse
of ages it is root, trunk, branch, flower, fruit.
The oldest trees of language on the earth
have borne no improved fruit.
Nor do they
take kindly to engrafting other stock upon the
old. According to Sayce, the language of the
nomads of the desert of Sahara has been station-
And yet
ary for the last four thousand years.
it is a thrifty though slow-growing tree, com-
pared with that revealed by the oldest monu-
ments of Egypt, "decrepit, outworn, with none
of the bloom of creative youth."
According to Dr. Edkins, it takes twelve hun-
dred years, in Chinese, to grow a new tone. So
a new tone in the Chinese language is a twelve-
century plant!
SPEECH AS AN ELEMENT OF EXPRESSION. 297
In the Aryan root word, man is he who
thinks, he who means. And man is man in vir-
tue of the faculty of articulate speech.
Said Martins: "Articulate language is the
distinctive characteristic of man."
to man.'
Said Darwin: "Articulate speech is peculiar
And Haeckel: "Nothing can have
transformed and ennobled the faculties of the
brain of man so much as the acquisition of lan-
guage."
And with a broader spiritual insight, Oken
said: "In the mind of man universal life has
become subjective, and language is this subjec-
tivity externalized."
In conclusion, we may say that, with the evo-
lution of the mouth organs as an instrument of
expression, man has reached the climax of phys-
ical differentiation.
It is not probable that a new being is to ap-
pear upon the earth, with a physical structure
differing in any essential from the present man.
The exterior has completed itself. Any fur-
ther differentiation must be looked for along the
parallels of the mental, ethical, and spiritual.
Along the psychic parallels we may expect
Nature to complete her design, held from the
beginning of life upon the earth, to crown her
creative acts by the presentation of a being in
whom the Spiritual shall realize itself.

I

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