824 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and wife, sometimes ultimately acquire a similarity of physiognomy. 

 Animals faithfully express the passions of their race in their organs 

 and attitudes ; and men, in turn, reproduce in themselves various 

 types of animality. Different races of men have their own respective 

 varieties of physiognomy, according to the predominant traits of their 

 characters, and different nations among men of the same race. 



The professions also leave their traces in the forms of the organs 

 and in the features. " The hearing of the soldier," says M. Mante- 

 gazza, " is precise, stiff, and energetic ; that of the priest, supple and 

 unctuous. The soldier, even in civil life, shows in his movements the 

 habit of obedience and command ; while the priest in a lay dress 

 wears the mark of the cassock and the cloth, and his fingers seem all 

 the time to be blessing or absolving." So many other professions may 

 be recognized by their attitudes, but there are limitations in the mat- 

 ter ; for physiognomy, as M. Mantegazza says, " can not yet be con- 

 sidered an exact science, because we do not yet know all the elements 

 of the problem. It has, nevertheless, its well-established general laws 

 We are not likely to confound a frank physiognomy with a tricky 

 one, or an honest face with the face of a debauchee or rascal." 



There remain a few words to be said on the interpretation of signs, 

 in which the old psychology saw a mysterious faculty. We regard 

 it as the simple continuation in another of the sympathetic conta- 

 gion, of the solidarity which is first manifested in the interior of an 

 organism. In the exterior as well as in the interior of our body, sym- 

 pathy is the only psychological law of expression ; to interpret is to 

 sympathize. In a mechanical view, this sympathy is a real communi- 

 cation of movements, as when the vibrations of a bell set another bell 

 in vibration ; in the psychological and social view, it is a real solidar- 

 ity of sensations, impressions, and volitions. The instinctive reaction 

 of the will under the influence of the feeling, having been extended by 

 contagion to our whole organism, extends by contagion to similar or- 

 ganisms, and, if other men comprehend what we feel, it is because 

 they themselves feel it. The final result of this sympathetic com- 

 munication is the retranslation of the emotion felt by one into similar 

 emotions in the others. The emotion of our neighbor is returned to 

 us by a kind of response or return shock. Seeing the movements and . 

 attitudes of others, we tend to realize them in ourselves ; then, as by 

 a counter-stroke, the movement and attitude realized by us reproduce 

 in us the feelings that correspond to them. 



Mr. Spencer would explain the interpretation of signs by a purely 

 mechanical association. This same cause, acting upon several animals 

 simultaneously, makes them, for example, utter the same cry of alarm ; 

 the fear and the cry are finally associated mechanically ; this associa- 

 tion, by the survival of the best endowed, becomes organic and heredi- 

 tary ; at least the mere hearing of the sound of alarm will be enough 

 mechanically to awaken the feeling. While we do not deny the in- 



