ggi Sir James Orichton-Broiom [May 27, 



orders of the will, and giving us our control over matter but we are 

 ant to forget that it moves responsive to passing feelings of the mind, 

 mav tell with nice precision of our pains and pleasures, and heighten 

 r/elu icTate the emotional expression of the face. Our constitutional 

 reserve in this country has led to the systematic suppression of 

 omoional movements in the hand, and we must go to the South of 

 Europe if we would learn how rich and diversified the emotive 

 fanguage of the hand may be. Canon Farrar says of the mimic 

 actors of Eome-who in the time of Nero expressed in movement 

 and in movement alone, every burning passioa and soft desire -that 

 Zy Uterally spoke with their hands ; and we had recently m London 

 a pky wTthout'^words, "L'Enfant Prodigue," in which a somewhat 

 compHcated story, full of incident and feeling, was told by pantomime 

 wThVusical accompaniment, and in which the hands of some of the 

 actors became articulate, and supplied the place of dialogue Facial 

 exnression counted for little. The two principal characters, the 

 Kerr;S were masked and their faces therefore blank. The music 

 no doubt was suggestive and the large movements of the body 

 conveyed bToad elcts, but it was the hands that really told the 

 story clearly and forcil^ly, and that like tongues of fire flashed and 

 Sed folhthe hidden strivings of the spirit. Suppose that the 

 hands of the actors had been cut off, and that they had played in 

 other respects exactly as they did and with the same music, only in 

 :tX^ -""nUs hald movements-why, the whole piece would have 

 Vippn absolutely unintelligible. , . . 



The education of the motor centres consists m great part in raising 

 them to individuality of action, or to the power of combined action 

 in a definUe oilr. At first these centres tend to discharge them- 

 selves in a confused and disorderly way. Presen an object of desire 

 -say a red-cheeked apple-to a young infant, and what does it do? 

 mes i? take hold of the coveted object ? Not at a 1. It kicks up its 



heels cows l«"«y. ^^"^ *'"-°™^ ''' ^^"^^ ^°^^ -t^/g'*^'-"' lf„ 

 thTit does because the sense impression conveyed from the eye to 

 ttas It aoes "eoaus emotion of pleasure and desire there, 



t?raml::ctS:ywht:ht widely diffused through the motor 

 area and ends not in definite but in wholesale and indiscriminate 

 d snlav Only gradually does the child learn, by observation 

 Sfon and experiment during evolution of its brain centres, to cut 

 off one superfluous movement after another, and ultimately to confine 

 ft!elf to thoe movements that are essential to its pniTose, to wit, the 

 stretching out of the arm, the closing of tlie hand, and the conveyance 

 of the apple to its mouth. All througli education this process of 

 snecialitation of motor centres goes on. Any one who has watched a 

 Ens class will know what pains are reciuired to put a stop to 

 unnecessary sprawling movements and grimaces and all through 

 educatTon and long tfter education is over illustrations may be 

 ru^M Z failui-e of this process in certain directions, and of what 

 I may ct 1 leakage fr<,m one centre to another. I daresay most of 



