Chap. I. PSYCHOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT. 299 



relations become more intimate, and acqnire a character of intensity unknown among 

 the cold-blooded Yertebrata. In Man, the vertical station renders the whole body 

 better adapted to perform sAMnpathetic motions, and the organs themselves, by 

 which they are performed, are more perfect ; the hand especially, still a locomotive 

 organ in the Monkeys, is, next to speech, the most expressive organ of Man. With 

 it he strengthens his word ; with it he grasp.s the hand of his fellow-man ; with it 

 he presses his mate upon his Jicart. Need I add, how expressive are the lips, the 

 eyes, the tongue, the organs of the voice, and even the attitudes of the body, in 

 giving utterance, by their diversified play, to our thoughts, our feelings, and our 

 emotions — joy, love, grief, or hope! 



In this series, the true Reptiles occupy an intermediate position between the 

 Batrachians and Birds. But if we apply the same test to the Turtles in particular, 

 we cannot fail to see that, as the complication of their structui-e assigns to them the 

 highest position in their class, .so also is their psychological development highest 

 among Reptiles. No one can foil, on the contrary, to see that the place assigned to 

 the Snakes, at the bottom of their clas.'s, while the Lizards stand in an intermediate 

 position between them and the Turtles, is as well justified in a psychological point 

 of view as it is by the complication of their structure. Their whole body is used 

 for locomotion ; there are no limbs ; the head and neck are buried in the uni- 

 form cj'lindrical body ; the eyes are nearly immovable ; there is no voice but a 

 kind of liLssing, which may express at times fear, at other times fierceness. This, 

 and certain bendings of the whole body, or an uplifting of its front part or of 

 the tail, and a feverish shaking of the latter, as we see it particularly in some 

 poisonous Snakes when near their prey, are the oidy motions by which Snakes 

 show to other animals or to Man, the state of their mind. Fear and ferocity 

 are indeed the only psychical emotions Avhicli have been observed in Snakes by 

 the most attentive oljservers. If we compare a Snake near its prey Avith a Liz- 

 ard in the same employment, we may admire the shrewd prudence of the latter, 

 while we are astonished at the awkwardness of the former. The Lizard, turning 

 its head now on one side then on the other, watches carefully the fiy it has 

 espied, and at once catches it by a quick motion, which he inake.^, however, onh- 

 when sure of success. On the contrary', we may often see Snakes striking again 

 and again in tlie direction of their prey before they catch it. There are more- 

 over no ej'clids in Snakes, while they are much developed in Lizards, and capable 

 of the liveliest motions?. The eyelids render the eyes of the Lizard expressive, 

 and from these alone we may ascertain whether they are lively or depressed, 

 while the e^-es of the Snake are unexpressive, cold, and unchanging. Snakes see 

 only ; Lizards look. And now what is the further step of iisychological devel- 

 opment made from the Lizards to the Turtles ? The neck, in the first i>lace. 



