GESTURES NATURAL SIGNS OF THE PASSIONS. 509 



the parts to which they are usually referred, attract our attention to 

 them principally, in consequence of the sensation which accompanies 

 them being there chiefly experienced. The same may be said of the 

 different gestures that accompany the various emotions. They are 

 dependent upon the influence exerted by the function of sensibility on 

 the other functions. Gall, 1 in his system, has feebly attempted to show, 

 that each gesture has a reference to the encephalic situation of the 

 organ concerned in the production of the emotion of which it is a con- 

 comitant. The idea was suggested to him, he asserts, by the fact, 

 observed by him a thousand times, that in fractures of the skull, the 

 hand, (naturally we should think,) was carried mechanically to the seat 

 of the fracture. He farther remarks, that the organs of the memory 

 of words and of meditation are seated in the forehead ; and that the 

 hand is carried thither, whenever we are engaged in deep study; that 

 the organ of religious instinct corresponds to the vertex; and hence, in 

 the act of prayer, all the gestures are directed towards that part of the 

 body. Like every professed systematist, Gall is here pushing his prin- 

 ciples ad absurdum. They are, indeed, controverted by facts. The 

 hand is usually carried, not to the part of the encephalon in which any 

 passion is effected, but to the part of the body in which its more pro- 

 minent effects are perceptible, as to the region of the stomach or heart ; 

 and frequently the gesture is referable to the determinate action, which 

 must be regarded as a necessary effect of the passion. 



Finally, poetry and painting belong properly to the varieties of ex- 

 pression; but they are topics that do not admit of elucidation by phy- 

 siology. 



Here terminates the history of the animal functions, which have the 

 common character of being periodically suspended by sleep. By many 

 physiologists, this function has, therefore, been examined in this place; 

 but as the nutritive and generative functions are, likewise, greatly in- 

 fluenced by sleep, we shall follow the example of M. Magendie, 2 and defer 

 its study until those functions have been inquired into. 



CILIARY MOTION. 



Although not an animal function, it may be convenient to allude, in 

 this place, to the phenomena of vibratory or ciliary motion, which, in 

 recent times, have received the attention of observers. These terms 

 have been employed to express the appearance produced by cilia, a 

 peculiar sort of moving bodies resembling small hairs, which are visible 

 by the aid of the microscope, on parts that are covered with ciliary or 

 vibratory epithelium. 3 



1 Sur les Fonctions du Cerveau, v. 436, Paris, 1825. 



* Precis Elementaire, i. 306. 



8 See page 132 ; and, also, Sharpey, art. Cilia, Cyclop, of Anat. and Phyiiol., P. vi ., p. 606, 

 Lond., 1836; and Henle, Allgem. Anat., or Jourdan's French Translation, p. 251, Paris, 1843 5 

 and the excellent article Flirnmerbewegung, by Valentin, in Wagner's Handwdrterbuch der 

 Physiologic, 3te Lieferung, s. 484, Braunschweig, 1842. 



