The " Power of Leasts!' 257 



these views is not without importance. Physicians 

 have always depended greatly upon emotional ex- 

 pression as a means of diagnosis. Unconsciously 

 the face of the patient reveals his physical state. 

 Yet too much has been left in the empirical border- 

 land of science. Why a certain pathological state 

 should be indicated by a definite combination of ex- 

 pressions has not always been clearly shown. To-day 

 the whole subject is studied from the point of view 

 of anatomy and physiology. No occult force is ad- 

 mitted, the correlative nerve-supply of muscles and 

 the effect of excitation of nerve-centres are rationally 

 investigated. 



Aside from the great special value of the work, of 

 what tremendous import to the race are Darwin's 

 deductions ! For he has shown us that our every 

 thought and act mould our physical frames, and 

 through them the generations yet unborn, either to 

 beauty and grace, or to uncouth ugliness and de- 

 formity. As the struggle for existence filled the rocks 

 with organisms forever extinct, because not for the 

 highest use, so may we, too, fossilise and outgrow 

 habits and desires of ignoble birth, ascending by the 

 " power of leasts," by that wondrous calculus of na- 

 ture, to purer and nobler existence. Darvvin has 

 taught us that the forces which, acting through count- 

 less cycles, have brought us up from formless slime, 

 now remain in our hands to use for good or ill — 



" That life is not as idle ore, 

 But iron dug from central gloom. 

 And heated hot with burning fears. 

 And dipt in baths of hissing tears. 

 And battered with the shocks of doom 

 For shape and use." 



