22 PHYSICAL EXPRESSION. 



empirical, or indirect expression, may be seen in 

 organic, and in non-living subjects. When such 

 cases occur in man, or in living animals, or vege- 

 tables, they may be termed " examples of coincident 

 development." This empirical expression differs 

 from the modes of direct expression, inasmuch as in 

 the latter, the expression is the direct outcome of 

 the property expressed. The sprouting beard in a 

 boy's chin, is a sign of commencing manhood, not 

 because the one produces the other, but because a 

 widely extended experience of many boys has 

 shown the two things to be usually coincident. 

 Pink-flowered geraniums are plants of feeble con- 

 stitution, not because the colour of the flower 

 directly affects the constitution of the plant, but 

 because pink-flowered geraniums usually have 

 highly coloured leaves, with but few cells con- 

 taining chlorophyll, and the presence of chlorophyll 

 is essential to the nutrition of the plant. Pink 

 flowers are, then, only an empirical sign of feeble 

 constitution in the geranium, but still a sign of 

 value; the real or direct expression of the con- 

 stitutional feebleness is the small amount of 

 chlorophyll in the leaves the scarcity of chlorophyll 

 is the direct expression of the feeble constitution, 

 because it is the cause of it. 



Impressionability and retentiveness are properties 

 found alike in living, and non-living subjects; nutri- 

 tion and growth belong to living beings only, or so 

 it is generally considered. By the term "nutrition" 

 is denoted an active vital process, converting pabu- 

 lum into tissue of the organism, or into some new 



