238 PHYSICAL EXPRESSION. 



Objects may be beautiful to one man that are not 

 beautiful to another. The same object say, a scien- 

 tific instrument is beautiful to one man, not to 

 another ; it affects them differently. Probably there 

 is no property " beauty " resident, as a property, in 

 the instrument; the sense of beauty, and the expres- 

 sion of beauty at the sight of the instrument, are 

 found only in some men. It follows, then, that when 

 we see the expression of the sense of beauty in a man 

 at the sight of the instrument, this indicates one of 

 his properties, one of his forms of impressionability. 

 In fact, the expression of the sense of beauty at the 

 sight of a certain object is a reflex movement of a 

 certain kind. I regret to be unable to describe the 

 expression of the sense of beauty in man, but I 

 think the following are important points in such 

 expression : The sight of the object causes the 

 head and eyes to turn towards it, as when the 

 attention is attracted ; then the visual impress of 

 the object is usually inhibitory, rather than stimu- 

 lating ; movements are commonly inhibited thereby, 

 and the primary appearances of rest are produced, 

 just as when the attention is attracted by anything ; 

 sometimes, as in children, there may be signs of 

 excitation rather than inhibition. There is, I think, 

 sometimes a tendency to extension of the head, 

 which may even occur to such an extent as to 

 remove the eyes from a position where they can see 

 the object. These motor signs at the sight of a 

 particular object occur only in some people; they 

 serve as physical signs indicating what kind of 

 brain they have, or, as it might commonly be said, 



