332 PHYSICAL EXPRESSION. 



expressions of the features, by exciting requisite 

 movements in the parts themselves." 



Camper is one of the writers who fully recognized 

 the significance of nerve-muscular signs as means 

 of expression. 



Sir Gilbert Blane* in his Croonian Lecture, 

 delivered before the Royal Society, says (p. 233) : 



" So far as we know, either from actual observa- 

 tion, or from analogy, there does not exist in nature 

 any such thing as absolute rest ; for when we con- 

 template the motions of the earth and heavenly 

 bodies, the various complications of the planetary 

 revolutions in their rotation round their own axes, 

 and in the paths of their orbits, in the irregularities 

 arising from the disturbances of their mutual 

 gravitation, and from the precession of the 

 equinoxes, not to mention the influence of the 

 innumerable sidereal systems upon each other, it 

 may be affirmed, on incontestable principles, that no 

 particle of matter ever was, or will be, for two 

 instants of time, in the same place, and that no 

 particle of it ever has returned, or will return, to 

 any one point of absolute space which it has ever 

 formerly occupied. Whether motion, therefore, can 

 strictly be called an essential property of matter or 

 not, it is, certainly, by the actual constitution of 

 nature, originally and indefeasibly impressed upon 

 it ; and as rest does not exist in nature, but may be 

 considered in a vulgar sense, as a fallacy of the 

 senses, and in a philosophical sense, as an abstraction 



* * Select Dissertations on several Subjects of Medical Science," 

 1822. 



