vengeance is
retarded.

The menace made in figure 3, with inclination of the head and agitation
of the index finger, is that of a valet who wishes to play some ill turn
upon his master; for with the body bent and the arm advanced, there is
no intelligence. But it is ill-suited to vengeance, because that
attitude should be strong and solid, with the eye making the indication
better than the finger.

[Illustration: Criterion of the Legs]

[Illustration. Criterion of the Legs]

Chapter VIII.

Of the Semeiotic, or the Reason of Gesture.

_The Types which Characterize Gesture._

The semeiotic is the science of signs, and hence the science of the form
of gesture. Its object is to give the reason for the forms of gesture
according to the types that characterize it, the apparatus that modifies
it, and the figures that represent it.

There are three sorts of types in man: constitutional or formal,
fugitive or passional, and habitual.

The constitutional type is that which we have at birth.

The passional type is that which is reproduced under the sway of
passion.

The habitual types are those which, frequently reproduced, come to
modify even the bones of the man, and give him a particular
constitution.

Habit is a second nature, in fact, a habitual movement fashions the
material and physical being in such a manner as to create a type not
inborn, and which is named habitual.

To recognize constitutional types, we study the movements of the body,
and the profound action which the habit of these movements exercises
upon the body; and, as the type produced by these movements is in
perfect analogy with the formal, constitutional types, we come through
this analogy to infer constant phenomena from the passional form. Thus
all the formal types are brought back to the passional types.

Passional types explain habitual types, and these last explain
constitutional types. Thus, when we know the sum of movements possible
to an organ, when we know the sense of it, we arrive at that semeiotic
through which the reason of a form is perfectly given.

_Of Gesture Relative to its Modifying Apparatus._

Every gesture places itself in relation with the subject and the object.

It is rare that a movement tending toward an object does not touch the
double form. Thus, in saying that a thing is admirable, we start from a
multitude of physical centres whose sense we are to determine. When this
sense is known, unde