ccess, if it accomplishes any
good, it may be traced back to and acknowledged as rising from the
never-failing encouragement of my old friend Brucker.

Let us return, now, to where I was in my researches.

It remains, then, for me to specify the true meaning of the shoulders in
the expression of the passions. Their intervention in all forms of
emotion being proven to me, it would seem that the very frequency of
that intervention should exclude the possibility of assigning any
particular role to this agent.

Fancy my perplexity, placed face to face with an organ infinitely
expressive, but whose physiognomy is mingled promiscuously with every
sentiment and every passion!

How, then, are we to characterize the shoulder? What name shall we give
to its dominant role? How specify that supreme power outside of which
all expression ceases to exist? Is it allowable for me to call it
_neutral?_ And if the universal application of that agent apparently
authorizes that appellation up to a certain point, whence comes its
importance? Whence the empire that it exerts over the aspect of its
congeners? Is it admissible for a neutral agent to exert so much action
upon the totality of the forces to which it is allied?

Assuredly not! The word _neutral_, moreover, excludes the idea of
action, and even more strongly that of predominant action which belongs
surpassingly to the shoulder. Truly, here was a treasure-house for me.
It was, as they say, "to give speech to the dogs."

This new difficulty only increased the determination with which I had
pursued my researches; and with the confidence arising from the fact
that no obstacle had yet conquered me, I said to myself that the
solution of this problem would be due to my perseverance. I could not,
in view of the importance of its expression, consider the shoulder as a
neutral agent. After spending a long time in vain study, I was on the
point of giving up as insoluble the problem that I had set myself. Let
us see by what simple means I obtained the solution. How much trouble
and pains one will sometimes give himself in looking for spectacles that
are on his nose!

The shoulder, in every man who is moved or agitated, rises sensibly, his
will playing no part in the ascension; the successive developments of
this involuntary act are in absolute proportion to the passional
intensity whose numeric measure they form; the shoulder may, therefore,
be fitly called _the thermometer of the sensi