Delsarte System of Oratory · Chapter 43Episode VI. First Objection to the Thermometric System of the Shoulder
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The innate æsthetic principle of the semeiotics of the shoulder was at last clearly demonstrated to me, and no more doubt or uncertainty upon that point seemed to me possible. I might safely formulate the following rule:
When a man says to you in interjective form: "I love, I suffer, I am delighted," etc., do not believe him if his shoulder remains in a normal attitude. Do not believe him, no matter what expression his face may assume. Do not believe him--he lies; his shoulder denies his words. That negative form betrays his thoughts; and, if he expresses ardent passion, you have merely to consult the thermometer which, all unwittingly, he himself offers to your inspection. See, it marks zero! therefore he lies; doubt it not, he lies! but his shoulder does not lie. He amiably puts it at your disposal--read, read at your ease; it bears inscribed in living letters his deceit and craft. It can never cheat you, and when the gentleman accosts you with such words as: "Dear friend! how charmed I am to see you!" say to yourself as you look at his thermometer: "Traitor, your delight as well as your friendship is below zero! You try to deceive me, but in vain; henceforth you have no secrets from me, clumsy forger! You do not see, as with one hand you proffer the false jewel which you would sell me, that the other at the same instant gives me the touch-stone which reveals your tricks; your right hand thus incessantly exposing to me the secrets of your left hand!"
What an admirable thing is this mechanism of the body working in the service of the soul! With what precision it reveals the least movements of its master! What magnificent things it lays bare! Voluntarily or involuntarily, everything leads to truth under the action of the translucid light which breaks forth in the working of each of our organs!
And yet, well founded as the preceding theory may be, solid as are the bases upon which it rests, is it free from any and all objection? May not some oppose to it, for instance, the impassibility of men and women of the world, among whom it would be difficult to find the movements of the shoulder, which such people deem so ungraceful in others as to deprive them of all desire to imitate them? Now what conclusions are we to draw from the absence of this movement in those who are known as aristocrats? Must we tax them all indiscriminately with falsehood?
Here I might, and without hesitation, answer by the affirmation, Yes, all aristocrats lie! The medium which they constitute and which is called the world is nothing but a perpetual lie. Civility itself rests upon a lie. Nay, more, it insists upon deceit as a duty. Heavens, what would become of the world if truth were a necessity! Quarter of an hour of sincerity would be intolerable; ... the inhabitants would slay each other!
In the world people display their feelings, even the most avowable, with great reserve; this prudence, which paralyzes the very springs of sensitive life, seems as if it needs must neutralize the role which I attribute to the shoulder; and yet, in spite of contrary appearances, I deny that the thermometric action of the shoulder undergoes the least alteration in the aristocratic world; I deny explicitly that this agent proves less expressive and, above all, less truthful there than in the street; and that for the following reasons:
In the first place, we cannot reasonably suppose very ardent passions in men who are enervated by the perpetual influence of an artificial society. Now, here the stationary condition of the thermometer is explained: it proves absolutely nothing against the truth of the reports; it remains at zero to mark a colorless medium totally destitute of vitality. The shoulder would violate its law if it were to rise under such circumstances. It is, therefore, perfectly in character here; it should be, a priori, impassive in a negative society.
But is the shoulder really impassive in that medium which we call society?
Yes, in the eyes of people who are not of it, and who, from that very fact, cannot understand the value of certain expressions which are almost imperceptible; no, to those who constitute that special world of relations called superior.
How many things, in fact, the shoulder reveals by those slight changes unseen by ignorant persons, and expressing particularly the delicate and exquisite charm of spiritual relations! It is the law of infinitesimal quantities, of those scarcely perceptible movements or sensations that characterize the finer relations of people of culture, of eloquence, of grace, and of refined tastes.
It should be borne in mind, as I have already shown, that the manifestations of the shoulder in the street by no means accord with those of people ruled by the fashions of society. There is very little harmony or relation between the exquisite joints of a refined nature, the swift and flexible movements of an elegant organism, and the evolutions clumsily executed by torpid limbs, ankylosed, as it were, by labor at once hard and constant
This observation logically led me to an important conclusion, namely, that the value or importance of a standard is deduced expressly from the nature of the being, or the object to which it is applied. Of what value, for instance, could a millimeter be when added to the stature of a man? That same millimeter, however, would acquire a colossal value when added to the proportions of a flea. It would form a striking monstrosity.
An imperceptible fraction may, in certain cases, constitute an enormity. Again, the value of a standard, not the specific or numerical value which is an invariable basis, but the relative or moral value, must be deduced from the importance of the medium to which it applies. For instance: Five hundred men constitute a very good army in the midst of a peaceful population; and this handful of soldiers exerts, indeed, more moral power than the multitudes restrained under their government. A smile coming from the lips of a sovereign leaves in the soul that it penetrates a far deeper trace than all the demonstrations of a common or vulgar crowd. The traveler, detained by the winter in the polar regions, finds that he is warm and takes pleasure in the discovery, though at the time the thermometer marks 10 degrees below zero.
The atmosphere of a cave that we find warm in winter seems to us, without being modified in the least, of an icy coldness in summer.
The large quantity of alcohol that laboring people consume would ruin the health of less strongly constituted persons.
To conclude, then, these examples prove beyond dispute that one can only appreciate the importance of an act when he takes into account the nature of its agents, and that without these considerations he will be obliged to give up immediately all serious estimation of these manifestations.
Here I touch, it seems to me, a law of harmony, a curious law that I wish to examine incidentally. I shall, then, occupy myself with the objections that may, perhaps, be opposed even yet to the thermometric system of the shoulder