CHAPTER XIX. Human Faculty

HUMAN FACULTY

Measurement of mental powers—Gentiles—Number forms—Visions of sane persons—Experiments on self—Classification by judgment—Sandow—Weight of cattle—First and second prizes—Arithmetic by smell—Influences of gesture, voice, etc.

After I had become satisfied of the inheritance of all the mental qualities into which I had inquired, and that heredity was a far more powerful agent in human development than nurture, I wished to explore the range of human faculty in various directions in order to ascertain the degree to which breeding might, at least theoretically, modify the human race. I took the moderate and reasonable standpoint that whatever quality had appeared in man and in whatever intensity, it admitted of being bred for and reproduced on a large scale. Consequently a new race might be created possessing on the average an equal degree of quality and intensity as in the exceptional case. Relative infertility might of course stand in the way, but otherwise everything seemed to show that races of highly gifted artists, saints, mathematicians, administrators, mechanicians, contented labourers, musicians, militants, and so forth, might be theoretically called into existence, the average excellence of each race in its particular line being equal to that of its most highly gifted representative at the present moment.

I desired to plan a laboratory in which Human Faculty might be measured so far as possible, and, after much inquiry and trouble, drew up and sent a printed circular to experts, showing in outline what seemed to me feasible, and drawing attention to desiderata. Useful replies reached me from many quarters.

There was no one to whose intelligent co-operation I then owed more than Professor Croom Robertson (1842-1892) of University College. His genius and temperament were of the most attractive Scottish type—exact, sane, and very genial. He was well known by his work on Hobbes, and as the founder and Editor of the periodical Mind, in which his critical notices of current philosophical literature were soon recognised as of especial weight. He was a thorough friend, whose death left a void in my own life that has never been wholly filled.

The leading ideas of such a laboratory as I had in view, were that its measurements should effectually “sample” a man with reasonable completeness. It should measure absolutely where it was possible, otherwise relatively among his class fellows, the quality of each selected faculty. The next step would be to estimate the combined effect of these separately measured faculties in any given proportion, and ultimately to ascertain the degree with which the measurement of sample faculties in youth justifies a prophecy of future success in life, using the word “success” in its most liberal meaning.

The method of centiles (or of per-centiles as I originally called it) was devised to give greater precision to the meaning of “class-place.” The familiar phrases of top of his class, near the top, half-way down it, and the like, express a great deal, but they express much more if used in connection with the size of the class. A useful way of reducing classes of all sizes to a common one is as follows. The names of the individuals are entered in the order of their class-places in a long column, beginning with the highest. The names are separated by lines which resemble the rungs of a ladder, and will here be called rungs for distinction. The interval between the lowest and highest rungs is divided along the sides of the ladder into equal parts to form a scale, usually one of 100 parts. In this the lowest rung stands at 0° and the highest at 100°. Such divisions are called centiles. If the divisions are not in hundredths, but otherwise as tenths, eighths, or quarters, they are still called by words ending in “-ile,” as decile, octile, and quartile. The marks corresponding to the class-places at each centile, decile, octile, or quartile, are independent of the size of the class, except in that small degree to which all statistical deductions are liable when derived from different samples of the same store of material.

The diagram opposite explains the process. For reasons of space it is adapted here to a class of only twelve individuals, but it is applicable equally well to classes however large, and the larger the better.

The method of centiles affords a convenient and compact way of comparing the amounts of specified faculties in different individuals. All this is an old tale now, but I had to take a great deal of trouble before it was clearly thought out and well tested.

+------------+-----------+----------+------------------------------+ | | | | | | | | | Divisions of Scale. | | | Marks | Class- +------------------------------+ | Names. | or | Place. | | | | | Measures. | | | | | | | | Quarters. | Hundredths | | | | | | (Centiles).| +------------+-----------+----------+-----------------+--- 0° ---+ | | | 1st | | | +------------+-----------+----------+ | | | | | 2nd | | | +------------+-----------+----------+ | | | | | 3rd | | | +------------+-----------+----------+--Lower quartile-+-- 25° --+ | | | 4th | | | +------------+-----------+----------+ | | | | | 5th | | | +------------+-----------+----------+ | | | | | 6th | | | +------------+-----------+----------+-Middle quartile-+-- 50° --+ | | | 7th | (Median) | | +------------+-----------+----------+ | | | | | 8th | | | +------------+-----------+----------+ | | | | | 9th | | | +------------+-----------+----------+--Upper quartile-+-- 75° --+ | | | 10th | | | +------------+-----------+----------+ | | | | | 11th | | | +------------+-----------+----------+ | | | | | 12th | | | +------------+-----------+----------+-----------------+-- 100° --+

As it may interest persons to know how they would stand among the visitants to a large London Exhibition, I give a brief extract on next page from my published table (Nature, January 8, 1885),, concerning those measured at the International Health Exhibition.

Suppose the reader to be a male adult, and the strength of his pull as with a bow to be 78 lbs., he will learn that his class-place in that particular is at the seventieth centile. In other words, that of those measured at the above Exhibition about 70 per cent. were weaker and 30 per cent. stronger.

This little table contains excellent material for comparing the powers of the two sexes.

From Measurements made at the Anthropometric Laboratory in the International Health Exhibition of 1884.

+-------------------+-------------+----+-----------------------------+ | | | | Centiles. | | Subject of | Unit of | +-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+ | Measurement. | Measure. |Sex.| | | | | | | | | | 10° | 30° | 50° | 70° | 90° | +-------------------+-------------+----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+ |Height standing, } |Inches {| M. | 64·5| 66·5| 67·9| 69·2| 71·3| | without shoes } | {| F. | 59·9| 62·1| 63·3| 64·6| 66·4| | | | | | | | | | |Span of arms |Inches {| M. | 66·1| 68·2| 69·9| 71·4| 73·6| | | {| F. | 59·5| 61·7| 63·0| 64·5| 66·7| | | | | | | | | | |Weight in indoor } |Pounds {| M. | 125| 135| 143| 150| 165| | clothing } | {| F. | 105| 114| 122| 132| 142| | | | | | | | | | |Breathing capacity |Cubic inches{| M. | 177| 199| 219| 236| 277| | | {| F. | 102| 124| 138| 151| 177| | | | | | | | | | |Strength of pull } |Pounds {| M. | 60| 68| 74| 78| 89| | with a bow } | {| F. | 32| 36| 40| 44| 51| +-------------------+-------------+----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+

One of my many inquiries related to what I called “Number Forms”; it originated in this way. Mr. George Bidder, Q.C., son of the engineer who in his youth was the famous “calculating boy” (1806-1878), and who inherited and transmitted much of his father’s remarkable powers, wrote in a postscript of a letter to me in response to other inquiries, that he himself habitually saw numbers in his mind’s eye, arranged in a peculiar form, of which he sent a drawing. It began with the face of a clock, numbered I. to XII., and then tailed off, much like the tail of a kite, into an undulating curve, having 20, 30, 40, etc., at each bend. This prompted me to ask others whom I met whether he or she saw anything of the kind, and I received affirmative replies from a few girls.

I then went to my Club and successively asked the same question of every friend whom I saw, but invariably met with a more or less contemptuous negative. Nothing daunted, I inquired further, and soon found a goodly number of distinguished persons who perceived these curious forms, no two of them alike. After prolonged questioning in many directions I gathered enough material for a memoir, and being determined to publish it in a way that could not be pooh-poohed, I selected six well-known friends out of those who said that they saw them, and having assured myself that they would speak to the veracity of their several diagrams, I invited them all to a good dinner, and took them to the meeting of the Anthropological Institute on March 9, 1880, where the diagrams were hung up. These were G. Bidder, Col. Yule, Rev. G. Henslow, Prof. Schuster, J. Roget, and Mr. Wood Smith. They acted faithfully up to their assurances, and so the fact of the existence of Number-Forms was solidly established. Their remarks are published in the Journal of the Anthropological Institute. I possessed a collection of most curious forms, not a few of them appearing in three dimensions and drawn in perspective; many of them were coloured.

Before quitting this subject I may be allowed to tell a tale thereon. I had to deliver a lecture at the British Association, in which these Number-Forms were to be spoken of, and did a rash thing. It was that after describing their character and frequency, I said, “Now, will every person in this large meeting who is conscious of seeing a Number-Form, hold up his hand?” There was a dead silence; those who should have responded were too shy to move, and not a hand was raised. I suddenly bethought myself of a tale that had not long since appeared in the Times, as told by a German soldier to his comrades over a bivouac fire, to account for a want of solidarity in the French resistance. It was this, and I told it with some variations to the meeting:—

“The Chief Rabbi of Dantzig was a wealthy and hospitable man. (I repeat what I read, and beg pardon if the tale was applied to the wrong person.) One day his house caught fire and even the contents of his good cellar suffered. The Jews took counsel what to do for their beloved Rabbi. First a handsome subscription was proposed, but overruled; then another idea was mooted, then another, each less costly than the preceding; and at the last it was agreed that every Jew should visit the house on a day to be fixed, and bring with him a bottle of Eau de Vie de Dantzig (the original said ‘wine’). That after an appropriate speech of greeting to the Rabbi, he should descend into the cellar and empty his bottle into a vat prepared for the purpose. The day came, the Chief Rabbi prepared a sumptuous collation, and listened with delight to the flattering addresses of his guests; then, when the ceremony was concluded, he went down to the cellar with his family, all of them brimful of kindly feelings, to taste the result. He turned the tap, a beautifully clear fluid ran into his glass; he lifted it with gratitude to his lips, when suddenly his countenance fell; he sipped a second time and exploded in wrath, for the fluid was pure water. The fact was that each Jew had said to himself, ‘What matters it whether I put in a spirit which costs money, or water which costs nothing? My own contribution will make no sensible difference to the total result.’ As every Jew acted on this principle, the result was pure water.

“Now each of you who perceive Number-Forms has acted in a similar way, so there has been no response to my request; but I cannot let the matter drop, therefore I call on Professor S——, whom I see on the platform, and who, I know, perceives these Forms, to hold up his hand, and I trust then that you who have hitherto abstained through shyness will do so likewise.”

The appeal succeeded; up went Professor S——’s hand, and up went a multitude of scattered hands all about the body of the hall.

* * * * *

In 1881 I gave one of the Friday Evening Lectures at the Royal Institution on the Visions of Sane Persons, in which I dwelt on the far greater frequency than was supposed, of hallucinations and illusions among individuals in normal health, as ascertained through numerous inquiries verbally or by letter. It very often happened that the verbal reply to my question took a form like this, “No, no; I’ve never had any hallucination”; then, after a pause, “Well, there certainly was one curious thing,” etc. etc.

One afternoon at tea-time, before a meeting of the Royal Society, Sir Risdon Bennett (1809-1891), a well-known physician, President of the College of Physicians in 1876, and a Fellow of the Royal Society, drew me apart and told me of a strange experience he had had very recently. He was writing in his study separated by a thin wall from the passage, when he heard the well-known postman’s knock, followed by the entrance into his study of a man dressed in a fantastic medieval costume, perfectly distinct in every particular, buttons and all, who, after a brief time, faded and disappeared. Sir Risdon said that he felt in perfect health; his pulse and breathing were normal, and so forth, but he was naturally alarmed at the prospect of some impending brain disorder. Nothing, however, of the sort had followed. The same appearance recurred; he thought the postman’s knock somehow originated the hallucination.

I begged him to publish the curious case fully with his name attached, as it would then become a classical example, but he hesitated; however, he did ultimately publish it at some length in a medical paper, but signed only with his initials. I wholly forget its date. If any reader interested in these things should come across the paper, these imperfect but vivid recollections of mine may corroborate such impressions as he would have of its veracity, for I heard the story at length, very shortly after the event, told me with painstaking and scientific exactness, and in tones that clearly indicated the narrator’s earnest desire to be minutely correct. I purposely omit many details, doubting the accuracy of my own memory in those respects. There can be no impropriety now in publishing the name hitherto withheld.

I gave in the lecture many examples of guiding “stars” and the like, and referred to the fact that the visionary temperament has manifested itself largely at certain historical times, and under certain conditions of national life, and endeavoured to account for this by the following considerations:—

That the visionary tendency is much more common among sane people than is generally suspected.

In early life it seems to be a hard lesson for an imaginative child to distinguish between the real and the visionary world. If the fantasies are habitually laughed at and otherwise discouraged, the child soon acquires the power of distinguishing them; any incongruity or nonconformity is quickly noted, the fact of its being a vision is found out; it is discredited, and no further attended to. In this way the natural tendency to see visions is blunted by repression. Therefore, when popular opinion is of a matter-of-fact kind, the seers of visions keep quiet; they do not like to be thought fanciful or mad, and they hide their experiences, which only come to light through inquiries such as those I have been making. But let the tide of opinion change and grow favourable to supernaturalism, then the seers of visions come to the front. It is not that a faculty previously non-existent has been suddenly evoked, but that a faculty long smothered in secret has been suddenly allowed freedom to express itself, and it may be to run into extravagance owing to the removal of reasonable safeguards.

The following experiments on Human Faculty are worth recording; they have not been published before. In the days of my youth I felt at one time a passionate desire to subjugate the body by the spirit, and among other disciplines determined that my will should replace automatism by hastening or retarding automatic acts. Every breath was submitted to this process, with the result that the normal power of breathing was dangerously interfered with. It seemed as though I should suffocate if I ceased to will. I had a terrible half-hour; at length by slow and irregular steps the lost power returned. My dread was hardly fanciful, for heart-failure is the suspension of the automatic faculty of the heart to beat.

A later experiment was to gain some idea of the commoner feelings in Insanity. The method tried was to invest everything I met, whether human, animal, or inanimate, with the imaginary attributes of a spy. Having arranged plans, I started on my morning’s walk from Rutland Gate, and found the experiment only too successful. By the time I had walked one and a half miles, and reached the cab-stand in Piccadilly at the east end of the Green Park, every horse on the stand seemed watching me, either with pricked ears or disguising its espionage. Hours passed before this uncanny sensation wore off, and I feel that I could only too easily re-establish it.

The third and last experiment of which I will speak was to gain an insight into the abject feelings of barbarians and others concerning the power of images which they know to be of human handiwork. I had visited a large collection of idols gathered by missionaries from many lands, and wondered how each of those absurd and ill-made monstrosities could have obtained the hold it had over the imaginations of its worshippers. I wished, if possible, to enter into those feelings. It was difficult to find a suitable object for trial, because it ought to be in itself quite unfitted to arouse devout feelings. I fixed on a comic picture, it was that of Punch, and made believe in its possession of divine attributes. I addressed it with much quasi-reverence as possessing a mighty power to reward or punish the behaviour of men towards it, and found little difficulty in ignoring the impossibilities of what I professed. The experiment gradually succeeded; I began to feel and long retained for the picture a large share of the feelings that a barbarian entertains towards his idol, and learnt to appreciate the enormous potency they might have over him.

I will mention here a rather weird effect that compiling these “Memories” has produced on me. By much dwelling upon them they became refurbished and so vivid as to appear as sharp and definite as things of to-day. The consequence has been an occasional obliteration of the sense of Time, and to replace it by the idea of a permanent panorama, painted throughout with equal vividness, in which the point to which attention is temporarily directed becomes for that time the Present. The panorama seems to extend unseen behind a veil which hides the Future, but is slowly rolling aside and disclosing it. That part of the panorama which is veiled is supposed to exist as vividly coloured as the rest, though latent. In short, this experience has given me an occasional feeling that there are no realities corresponding to Past, Present, and Future, but that the entire Cosmos is one perpetual Now. Philosophers have often held this creed intellectually, but I suspect that few have felt the possible truth of it so vividly as it has occasionally appeared to my imagination through dwelling on these “Memories.”

Many mental processes admit of being roughly measured. For instance, the degree to which people are bored, by counting the number of their Fidgets. I not infrequently tried this method at the meetings of the Royal Geographical Society, for even there dull memoirs are occasionally read. A gallery in the meeting room is supported by iron columns. The portion of the audience as seen from the platform who are bounded by two of these columns, and who sit on two or three of the benches, are a convenient sample to deal with. They can be watched simultaneously, and the number of movements in the group per minute can be easily counted and the average number per man calculated. I have often amused myself with noticing the increase in that number as the audience becomes tired. The use of a watch attracts attention, so I reckon time by the number of my breathings, of which there are fifteen in a minute. They are not counted mentally, but are punctuated by pressing with fifteen fingers successively. The counting is reserved for the fidgets. These observations should be confined to persons of middle age. Children are rarely still, while elderly philosophers will sometimes remain rigid for minutes together.

I will now revert to the problem with which I started, of measuring by Classification, and will give a few instances of its employment. Some years ago I attended a meeting in the Albert Hall, at which prizes of much value were to be awarded to the best made men in Sandow’s gymnastic classes, as estimated by three examiners, of whom Sir A. Conan Doyle was one, while Sandow himself acted as referee.

I regret to have destroyed or mislaid the notes I made, so the following description of the very instructive ceremony may be inaccurate in small details.

The prizes were three, of an aggregate value of not far from £1000, and given by Mr. Sandow. He had made a tour to his many centres of gymnastic teaching in England, and picked out from each of them the man or men who were most likely to stand well in the competition. The day arrived; I got a good seat, and was prepared with an opera glass. The competitors marched into the arena; they were about eighty in number, and they were in ranks of ten abreast. They were stripped to the waist, but calico cloths coloured something like a leopard skin were thrown over their shoulders. So they marched round the arena, then the front row discarded their leopard skins, and jumped each man on to one of a row of pedestals arranged in front of the organ. The electric light was thrown on them. The three examiners walked in front and behind, taking notes and interchanging views. The man who was selected as the best of this batch went to one side; the others rejoined their companions. The same proceeding was gone through with the second row, and so on successively to the end. Then the selected ones came forward and stood on the pedestals as before, and were examined still more minutely, if possible. Finally, the first, second, and third man in order of their estimated merit were marched to the middle of the hall to the tune of the “Conquering Hero,” and received their costly prizes in the form of athletic groups in gold, silver, or bronze.

The point that especially interested me was that I had done my best to form just decisions of my own, and that I had already selected those who came second and third as among the best three. But I had wrongly classed the first prizeman. However, after the judges had made their award I recognised the superior justness of their estimate to my own. The power of classifying men correctly, by mere inspection, seemed to me much greater after this experience than before.

A little more than a year ago, I happened to be at Plymouth, and was interested in a Cattle exhibition, where a visitor could purchase a stamped and numbered ticket for sixpence, which qualified him to become a candidate in a weight-judging competition. An ox was selected, and each of about eight hundred candidates wrote his name and address on his ticket, together with his estimate of what the beast would weigh when killed and “dressed” by the butcher. The most successful of them gained prizes. The result of these estimates was analogous, under reservation, to the votes given by a democracy, and it seemed likely to be instructive to learn how votes were distributed on this occasion, and the value of the result. So I procured a loan of the cards after the ceremony was past, and worked them out in a memoir published in Nature[177-8]. It appeared that in this instance the vox populi was correct to within 1 per cent. of the real value; it was 1207 pounds instead of 1198 pounds, and the individual estimates were distributed in such a way that it was an equal chance whether one of them selected at random fell within or without the limits of -3.7 per cent., or +2.4 per cent. of the middlemost value of the whole.

The result seems more creditable to the trustworthiness of a democratic judgment than might have been expected. But the proportion of the voters who were practised in judging weights undoubtedly surpassed that of the voters in ordinary elections who are versed in politics.

I endeavoured in the memoirs just mentioned, to show the appropriateness of utilising the Median vote in Councils and in Juries, whenever they have to consider money questions. Each juryman has his own view of what the sum should be. I will suppose each of them to be written down. The best interpretation of their collective view is to my mind certainly not the average, because the wider the deviation of an individual member from the average of the rest, the more largely would it effect the result. In short, unwisdom is given greater weight than wisdom. In all cases in which one vote is supposed to have one value, the median value must be the truest representative of the whole, because any other value would be negatived if put to the vote. If it were more than the median, more than half of the voters would think it too much; if less, too little. My idea is that the median ought to be ascertained, which could be very quickly done by the foreman, aided by one or two others of the Jury, and be put forward as a substantial proposal, after reading the various figures from which it was derived.

This is a convenient place for speaking of an analogous problem that interested me a few years previously. I have had more than once to assist in determining how a given sum allotted for prizes ought to be divided between the first and second men when only two prizes are given. The same problem has to be solved by the judges of cattle shows, and it is, if a little generalised, of very wide application. I attacked it both theoretically and practically, and got the same results both ways. When the number of candidates is known, and the distribution of merit follows the well-known Gaussian law, the calculation is easy enough, but when the number of candidates is not known it is a different matter; moreover, the Gaussian law may not apply to the case, though it will probably do so pretty closely. So I calculated what the ratios would be in classes of different numbers and according to the Gaussian law. The ratio in question is that between the excess of the first performance over the third, and the excess of the second performance over the third. The third being the highest that gets no prize at all, forms the starting-point of the calculation. When the numbers of candidates were either 3, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 1,000, 10,000, or 100,000, I found, to my surprise, that the ratio was much the same. The appropriate portion of the total of one hundred pounds which should be allotted to the first prize proved to be seventy-five pounds, leaving twenty-five or one-third of its amount for the second prize. Even when the number of candidates were at the minimum of 3, the first prize would be £67; if 5, it would be £71; if 10, it would be £73; and if 100,000, it would be £75 (to the nearest whole figures).

Then, through the courtesy of Mr. Muir, the Chief Examiner at the Education Office, I was allowed to examine a large number of results from the Civil Service Examinations, and found that the average value of the first prize should be £74. Taking groups of 50 cases, each group gave that value pretty closely, no one differing as much as £4 from it.

The subject has since been generalised and discussed in Biometrika with far more mathematical skill than I possess, by both Professor Karl Pearson and Mr. W. F. Sheppard (a former Senior Wrangler), with practically the same result, so that if only two prizes are to be given, whatever be the character of the competition, and whatever the number of candidates, the first prize should in round numbers be three times the value of the second.

* * * * *

Professor Max Müller had, in a work dated 1886 or 1887, laid an exaggerated stress, as I considered, on language as a means of thought, upon which I wrote some remarks in Nature, entitled “Thought without Words,” which led to a short newspaper controversy, June 2, between us two. My point was that I myself thought hardest when making no mental use of words. Professor Max Müller’s definitions of what he considered “words” seemed to me to vary, and therefore to be elusive, so I did not and will not pursue the matter farther.

It led, however, to the idea of an experiment that seemed worth making, which I described as “Arithmetic by Smell.” When we propose to add, and hear the spoken words “two” and “three,” we instantly through long habit say “five.” Or if we see those figures, we have a mental image, and write 5. Surely, Sound and Sight-symbols are not the only Sense-symbols by which arithmetic could be performed.

Leaving aside Colour, Touch, and Taste, I determined to try Smells. The scents chiefly used were peppermint, camphor, carbolic acid, ammonia, and aniseed. Each scent was poured profusely on cotton wool loosely packed in a brass tube, with a nozzle at one end. The other end was pushed tightly into a caoutchouc tube, whose free end was stopped with a cork. A squeeze of the tube caused a whiff of scented air to pass through the nozzle. When the squeeze was relaxed, fresh air was sucked in and became scented by the way. I taught myself to associate two whiffs of peppermint with one of camphor, three of peppermint with one of carbolic acid, and so on. Next, I practised small sums in addition with the scents themselves, afterwards with the mere imagination of them. I banished without difficulty all visual and auditory associations, and finally succeeded perfectly. Thus I fully convinced myself of the possibility of doing sums in simple addition with considerable speed and accuracy, solely by imagined scents. I did not care to give further time to this, as I only wanted to prove a possibility, but did make a few experiments with Taste, that promised equally well, using salt, sugar, quinine, and citric acid.

* * * * *

I have once in my life experienced the influence of Personal Ascendancy in that high degree which some great personalities have exercised, and the occasion of which I speak was the more striking owing to the absence of concurrent pomp. It was on Garibaldi’s arrival in London, where he was hailed as a hero. I was standing in Trafalgar Square when he reached it, driving up Parliament Street. His vehicle was a shabby open carriage, stuffed with Italians, regardless of style in dress; Garibaldi alone was standing. I had not been in a greatly excited or exalted mood, but the simplicity, goodness, and nobility impressed on every lineament of Garibaldi’s face and person quite overcame me. I realised then what I never did before or after, something of the impression that Jesus seems to have exercised on multitudes on more than one occasion. I am grateful to that experience for revealing to me the hero-worshipping potentialities of my nature.

When the late Mr. Spurgeon first made his reputation, I went, as many others did, to hear him. I was in the gallery of his “Tabernacle,” which was said to hold 11,000 persons, and in which certainly 9000 were then present, as roughly counted by myself. The men had their hats on, and conversation was unchecked. Suddenly there was a slight stir that travelled through the crowd, and the almost childlike features of the young preacher came into view as he rose from below and mounted the platform. He simply raised his hand; there was a simultaneous removal of hats and a great hush, and then the words began. It was a marvellous instance of the commanding power of a simple gesture.

One more instance, and I have done. It occurred towards the close of my undergraduate days at Cambridge at a festival which I will not particularise further than to say it was partly solemn at first, and broadened into good fellowship without any excess. Songs were sung, and J. Mitchell Kemble, the subject of Tennyson’s early “Ode to J. M. K.,” gave time to the chorus of one of the songs by raising his arm and moving his glass. By those most simple gestures, he drove us all into an enthusiasm, comparable with that to which negroes are occasionally driven by an accurately timed tom-tom. In one of Bulwer’s novels, the performer in a barn exercises equal power over his audience by the movements of a stick.

The human senses, when rythmically stimulated in certain exact cadences, are capable of eliciting overwhelming emotions not yet sufficiently investigated.