In the phrase, “How are you, papa Dugrand,” the arms should be raised, the head lowered and the torso thrown back, supporting itself on the back leg.  This was indeed a blow to the presumption of my poor reason, but should it complain?  No, for it has gained even from its confusion most fruitful instruction.

Let us see.  In questioning the effects and the analogy, we shall doubtless explain their reason of being.  Why should the head become lowered?  I do not see all at first sight; but let us generalize the question and probably it will specify itself.

When does a man bow his head before the object which strikes his eye?

When he considers or examines it.

Does he never consider things with head raised?

Yes, when he considers them with a feeling of pride.  It is thus that he rules them or exalts them; and also when he questions them with his glance; in fine, when what he sees astonishes or surprises him.

This last statement contradicts the example in question, and seems to condemn it.  Not the least in the world.  How is this?  Thus:  when the astonishment or the surprise is not intense enough to shake the frame, the head wherein all the surprise is concentrated, is lifted and exalted.  But so soon as that surprise is great enough to raise the shoulders and the arms, as by a galvanic shock, the head takes an inverse direction, it sinks and seems anxious to become solid to offer more resistance to that which might attack it, for the first instinctive movement in such a case is to guard against any unpleasant event; then if the head is lifted to look at that which surprises it, it is because it has no great interest in the recognition of that which it considers; but as soon as that interest commands it to examine, to recognize, it is instantly lowered and placed in the state of expectation.

O, now it becomes clear.

Now, how does surprise cause us to lift our arms?

The shoulder, in every man who is agitated or moved, rises in exact proportion to the intensity of his emotion.

It thus becomes the thermometer of the emotions.  Now, the commotion that imprints a strong impression, communicates to the arms an ascending motion which may lift them high above the head.

But why do not the arms, in an agreeable surprise, tend toward the object of that surprise?

The arm should move gently toward the object that it wishes to caress.  Under the rapid action of surprise, therefore, it could only injure or repel that object.

This it does in affright.

But instinct—­that marvelous agent of divine reason—­in that case turns the arms away from the object which they might injure by the rapidity of their sudden extension, and directs them toward heaven, leads them to rise as if expressing thanks for an unexpected joy, so true it is that everything is turned to use and is modified under the empire of our instinct.  Certainly, there is no similarity