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 sensibility.

“Thermometer,” I cried, “there is an excellent word, strikingly correct.  But have I not, in pronouncing it, simply and naturally characterized the role that I am striving to define?

“Thermometer of the sensibility!  Is not that the solution of the enigma?  Thermometer; yes, that is it!  That is the very expression to give to my researches, an expression without which nothing could be explained.  That, indeed, answers to everything, and makes the difficulties against which my reason struggled disappear.”

The shoulder is, in fact, precisely the thermometer of passion as well as of sensibility; it is the measure of their vehemence; it determines their degree of heat and intensity.  However, it does not specify their nature, and it is certainly in an analogous sense that the instrument known by the name of thermometer marks the degrees of heat and cold without specifying the nature of the weather—­a specification belonging to another instrument, the complement of the thermometer—­the barometer.  The parallel is absolute, perfect.

Let us examine this point: 

The shoulder, in rising, is not called upon to teach us whether the source of the heat or vehemence which mark it, arise from love or hate.  This specification does not lie within its province; it belongs entirely to the face, which is to the shoulder what the barometer is to the thermometer.  And it is thus that the shoulder and the face enter into harmonious relations to complete the passional sense which they have to determine mutually and by distinct paths.

Now, the shoulder is limited, in its proper domain, to proving, first, that the emotion expressed by the face is or is not true.  Then, afterward, to marking, with mathematical rigor, the degree of intensity to which that emotion rises.

After having finished the formulation of this principle I exultingly exclaimed: 

“God be praised!  I now possess the semeiotics of the shoulder, and thereby I hold the criterion of the passional or sensitive powers—­a criterion outside of which no truth can be demonstrated in the sphere of sentiment or feeling.”

Thus, a word suggested by chance became my Archimedean lever.  The word, like a flash of light, flooded my mind with radiance which suddenly revealed to me the numerous and fertile applications of a principle hitherto unknown.  Yes, I henceforth possessed an aesthetic principle of the utmost value, the consequences of which, I could readily see, were as novel as they were profound.

Episode VI.

First Objection to the Thermometric System of the Shoulder.