;
the reason of which is that, with a very small brain, their spine and
nerves are very thick. Now gait and movement of the arms are mainly
functions of the brain; our limbs receive their motion and every little
modification of it from the brain through the medium of the spine.

This is why conscious movements fatigue us: the sensation of fatigue,
like that of pain, has its seat in the brain, not, as people commonly
suppose, in the limbs themselves; hence motion induces sleep.

On the other hand those motions which are not excited by the brain, that
is, the unconscious movements of organic life, of the heart, of the
lungs, etc., go on in their course without producing fatigue. And as
thought, equally with motion, is a function of the brain, the character
of the brain's activity is expressed equally in both, according to the
constitution of the individual; stupid people move like lay-figures,
while every joint of an intelligent man is eloquent.

But gesture and movement are not nearly so good an index of intellectual
qualities as the face, the shape and size of the brain, the contraction
and movement of the features, and above all the eye,--from the small,
dull, dead-looking eye of a pig up through all gradations to the
irradiating, flashing eyes of a genius.

The look of good sense and prudence, even of the best kind, differs from
that of genius, in that the former bears the stamp of subjection to the
will, while the latter is free from it.

And therefore one can well believe the anecdote told by Squarzafichi in
his life of Petrarch, and taken from Joseph Brivius, a contemporary of
the poet, how once at the court of the Visconti, when Petrarch and other
noblemen and gentlemen were present, Galeazzo Visconti told his son, who
was then a mere boy (he was afterwards first Duke of Milan), to pick out
the wisest of the company; how the boy looked at them all for a little,
and then took Petrarch by the hand and led him up to his father, to the
great admiration of all present. For so clearly does nature set the mark
of her dignity on the privileged among mankind that even a child can
discern it.

Therefore, I should advise my sagacious countrymen, if ever again they
wish to trumpet about for thirty years a very commonplace person as a
great genius, not to choose for the purpose such a beerhouse-keeper
physiognomy as was possessed by that philosopher, upon whose face nature
had written, in her clearest characters, the fam