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.
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