If the race-expression of the plant consists predominantly in the physiognomy of position, the animal-expression resides in a physiognomy of movement — namely, in the form as having motion, in the motion itself, and in the set of the limbs as figuring the motion. Of this race-expression not very much is revealed in the sleeping animal, and far less still in the dead animal, whose parts the scientist explores; we have practically nothing to learn now about the skeleton of the vertebrate. Hence it is that in vertebrates the limbs are more expressive than the bones. Hence it is that the limb-masses are the true seat of expressiveness in contrast to the ribs and skull-bones — the jaw being an exception in that its structure discloses the character of the animal's food, whereas the plant's nutrition is a mere process of nature. Hence it is, again, that the insect's skeleton, which clothes its body, is fuller of expression than the bird's, which is clothed by its body. It is pre-eminently the organs of the outer sheath that more and more forcefully gather the race-expression to themselves — the eye, not as a thing of form and colour, but as glance and expressive visage; the mouth, which becomes through the usage of speech the expression of understanding; and the head (not the skull), with its lineaments formed by the flesh, which has become the very throne of the non-vegetable side of life. Consider how, on the one hand, we breed orchids and roses and, on the other, we breed horses and dogs — and would like human beings to be bred, too. But it is not, I repeat, the mathematical form of the visible parts, but exclusively the expression of the movement, that displays this physiognomy. When we seize at a glance the race-expression of a motionless man, it is because our experienced eye sees the appropriate motion already potentially in the limbs. The real race-appearance of a bison, a trout, a golden eagle, is not to be reproduced by any reckoning of the creature's plane or solid dimensions; and the deep attractiveness that they possess for the creative artist comes precisely from the fact that the secret of race can reveal itself in the picture by way of the soul and not by any mere imitation of the visible. One has to see and, seeing, to feel how the immense energy of this life concentrates upon head and neck, how it speaks in the bloodshot eye, in the short compact horn, in the "aquiline" beak and profile of the bird of prey — to mention one or two only of the innumerable points that cannot be communicated by words and are only expressible, by me for you, in the language of an art.
But with such hall-marks as those quoted, characterizing the noblest sorts of animals, we come very near to the concept of race which enables us to perceive within the type "mankind" differences of a higher sort than either the vegetable or the animal — differences that are spiritual rather, and eo ipso less accessible to scientific methods. The coarse characters of the skeletal structure have ceased to possess independent importance. Already Retzius (d. 1860) had put an end to the belief of Blumenbach that race and skull-formation are coincident, and J. Ranke summarizes his tenets in these
