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?