letters which called attention mostly to the fact that there was in such and such a place an unknown imbecile woman who might be identical with the ostensible murdered person. For that reason the defendant appealed for a postponement of the trial or immediate liberation. The prosecutor of the time fought the appeal but held that so far as the case went (and it was pretty bad for the prosecution), the action taken with regard to the appeal was indifferent. “The mills of the gods grind slowly,” he concluded in his oration; “a year from now I shall appear before the jury.” The expression of this rock-bound conviction that the defendants were guilty, on the part of a man who, because of his great talent, had tremendous influence on juries, caused an astounding impression. The instant he said it one could see in most of the jurymen clearest signs of absolute resolution and the defendants were condemned from that moment. Correlated with the signs of resolution are those of astonishment. “The hands are raised in the air,” says Darwin, “and the palm is laid on the mouth.” In addition the eyebrows are regularly raised, and people of not too great refinement beat their foreheads and in many cases there occurs a slight, winding movement of the trunk, generally toward the left. The reason is not difficult to find. We are astonished when we learn something which causes an inevitable change in the familiar course of events. When this occurs the hearer finds it necessary, if events are simple, properly to get hold of it. When I hear that a new Niebelungen manuscript has been discovered, or a cure for leprosy, or that the South Pole has been reached, I am astonished, but immediate conception on my part is altogether superfluous. But that ancient time in which our habitual movements came into being, and which has endured longer, incomparably longer than our present civilization, knew nothing whatever of these interests of the modern civilized human being. What astonished people in those days were simple, external, and absolutely direct novelties: that a flood was coming, that game was near the camp, that inimical tribes had been observed, etc.--in short, events that required immediate action. From this fact spring our significant movements which must hence be perceivably related to the beginning of some necessary action. We raise our hands when we want to jump up; we elevate our eyebrows when we look up, to see further into the distance; we slap our foreheads in order to stimulate the muscles of our legs, dormant because of long sitting; we lay the palms of our hands on our mouths and turn the trunk because we discover in the course of life rather more disagreeable than pleasant things and hence we try to keep them out and to turn away from them. And astonishment is expressed by any and all of these contradictory movements.