The success of our search for the meaning of our concept is here dependent upon the function of speech to imply and predict action,—a function which we have already commented upon in our second chapter. Words, like thoughts, are either reminiscent of overt action, or else they assist in preparing us for it. When, then, a man uses the word “right” to commend either statements or persons, it is the same as if he were to say: “Either there were, or there are, or there may be, objects and events as you describe, and I think as you do about them.” The action-pattern here implicated is plainly that of _belief_. It involves a lowered threshold with respect to the person or statement called “right,” and a correspondingly higher threshold toward those persons or statements which contradict what is accepted. And as was the case with Class B, this action-pattern involves the use of one of the halves of a system of antagonistic muscles, since the “emphasis here is upon true opinions and judgments in contrast to false ones.” This, however, is not all that can be said upon this point. For every case of belief is a case of constitutional readiness so to respond. And while we do not exactly know how the body provides such predeterminations, if the theory of action-patterns is sound, the conjecture is not unfounded that belief is a function of chronic postures maintained in the muscles of the voluntary system. Evidences in favor of this conjecture are readily supplied from our everyday scrutiny of the faces of our fellow-men. The beggar’s hand is actually a different hand than the hand of the donor; as he sits on the sidewalk, his predetermination to receive alms is patent in the chronic posture of even his palm and fingers. The courtesan not only manifests her willingness to exchange smiles by the chronic postures in her eyelids and mouth, but with a fitness that a De Maupassant might celebrate, she also acquires a carriage that betokens her particular vocation. Contrariwise, the generous, affable man gives evidence that his traits are at least muscle-deep; while every actor will confess that if he gets into the adequate posture, the character he is depicting is automatically portrayed. Those who pray also confess that there are certain bodily attitudes which hinder, and others which assist, the flow of sentiment which they desire. Photographic evidences such as these, however, are not the only proofs we possess of postural predeterminations of action and thought, for it is sound physiology that in the multifariously complex musculature of the body, there are unnoticed postural tensions being generated and maintained all the while. And since, according to the all-or-none principle of nervous and muscular activity, every motor tendency is a truly positive physiological event, whenever we manifest belief, some part of the body is preparing to execute a movement appropriate to the assertion implied.