Handwriting and expression / translated and edited by John Holt Schooling from the 3d French ed.

Jules Crépieux-Jamin

Date:: 1892

Credit: Handwriting and expression / translated and edited by John Holt Schooling from the 3d French ed. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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$variation in the man himself. The main character is there, the variation is due to numerous causes of fluc- tuation in mood or feeHng ; and as regards handwriting, an experienced graphologist sees what is the outline of the permanent character, as well as the merel\- tempo- rary changes passing over it. The more numerous the specimens of handwriting of a variable man that are submitted for analysis, the more detailed would be the traits extracted with reference to the mood influencing the writer at the various dates of the specimens ; and referring now to men not easily subjected to temporary variation, and extending the period for the operation of possible change of character, so as to let it range from the time when mechanical difficulty in acquiring the art of writing has been overcome, to the time when old age begins to also cause effort in writing, and obtaining thus a series of spontaneous expressions of the writer's nature, we should then possess a reliable index of the various changes occurring in a man's character during this long period, however little subjected to temporary variation he might be, during those shorter intervals that would affect more variable and impressionable persons. The nearest approach that I possess to a series extending over many years, is a collection of the signatures of the first Napoleon, dating from 1785, when he was a second lieutenant, to the nth December, 1816, when he wrote a letter to the Comte de Las Cases, his companion in captivity at St. Helena, who was ordered to leave the island, a circumstance which Napoleon much regretted. This is his signature (see next page) written immediately after the battle of Austerlitz, which is so ascendant that it forms (approximately) an angle$

Handwriting and expression / translated and edited by John Holt Schooling from the 3d French ed.

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