demonstrative manner than is the case with civilized nations. This
circumstance may account for its not having been noticed by four of my
informants.
These statements, relating to Europeans, Hindoos, the hill-tribes of
India, Malays, Micronesians, Abyssinians, Arabs, Negroes, Indians of
North America, and apparently to the Australians many of these natives
having had scarcely any intercourse with Europeans are sufficient to
show that shrugging the shoulders, accompanied in some cases by the
other proper movements, is a gesture natural to mankind.
This gesture implies an unintentional or unavoidable action on our own
part, or one that we cannot perform; or an action performed by another
person which we cannot prevent. It accompanies such speeches as, It
was not my fault; It is impossible for me to grant this favour; He
must follow his own course, I cannot stop him. Shrugging the shoulders
likewise expresses patience, or the absence of any intention to resist.
Hence the muscles which raise the shoulders are sometimes called, as I
have been informed by an artist, the patience muscles. Shylock the Jew,
says,
Signor Antonio, many a time and oft
In the Rialto have you rated me
About my monies and usances;
Still have I borne it with a patient shrug.
_Merchant of Venice_, act i. sc. 3.
Sir C. Bell has given[1114] a life-like figure of a man, who is
shrinking back from some terrible danger, and is on the point of
screaming out in abject terror. He is represented with his shoulders
lifted up almost to his ears; and this at once declares that there is
no thought of resistance.
As shrugging the shoulders generally implies I cannot do this or
that, so by a slight change, it sometimes implies I won t do it. The
movement then expresses a dogged determination not to act. Olmsted
describes[1115] an Indian in Texas as giving a great shrug to his
shoulders, when he was informed that a party of men were Germans and
not Americans, thus expressing that he would have nothing to do with
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