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.
In law these stigmata are significant when the person under examination ought to be astonished at what is told him but for one reason or another does not want to show his astonishment. This he may hide in words, but at least one significant gesture will betray him and therefore be of considerable importance in the case. So, suppose that we present some piece of evidence from which we expect great results; if they do not come we may perhaps have to take quite another view of the whole case. It is hence important not to be fooled about the effect, and that can be accomplished only through the observation of the witnesses’ gestures, these being much more rarely deceptive than words.