ギロチン

解説

付記

博識なるブレイフーグル教授は、フランス人の「肩すくめ」の仕草を研究し、 「彼らは亀の子孫であり、首を甲羅に引っ込める習性の名残だ」と主張した。 私はこれに異を唱える。 フランス革命以前には、この仕草は存在しなかったのだから。 むしろ断頭台の恐怖こそが、この動作を生んだのだ。

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Original

A machine which makes a Frenchman shrug his shoulders with good reason.

Additional notes

In his great work on Divergent Lines of Racial Evolution, the learned Professor Brayfugle argues from the prevalence of this gesture —the shrug—among Frenchmen, that they are descended from turtles and it is simply a survival of the habit of retracting the head inside the shell. It is with reluctance that I differ with so eminent an authority, but in my judgment (as more elaborately set forth and enforced in my work entitled Hereditary Emotions—lib. II, c. XI) the shrug is a poor foundation upon which to build so important a theory, for previously to the Revolution the gesture was unknown. I have not a doubt that it is directly referable to the terror inspired by the guillotine during the period of that instrument's activity.