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The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals

Page 123 of 275, printed 123

death; and he distinctly saw the eyebrows raised at the inner comers, the eyelids drooping, the forehead wrinkled in the middle, the mouth slightly open, with the comers much depressed. He then came from behind a screen of plants and spoke to the poor woman, who started, burst into a bitter flood of tears, and besought him to cure her baby. The second case was that of a Hindustani man, who from illness and poverty was compelled to sell his favourite goat. After receiving the money, he repeatedly looked at the money in his hand and then at the goat, as if doubting whether he would not return it. He went to the goat, which was tied up ready to be led away, and the animal reared up and licked his hands. His eyes then wavered from side to side; his mouth was partially closed, with the corners very decidedly depressed. At last the poor man seemed to make up his mind that he must part with his goat, and then, as Mr. Scott saw, the eyebrows became slightly oblique, with the characteristic puckering or swelling at the inner ends, but the wrinkles on the forehead were not present. The man stood thus for a minute, then heaving a deep sigh, burst into tears, raised up his two hands, blessed the goat, turned round, and without looking again, went away. _On the cause of the obliquity of the eyebrows under suffering_. During several years no expression seemed to me so utterly perplexing as this which we are here considering. Why should grief or anxiety cause the central fasciae alone of the frontal muscle together with those round the eyes, to contract? Here we seem to have a complex movement for the sole purpose of expressing grief; and yet it is a comparatively rare expression, and often overlooked. I believe the explanation is not so difficult as it at first appears. Dr. Duchenne gives a photograph of the young man before referred to, who, when looking upwards at a strongly illuminated surface, involuntarily contracted his grief-muscles in an exaggerated manner. I had entirely forgotten this photograph, when on a very bright day with the sun behind me, I met, whilst on horseback, a girl whose eyebrows, as she looked up at me, became extremely oblique, with the proper furrows on her forehead. I have observed the same movement under similar circumstances on several subsequent occasions. On my return home I made three of my children, without giving them any clue to my object, look as long and as attentively as they could, at the summit of a tall tree standing against an extremely bright sky. With all three, the orbicular, corrugator, and pyramidal muscles were energetically contracted, 123
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