Actions of all kinds, if regularly accompanying any state of the mind,
are at once recognized as expressive. These may consist of movements of
any part of the body, as the wagging of a dog s tail, the shrugging of
a man s shoulders, the erection of the hair, the exudation of
perspiration, the state of the capillary circulation, laboured
breathing, and the use of the vocal or other sound-producing
instruments. Even insects express anger, terror, jealousy, and love by
their stridulation. With man the respiratory organs are of especial
importance in expression, not only in a direct, but in a still higher
degree in an indirect manner.
Few points are more interesting in our present subject than the
extraordinarily complex chain of events which lead to certain
expressive movements. Take, for instance, the oblique eyebrows of a man
suffering from grief or anxiety. When infants scream loudly from hunger
or pain, the circulation is affected, and the eyes tend to become
gorged with blood: consequently the muscles surrounding the eyes are
strongly contracted as a protection: this action, in the course of many
generations, has become firmly fixed and inherited: but when, with
advancing years and culture, the habit of screaming is partially
repressed, the muscles round the eyes still tend to contract, whenever
even slight distress is felt: of these muscles, the pyramidals of the
nose are less under the control of the will than are the others and
their contraction can be checked only by that of the central fasciae of
the frontal muscle: these latter fasciae draw up the inner ends of the
eyebrows, and wrinkle the forehead in a peculiar manner, which we
instantly recognize as the expression of grief or anxiety. Slight
movements, such as these just described, or the scarcely perceptible
drawing down of the corners of the mouth, are the last remnants or
rudiments of strongly marked and intelligible movements. They are as
full of significance to us in regard to expression, as are ordinary
rudiments to the naturalist in the classification and genealogy of
organic beings.
That the chief expressive actions, exhibited by man and by the lower
animals, are now innate or inherited, that is, have not been learnt by
the individual, is admitted by every one. So little has learning or
imitation to do with several of them that they are from the earliest
days and throughout life quite beyond our control; for instance, the
231