chapter iv

. of the first part.

[419] M. Fr. Paulhan, in a little work full of accurate observations of detail (Les Phénomènes Affectifs et les Lois de leur Apparition), seems to me rather to turn the truth upside down by his formula that emotions are due to an inhibition of impulsive tendencies. _One_ kind of emotion, namely, uneasiness, annoyance, distress, does occur when any definite impulsive tendency is checked, and all of M. P.'s illustrations are drawn from this sort. The other emotions are themselves primary impulsive tendencies, of a diffusive sort (involving, as M. P. rightly says, a _multiplicité des phénomènes_); and just in proportion as more and more of these multiple tendencies are checked, and replaced by some few narrow forms of discharge, does the original emotion tend to disappear.

[420] A list of the older writings on the subject is given in Mantegazza's work, La Physionomie et l'Expression, chap. I; others in Darwin's first chapter. Bell's Anatomy of Expression, Mosso's La Paura, Piderit's Wissenschaftliches System der Mimik und Physiognomik, Duchenne's Mécanisme de la Physionomie Humaine, are, besides Lange and Darwin, the most useful works with which I am acquainted. Compare also Sully: Sensation and Intuition, chap. ii.

[421] One must remember, however, that just in so far forth as sexual selection may have played a part in determining the human organism, selection of expressive faces must have increased the average mobility of the human countenance.

[422] Psychol., § 213.

[423] Weeping in childhood is almost as regular a symptom of anger as it is of grief, which would account (on Darwin's principles) for the frown of anger. Mr. Spencer has an account of the angry frown as having arisen through the survival of the fittest, by its utility in keeping the sun out of one's eyes when engaged in mortal combat(!). (Principles of Psychology, ii. 546.) Professor Mosso objects to any explanation of the frown by its utility for vision, that it is coupled, during emotional excitement, with a dilatation of the pupil which is very unfavorable for distinct vision, and that this ought to have been weeded out by natural selection, if natural selection had the power to fix the frown (see La Paura, chap. ix. § vi). Unfortunately this very able author speaks as if all the emotions affected the pupil in the same way. Fear certainly does make it dilate. But Gratiolet is quoted by Darwin and others as saying that the pupils _contract_ in anger. I have made no observations of my own on the point, and Mosso's earlier paper on the pupil (Turin, 1875) I have not seen. I must repeat, with Darwin, that we need more minute observations on this subject.

[424] Physiologie u. Psychologie des Lachens und des Komischen (Berlin, 1873), pp. 13, 15.

[425] These movements are explained teleologically, in the first instance, by the efforts which the tongue is forced to make to adapt itself to the better perception or avoidance of the sapid body. (Cf. Physiol. Psych., ii. 423.)

[426] Professor Henle derives the negative wag of the head from an incipient shudder, and remarks how fortunate is the abbreviation, as when a lady declines a partner in the ball-room. The clapping of the hands for applause he explains as a symbolic abridgment of an embrace. The protrusion of the lips (_der prufende Zug_) which goes with all sorts of dubious and questioning states of mind is derived by Dr. Piderit from the _tasting_ movement which we can see on any one's mouth when deciding whether a wine is good or not.

[427] _Loc. cit._ § 497. Why a dog's face-muscles are not more mobile than they are Mr. Spencer fails to explain, as also why different stimuli should innervate these small muscles in such different ways, if easy drainage be the only principle involved. Charles Bell accounted for the special part played by the facial muscles in expression by their being _accessory muscles of respiration_, governed by nerves whose origin is close to the respiratory centre in the medulla oblongata. They are an adjuvant of _voice_, and like it their function is _communication_. (See Bell's Anatomy of Expression. Appendix by Alexander Shaw.)

[428] La Paura, Appendice, p. 295.

[429] See below, p. 627.

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