THE EXPRESSION OF THE EMOTIONS. 435 



that he is far from' having established his case, it will be admitted by 

 every reader that he has thrown much new light upon it, and made a 

 most fascinating and instructive book. Mr. Darwin distinguishes be- 

 tween physiognomy and expression. The former is statical, the latter 

 dynamical. Physiognomy aims at the recognition of character through 

 the study of the permanent form of the features. Expression, on the 

 other nand, deals with actions, or the play of features and gesture in 

 man and animals, as constituting the natural language of the feelings. 

 Much has been written upon the subject of Expression by men of vari- 

 ous countries, but Mr. Darwin recognizes that Sir Charles Bell, in his 

 "Anatomy and Philosophy of Expression," published in 1806, not only 

 laid the foundations of the subject as a branch of science, but built it 

 up into a noble structure. Mr. Darwin is of opinion that the subject 

 has hitherto been pursued by a false method, or has been vitiated in 

 its treatment by erroneous assumptions. Bell, Gratiolet, Duchenne, 

 and the other leading writers upon the question, have dealt with it on 

 the old hypothesis, that the different animal species came into exist- 

 ence just as they are now, wholly distinct from each other ; but Mr. 

 Darwin maintains that, so long as man and all other animals are viewed 

 in this way as independent creations, the true philosophy of the sub- 

 ject cannot be reached. The simple before the complex ; the lower 

 forms of life as interpreting the higher, and the whole as a connected 

 scheme of development, is now the method of biology, and for this in- 

 vestigation it is, therefore, necessary to study the manifestations of 

 character in their simplest forms. 



An able writer in the Saturday Review summarizes Mr. Darwin's 

 views as follows : " The tendency to draw as broadly as possible the dis- 

 tinction between man and brutes led Sir Charles Bell to deny to the low- 

 er animals any expression beyond what might be referred more or less 

 plainly to acts of volition or necessary instincts, their faces seeming to 

 him to be chiefly capable of expressing merely rage or fear. The facial 

 muscles in man he thought to be a special provision for the sole object 

 of expression, and so far distinctive of humanity. But the simple fact 

 that the anthropoid apes possess the same facial muscles that we do, 

 renders it most improbable, apart from any reference to teleology in 

 general, that we were endowed with these muscles for any such purpose, 

 still more that monkeys had special muscles given to them solely for 

 the purpose of exhibiting their hideous grimaces. Since distinct 

 uses can, with much probability, be assigned to almost all the facial 

 muscles, we may look upon expression as but an incidental result of 

 muscular or organic function. Mr. Darwin's early inclination toward 

 the doctrine of evolution, or the origin of man from lower forms, led 

 him five-and-twenty years ago to regard the habit of expressing our 

 feelings by certain movements, innate as it has now become, as having 

 been in some manner gradually acquired at the first. Seeking back 

 for the origin of movements of this kind, he, in the first place, was 



