8 h THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



THE LANGUAGE OF THE EMOTIONS. 



Bt M. ALFRED FOUILLEE. 



WITH the words " Every gesture is a metaphor," Diderot exactly- 

 characterized that translation of the feelings into corresponding 

 movements which we call their expression. But, though the natural 

 language of the physiognomy and of gestures is metaphorical, it need 

 not be inferred that it is composed of symbols in any degree arbitrary. 

 It is rather by a necessary determinism that a particular internal phe- 

 nomenon is translated by a peculiar external manifestation. Expres- 

 sion is no longer considered a sign that may be detached from the 

 expressed fact ; it is an integral part of the fact, or of its history. A 

 man, realizing that his life is in extreme peril and anxious to save it, 

 might, perhaps, be able to preserve his calm ; but, as Darwin says, he 

 suffers a tension of his will against his emotion, and the conflict within 

 him is faithfully expressed in the body by the parallel tension of the 

 muscles and the correlative tension of the pulse. Feelings too weak to 

 produce a visible outward expression are marked in the interior of the 

 organs. We should not, then, as the old psychologists did, place the 

 psychological changes and the physiological movements in which they 

 are realized, or prolonged, or expressed, in different worlds. 



Darwin attempted a biological explanation of this reciprocally de- 

 termined connection of the internal feelings with external movements, 

 as arising in the gradual evolution of organisms struggling for exist- 

 ence. Mosso * and Warner f showed that there are physiological 

 and mechanical limitations to the influence of selection and the 

 medium, or that there are internal necessities independent of ex- 

 terior utility, and assumed that the explanation of the phenomena 

 belongs to physiology. But should not philosophy, we ask, main- 

 tain a view yet more of the interior, strictly psychological and 

 sociological ? Should it not explain, by the laws of individual or col- 

 lective consciousness, those facts of expression which are the precise 

 continuation of the mental in the physical and of the physical in the 

 mental ? All expression of feeling has, by its definition, a psycho- 

 logical, and, still more, a social, side. There is, in fact, no veritable 

 expression except as there may be a possible interpretation of the 

 movements by other beings forming, with the first one, a society. The 

 language of the passions is eminently communicative. Every living 

 organism is, moreover, itself a society of more elementary organisms, 

 and it is therefore legitimate to inquire if the act of social communi- 

 cation does not begin within the organism itself before extending to 

 other analogous organisms ; if there is not a solidarity, at once me- 

 chanical and mental, between the parts of the identical organism 



* Angelo Mosso, "La Paura," 1885. f Warner, "Physical Expression," 1886. 



