THE LANGUAGE OF THE EMOTIONS. 815 



brain, heai't, and muscles of the face before the passion is communi- 

 cated to the other organism. All the acts of expression are, we think, 

 best explained by this physiological and sociological law of solidarity 

 and sympathy. 



According to Darwin's theory of explanation, our expressional 

 movements are habits, which, useful at first for the maintenance or 

 defense of life, are preserved and transmitted after they no longer 

 have immediate utility. Most of our gestures are of this class. , The 

 signs of affirmation and negation appear to have come from the infant's 

 inclining its head to receive nourishment from its mother's breast, and 

 turning it away when it does not want food. The same gestures, 

 applied to all affirmation and negation, have become hereditary and 

 instinctive with many nations. The acts of clinching the fists and 

 displaying the teeth were primarily voluntary, as preparations for 

 combat and signs of defiance of the enemy ; they then became asso- 

 ciated with the feeling of anger, then transmitted by heredity, till now 

 we clinch our fist when the enemy is not present, and express the sneer 

 of contempt by an exhibition of the teeth, joined with a backward 

 motion of the head, but with no thought of biting. 



However extended the effects of heredity may really be, we have 

 a right to reproach Darwin for having given too great a part to the 

 external causes, to selection and the medium. It is in the very tissues 

 of the organism, in the inmost properties of the living substance, that 

 we should first seek for the mechanical and physiological reasons for 

 the phenomena of expression. Thus, the contraction of the eyebrows 

 in struggle and in pain, which is explained by Darwin as a survival of 

 a movement originally advantageous in combat, is shown by M. Mosso 

 to be a result of the flow of blood to supply the waste of nervous force, 

 and to be physiologically connected with movements of attention and 

 of effort. 



In the physiological view, the law that links the emotion with its 

 exterior signs is the same that governs all the manifestations of life 

 and force ; it is the law of the equivalence of movements. At any 

 particular moment, the quantity of nervous force corresponding to 

 the state of consciousness called sensation has to expend itself in some 

 way, and engender somewhere an equivalent manifestation of force. 

 The expended force may itself follow three different courses. Some- 

 times the nervous excitation is transformed simply into cerebral move- 

 ments corresponding with a mental agitation. This is what takes 

 place, for example, when a child hears a story that interests and moves 

 it. At other times the nervous excitation is transformed into move- 

 ments of the viscera, and follows the ganglionic nerves. Agreeable 

 thoughts, for example, aid digestion. Fear may paralyze the nerves 

 of the intestine. The heart beats more rapidly under emotion, and 

 sometimes stops, and this influence is accomplished through the means 

 of the pneumogastric nerves. Or the nervous excitation, following the 



