THE LANGUAGE OF THE EMOTIONS. 823 



pain into sadness, and their sensation into feeling ; it sends them 

 back its pain and receives it multiplied ; a sad thought soon has a 

 cortege of myriads of painful sensations, from the movements of the 

 heart and chest to the most superficial parts of the organism. 



To the association of analogous sensations or emotions may he re- 

 ferred, we think, the third of the laws of expression, which Darwin 

 has studied without exhibiting its real meaning the law of antithe 

 sis. Some states of mind, says Darwin, induce in the animal certain 

 habitual acts which are useful to the support or defense of life ; and 

 when a state of mind of a directly inverse character is produced, the 

 animal instinctively and by antithesis performs the opposite acts, even 

 when they are useless. Physiologists have rejected the Darwinian 

 principle of antithesis, and the examples he cites in illustration of it 

 may generally be explained in another way. But we think the prin- 

 ciple has a psychological value which Darwin failed to elucidate. 

 The association of states of consciousness takes place by contrast and 

 antithesis as well as by analogy ; contraries as well as similars are 

 subject to a law of association, which is especially manifested in the 

 domain of the emotions. There exists a fundamental antithesis be- 

 tween pleasure and pain, between acceptation and repulsion by the 

 will. An organic connection appeal's to be established between these 

 opposites, in such a way as to produce a perpetual bifurcation of 

 movements. It is not, therefore, strange that the contrary of a feeling 

 should be expressed by contrary movements or attitudes, aside from 

 all considerations of utility or all choice of the will. This contrast 

 affords a means of facilitating the interpretation of signs. 



The law of antithesis is thus a particular case of the law of asso- 

 ciation, which itself results from the natural concert of all the organs. 

 This concert, or sociality, is so much the essential character of the 

 emotion and its language, that the absence of accord and consonance 

 between all the parts of the organism gives us the means of distinguish- 

 ing feigned emotions from i*eal. Thus, in theatrical pain, the expres- 

 sion is exaggerated out of all proportion to the occasion, and the real 

 physical condition is so unlike the assumed that the sham is easily de- 

 tected, and the illusion may be destroyed by a slight accident. On 

 the other hand, when dissimulation of a real emotion is attempted, it 

 is very hard to keep the current of feeling, which is not allowed to 

 express itself in the natural way, from finding vent in some other way, 

 as in mental excitement, or in movements which apparently have no 

 relation to the suffering experienced. Passions on the point of break- 

 ing out may be revealed by rhythmical movements of the fingers, or 

 by forced respiration. 



Expressional movements, associated according to the laws we have 

 reviewed, end by fixing themselves and leaving traces, not only in 

 passing attitudes, but also in that permanent attitude which consti- 

 tutes the form of the features. Persons leading the same life, as man 



