304 HORROR. Chap. XII. 



Horror. — The state of mind expressed by this term 

 implies terror, and is in some cases almost synonymous 

 with it. Many a man must have felt, before the blessed 

 discovery of chloroform, great horror at the thought of 

 an impending surgical operation. He who dreads, as 

 well as hates a man, will feel, as Milton uses the word, 

 a horror of him. We feel horror if we see any one, for 

 instance a child, exposed to some instant and crushing 

 danger. Almost every one would experience the same 

 feeling in the highest degree in witnessing a man being 

 tortured or going to be tortured. In these cases there 

 is no danger to ourselves; but from the power of the 

 imagination and of sympathy we put ourselves in the 

 position of the sufferer, and feel something akin to fear. 



Sir C. Bell remarks, 26 that " horror is full of energy; 

 the body is in the utmost tension, not unnerved by fear." 

 It is, therefore, probable that horror would generally 

 be accompanied by the strong contraction of the brows; 

 but as fear is one of the elements, the eyes and mouth 

 would be opened, and the eyebrows would be raised, as 

 far as the antagonistic action of the corrugators per- 

 mitted this movement. Duchenne has given a photo- 

 graph 27 (fig. 21) of the same old man as before, with his 

 eyes somewhat staring, the eyebrows partially raised, and 

 at the same time strongly contracted, the mouth opened, 

 and the platysma in action, all effected by the means of 

 galvanism. He considers that the expression thus pro- 

 duced shows extreme terror with horrible pain or torture. 

 A tortured man, as long as his sufferings allowed him 

 to feel any dread for the future, would probably exhibit 

 horror in an extreme degree. I have shown the original 

 of this photograph to twenty-three persons of both sexes 



28 ' Anatomy of Expression,' p. 169. 



27 ' Mecanisme de la Physionomie,' Album, pi. 65, pp. 

 44, 45. 



