Chap. XIV. AND SUMMARY. 353 



definite object, — namely, to escape some danger, to re- 

 lieve some distress, or to gratify some desire. For in- 

 stance, there can hardly be a doubt that the animals 

 which fight with their teeth, have acquired the habit 

 of drawing back their ears closely to their heads, when 

 feeling savage, from their progenitors having voluntarily 

 acted in this manner in order to protect their ears from 

 being torn by their antagonists; for those animals which 

 do not fight with their teeth do not thus express a savage 

 state of mind. We may infer as highly probable that 

 we ourselves have acquired the habit of contracting the 

 muscles round the eyes, whilst crying gently, that is, 

 without the utterance of any loud sound, from our pro- 

 genitors, especially during infancy, having experienced, 

 during the act of screaming, an uncomfortable sensation 

 in their eyeballs. Again, some highly expressive move- 

 ments result from the endeavour to check or prevent 

 other expressive movements; thus the obliquity of the 

 eyebrows and the drawing down of the corners of the 

 mouth follow from the endeavour to prevent a screaming- 

 fit frOm coming on, or to check it after it has come on. 

 Here it is obvious that the consciousness and will must 

 at first have come into play; not that we are conscious 

 in these or in other such cases what muscles are brought 

 into action, any more than when we perforin the most 

 ordinary voluntary movements. 



With respect to the expressive movements due to 

 the principle of antithesis, it is clear that the will has 

 intervened, though in a remote and indirect manner. 

 So again with the movements coming under our third 

 principle; these, in as far as they are influenced by 

 nerve-force readily passing along habitual channels, have 

 been determined by former and repeated exertions of the 

 will. The effects indirectly due to this latter agency 

 are often combined in a complex manner, through the 



