358 CONCLUDING REMARKS Chap. XIV. 



able doubt. It is however extremely difficult to prove 

 that our children instinctively recognize any expression. 

 I attended to this point in my first-born infant, who 

 could not have learnt anything by associating with other 

 children, and I was convinced that he understood a smile 

 and received pleasure from seeing one, answering it by 

 another, at much too early an age to have learnt anything 

 by experience. When this child was about four months 

 old, I made in his presence many odd noises and strange 

 grimaces, and tried to look savage; but the noises, if 

 not too loud, as well as the grimaces, were all taken 

 as good jokes; and I attributed this at the time to their 

 being preceded or accompanied by smiles. When five 

 months old, he seemed to understand a compassionate 

 expression and tone of voice. When a few days over six 

 months old, his nurse pretended to cry, and I saw that 

 his face instantly assumed a melancholy expression, with 

 the corners of the mouth strongly depressed; now this 

 child could rarely have seen any other child crying, and 

 never a grown-up person crying, and I should doubt 

 whether at so early an age he could have reasoned on 

 the subject. Therefore it seems to me that an innate 

 feeling must have told him that the pretended crying 

 of his nurse expressed grief; and this through the in- 

 stinct of sympathy excited grief in him. 



M. Lemoine argues that, if man possessed an innate 

 knowledge of expression, authors and artists would not 

 have found it so difficult, as is notoriously the case, to 

 describe and depict the characteristic signs of each par- 

 ticular state of mind. But this does not seem to me a 

 valid argument. We may actually behold the expression 

 changing in an unmistakable manner in a man or ani- 

 mal, and yet be quite unable, as I know from experience, 

 to analyse the nature of the change. In the two photo- 

 graphs given by Duchenne of the same old man (Plate 



