1892.] on Emotional Expression. 665 



you have noticed how in children learning to write, their tongues 

 twist about, keeping time with their fingers ; how in a woman using a 

 pair of scissors, the jaws will sometimes move synchronously with the 

 fingers (although the opening and closing of the mouth does not in 

 any way facilitate the process of cutting) ; and how in a man using a 

 corkscrew the corner of his mouth is sometimes drawn down with every 

 turn he gives the instrument. These are instances of leakage from the 

 hand to the mouth centres. It is as if the hand centres had been im- 

 perfectly banked up, and permitted of overflow at one part, so that 

 voluntary hand movements are followed by an automatic mouth move- 

 ment. And overflows in the opposite direction from the mouth to the 

 hand centres are of the most constant occurrence. You all know that it 

 is a word and a blow — a word, a voluntary act dependent on the mouth 

 centre, followed by a blow which may be almost automatic, dependent 

 on the hand and arm centres ; and innumerable examples might be 

 given of the way in which emotional conditions first expressed in the 

 mouth centres immediately afterwards involve the hand, the move- 

 ments of hand and face in these cases being partly voluntary and 

 partly automatic ; and it is important to note that while the currents 

 of overflow of purely voluntary into automatic movements are from 

 the hand to the face centre?, the currents of overflow of emotional 

 into voluntary expression are from the face to the hand. 



[A few more photographs illustrating the rapid diffusion of 

 emotional excitation from face to hand centres were exhibited.] 



I can but mention now another great law of emotional expression 

 which affords a key to a large class of emotional movements, and 

 admits of very beautiful demonstration, and which, although present 

 to the minds of Piderit and Gratiolet seems to have escaped Darwin 

 — I allude to the law of correlation of movements with ideas, which 

 has been insisted on by Professor Clelland, of Glasgow. 



Words indicating position and quantity, represent ideas which relate 

 alike to the physical and the mental world ; and emotions expressed 

 by such words are indicated by the attitudes, gestures, and move- 

 ments of the body, expressed by the same words. Take words 

 relating to height — upward, downward, ascent, descent, elevation, 

 depression, rise, fall — and you will find that you apply them equally 

 to physical and mental conditions. Yau speak of the elevation of a 

 building, and of elevation of soul ; of a depression in the ground, 

 and of depression in spirits ; of the ascent of a balloon, and of the 

 ascent of genius ; of the descent of a stair, and of descent into 

 vice. Take words expressing magnitude — such as large and small, 

 wide and narrow, expanded and contracted. You speak of large 

 gooseberries and large hearts ; small profits and small wits ; bodies 

 that are expanded and contracted, and ideas that are the same. And 

 so it is with words expressing direction — forward, backward, advance, 

 retrogression ; with words expressing distance — far and near, attrac- 

 tion, repulsion ; with words expressing resistance — as strong, weak, 

 hard, soft ; with words expressing motion — as quick, slow, tension, 



Vol. XIII. (No. 86.) 2 y 



