252 STUDIES IN LIFE AND SENSE. 



physiognomy, to account for how the face came to be the veritable 

 " Dyall of the Affections " which the science of yesterday and that 

 of to-day agree in stamping it. 



Regarding the face as the chief centre wherein the emotions and 

 feelings which constitute so much of the individual character are 

 localised, common observation shows us, however, that the mind's 

 index is not limited to the play of features alone. A shrug of the 

 shoulders may speak as eloquently of disdain as the stereotyped curl 

 of the upper lip and nose. The "attitude" of fear is as expressive 

 as the scared look. The outstretched and extended palms of horror 

 are not less typical than the widely opened eyes and the unclosed 

 lips. Gesture language the speech of the bodily muscles is in 

 truth almost as much a part of our habitual method of expression as 

 the muscular play of the face ; and the emotions displayed by the 

 countenance gain immeasurably in intensity when aided by the 

 appropriate gestures which we have come tacitly to recognise as part 

 and parcel of our waking lives. No better portrait of the part which 

 muscular movements play in the enforcement of language and feelings 

 has been drawn than that of Shakespeare's Wolsey. Here the picture 

 teems with acts of gesture, each eloquent in its way, and testifying to 

 the conflicting passions and emotions which surged through the busy 

 brain of Henry's counsellor : 



Some strange commotion 

 Is in his brain ; he bites his lip and starts ; 

 Stops on a sudden, looks upon the ground, 

 Then lays his finger on his temple ; straight, 

 Springs out into fast gait ; then stops again, 

 Strikes his breast hard ; and anon, he casts 

 His eye against the moon : in most strange postures 

 We have seen him set himself. 



We thus obtain, from the full consideration of the means which exist 

 for the expression of the emotions, the knowledge that not the face 

 alone, but the common movements of body and limbs, have to be 

 taken into account in the new science of emotional expression which 

 has thus arisen amongst us. Properly speaking, the modern phy- 

 siognomy is one of the body as a whole, and not of face alone ; and 

 above all. it is well to bear in mind that the newer aspect of the 

 science deals not merely and casually with this gesture or that, but 

 with the deeper problem of how the gesture came to acquire its meaning 

 and how the " strange postures " of face and form were evolved. 



By way of fit preface to such a subject as the expression of 

 the emotions in a scientific sense, we may, firstly, glance at the 

 emotions themselves and at their general relations to the bodily 

 and mental mechanism of which they form the outward sign and 

 symbol. It is well that, primarily, we should entertain some clear 

 idea as to the exact place which the emotions occupy in the list of. 



