INFANT EMOTION AND EXPRESSION. 19 



9 

 is but one answer. Already in its developing brain there 



is coming into play the structure through which one 

 cluster of visual and auditory impressions excites pleasur 

 able feelings, and the structure through which another 

 cluster of visual and auditory impressions excites painful 

 feelings. The infant knows no more about the relation 

 existing between a ferocious expression of face, and the 

 evils that may follow the perception of it, than the young 

 bird just out of its nest knows of the possible pain and 

 death which may be inflicted by a man coming toward 

 it ; and as certainly in the one case as in the other, the 

 alarm felt is due to a partially-established nervous struct 

 ure. &quot;Why does this partially-established nervous struct 

 ure betray its presence thus early in the human being ? 

 Simply because, in the past experiences of the human 

 race, smiles and gentle tones in those around have been 

 the habitual accompaniments of pleasurable feelings; 

 while pains of many kinds, immediate and more or less 

 remote, have been, continually associated with the im 

 pressions received from knit brows and set teeth and 

 grating voice. Much deeper down than the history of 

 the human race must we go to find the beginnings of 

 these connections. The appearances and sounds which 

 excite in the infant a vague dread, indicate danger ; and 

 do so because they are the physiological accompaniments 

 of destructive action some of them common to man and 

 inferior mammals, and consequently understood by inferior 

 mammals, as every puppy shows us. What we call the 

 natural language of anger, is due to a partial contraction 

 of those muscles which actual combat would call into 

 play ; and all marks of irritation, down to that passing 

 shade over the brow which accompanies slight annoyance, 

 are incipient stages of these same contractions. Conversely 

 with the natural language of pleasure, and of that state 



