264 STUDIES IN LIFE AND SENSE. 



infant's gesture precedes its speech, so in the early phases of man's 

 development the sign-speech probably served as a means of com- 

 munication ere the principle of imitating natural sounds led to the 

 first beginning of language. Besides the play of the hands, the 

 movements of breathing may be ranked as amongst the means for 

 the due expression of the emotions. Sir Charles Bell speaks of the 

 " respiratory " group of nerves as highly distinctive of man, and 

 maintains that they were developed to adapt the process and organs 

 of breathing to man's intellectual nature. Such an explanation 

 would, of course, be utterly rejected by the evolutionist, who main- 

 tains that the means possessed by man for the expression of the 

 emotions are explicable on utilitarian and allied grounds as having 

 been generated by outward favouring circumstances and perpetuated 

 by habit, or as having arisen from the perpetuation of traits of ex- 

 pression found in lower forms of life. The altered movements of 

 breathing seen in the paroxysm of terror or grief, are more or less 

 secondary effects of the emotions ; they are seen equally well in the 

 fear of many quadrupeds ; and they hardly fall into the category of 

 direct effects illustrated so markedly by the flitting shadows of the 

 face or by the gesture language of the hands and body. Not the 

 least interesting feature of the present subject exists in the obvious 

 connection between the formation of words expressive of certain 

 strong emotions, and the physical or bodily expression by the face of 

 similar feelings. Reference has already been made to this corre- 

 spondence, but the topic will bear an additional mention before we 

 pass to consider the probable origin of the modes of emotional ex- 

 pression, by way of summing up the present paper. As already 

 quoted from Dr. Maudsley, the fact of a spoken word relating itself 

 to the idea of which it is the expression, is a well-known feature of 

 our everyday mental existence. Many of our most primitive emo- 

 tional traits bear to the words whereby we express them the relation 

 of cause to effect. Take as an example the expression " Pooh ! " 

 What better explanation of this otherwise meaningless but at the 

 same time expressive term can be afforded, than that it arises from 

 the natural expiratory effort produced by, or at least naturally 

 associated with, the protrusion of the lips in the act of rejecting some 

 undesirable substance. The labial movement of expression gives 

 rise to a sound which becomes convertible into the term for disgust. 

 The " hiss " of contempt is explicable on similar grounds ; and the 

 word " ugly " is by no means the unlikely offspring of that " ugh " 

 which is so plainly associated with the expression of contempt and 

 disgust. 



These observations regarding the nature and mechanism of the 

 emotions have already extended to a considerable length, and it 

 now behoves us to summarise them shortly in the question of their 



