780 Dynamic Theory. 



while those from the cerebrum to the face remained functional. 



The portion of the expression depending on the medulla, would be 



abolished. 



As before observed, we are born with our muscles each connected pri- 

 marily with a certain tract of brain. Indirectly, each muscle is connected 

 with every tract, since every tract is connected with every other. The 

 number of motives by which a will is formed to move any limb, is prac- 

 tically infinite. The same movement of a leg follows any one of a 

 thousand purposes. Likewise the overflow of many different sorts of 

 emotion affects the same muscle and produces the same motor effects. 

 Tears for example, are produced by emotions of very different, and 

 even contrary, natures. Tears are shed from feelings of physical 

 pain, from grief, disappointment, rage, vexation, joy, laughter, sympa- 

 thy, and also when there is no emotion; from a dazzling light, exposure 

 of the face to a chilly wind, coughing, vomiting, yawning, severe irrita- 

 tion of the eyes by foreign substances, irritation of the nostrils and of 

 the fauces, inflammations, &c. If we consider in how many ways, and 

 in how many parts of the body, we can suffer physical pain, from what 

 numerous causes we can suffer grief, rage or disappointment, and from 

 what numerous circumstances we can experience excessive joy or sympa- 

 thy, and by how great a number of circumstances we can be excited to 

 laughter, &c. , we shall see that the single emotional causes competent 

 to produce tears, are well-nigh innumerable. Add to these the mechan- 

 ical causes which act upon the same nerves through reflex action, as 

 mentioned above, and the list is greatly increased. The excessive stim- 

 ulation of a vast number of cerebral parts is propagated to the tear 

 glands and to the orbicularis, and a few other muscles about the face 

 and e}^es, whose compression tends to the secretion and emission of tears. 

 (See fig. 66.) The same muscles are all subject to voluntary contrac- 

 tion. A good actor will, by purposive contractions of the facial mus- 

 cles, produce very deceptive imitations of the ordinary emotional ex- 

 pressions, even to the production of tears. The same sort of observa- 

 tions apply equally to many other attitudes and demonstrations of emo- 

 tion. They may become attitudes and demonstrations of intellectual 

 states, and consequently purposive. But the two run into one another 

 in such a complicated manner that they cannot be separated into differ- 

 ent categories, either in respect to their necessary origin in environal 

 causes or in their termination in muscular contraction. In short, there 

 is no radical structural difference in the manner in which the brain is 

 worked by different stimuli, nor in the outcome of that work as exhibited 

 in muscle contraction and expression. We are justified in characteriz- 

 ing the last step in the cerebral action preceding muscle contraction, by 

 the same term for all the stimuli. If we say purposive will, we may 



