The Emotions. 781 



also say emotional will, since emotions lie behind all purposes. But all 

 such distinctions can be made only for the sake cf convenience of dis- 

 cussion. 



It would be curious, if it were possible, to trace the origin of the dif- 

 ferent emotional expressions which have descended to ns as matters of 

 involuntary habit. We have seen all along how the different parts of 

 our bodies have been molded and shaped by the actions which the ex- 

 ternal stimuli have put upon them through the ages. A great many of 

 our present movements of expression seem to be quite useless and we 

 do not readily see why such and such movements and gestures should 

 follow such cerebral states. But in many cases it is possible to dis- 

 cover how these movements have once been useful, and having become 

 habitual, have descended to us and remain as heirlooms of a more or 

 less rudimentary character. 



The corrngator muscles of the forehead (see fig. 66) by their con- 

 traction produce frowning. The contraction of these muscles occurs 

 when the eyes are exposed to too much light, and when it is necessary 

 to intently concentrate the vision upon something difficult to be seen, 

 and the seeing of which makes it necessary to exclude light reflected 

 from other objects beside the one looked at. In such cases the pyram- 

 idal and orbicular muscles are likewise often contracted, acting to the 

 same end, and the action may be reflex or automatic, or consciously 

 voluntary. But in all the cases the same physiological process of an 

 increased determination of the blood to the muscles involved, takes 

 place preceding and during their contraction. We have seen that this 

 is the process which we call attention in voluntary actions, and since 

 the same thing occurs with involuntary actions we have what may prop- 

 erly be termed involuntary attention. We find a good example of this 

 involuntary attention in the case of blushing. It is likely that the 

 contraction of these particular muscles, the corrugators, first became 

 habitual through attention following visual stimuli, second, certain cere- 

 bral activities became associated with these visual stimulations, and ner- 

 vous connections became established between the contracting muscles 

 and cerebral tracts. Third, it would finally become possible for the 

 muscles to be automatically contracted by the overflow stimulation from 

 these connected cerebral tracts whenever the latter were excited, re- 

 gardless of the source of the excitation. Thus we find that the frown 

 caused by the contraction of the corrugators results from close atten- 

 tion and puzzled occupation of various sorts, physical or cerebral. To 

 be puzzled includes a strong and earnest cerebral attention. And in 

 some cases the overflow or excess of this, passes to the corrugators as 

 the habitual and easiest route. We are seldom merely puzzled or 

 baffled; there goes with this state, as a consequence of it, generally, a 



