1 62 THE METHOD OF DARWIN. 



from the facts that he regarded it as the most 

 deductive in spirit of all his work, and as the 

 only hypothesis which he was not obliged to 

 modify, and that scientists have since attacked 

 it more severely perhaps than any of his other 

 theories. 



Darwin's approach to the subject of the ex- 

 pression of the emotions has already been 

 described under Induction. He said, "When I 

 read Sir C. Bell's great work [On the Anat- 

 omy of Expression], his view, that man had 

 been created with certain muscles specially 

 adapted for the expression of his feelings, 

 struck me as unsatisfactory." 1 This was be- 

 cause he had become convinced of the truth of 

 evolution, which required him to believe that 

 the habit of expressing our feelings by cer- 

 tain movements had been somehow gradually 

 acquired. This view required that the whole 

 subject of expression should be studied under 

 a new aspect; "and each expression," he said, 

 "demanded a rational explanation. This belief 

 led me to attempt the present work." In this 

 case the general theory led him only to the 

 conviction that there must be some rational 

 explanation for each emotional expression; and 

 left him to find out inductively the particular 



1 Expression of the Emotions, p. 19. 



