Facial Expression. 71 



a manner singled out as the chief exponent of psychic activities. 

 He considers that in the overflow from the seat of consciousness 

 of the nerve currents that accompany emotion, those lighter 

 structures which are most susceptible to such impulses will first 

 shew symptoms of the disturbance that is taking place ; and 

 that just as the psychic storm increases in intensity, so will less 

 susceptible muscles become gradually more deeply involved in 

 the nervous discharge, till it may happen that all become 

 violently excited. This sequence of activities is well illustrated 

 by the phenomena of some intense human passion, such as 

 anger when typically exemplefied ; for it is only when the face 

 has assumed the utmost limit of the characteristic distortion of 

 rage, that the fingers twitch, the hands are clenched, and the 

 foot stamped in the intensity of passion. 



Thus it is that in the first instance, in the unsophisticated mor- 

 tal, the face is pre-eminently the index of the soul. But people 

 are conscious of this sometimes embarrassing fact, and take 

 elaborate precautions to keep their faces calm even when the 

 mind itself is ruffled by tempestuous storms. But here the 

 discrimination of the true observer comes into play. Lavater 

 has well remarked that " he alone is an acute observer who can 

 observe minutely without being observed ;" and to the subtle 

 observer of human passions the casually detected twitching of 

 those apparently listless fingers, the tapping of that little foot 

 on the noiseless Persian carpet, may often be as eloquent of 

 meaning as the most passionate facial expression. We all saw 

 that exemplified in the recent epidemic of " Thought-reading," 

 where the fingers of the medium gave that indication to the 

 " thought-reader " that his face so carefully and scrupulously 

 denied. Now as regards the facial muscles, they are many in 

 number and elaborate in their arrangement. Further, they 

 rarely, if ever, act in an individual capacity in producing any 

 typical expression. In fact, they so habitually act in concert 

 that it would be impossible to assign its proper function to 

 each, were it not for the fact that they can severally be thrown 

 into individual activity by artificial means. This method of 

 studying their various actions was devised by M. Duchenne, who, 



