MEANS OF THE EXPRESSION OF THE EMOTIONS. 891 



The actions and attitude of a helpless man are, in every 

 one of these respects, exactly the reverse. 



BLUSHING. 



Expression Blushing is the most peculiar and the most 



of the human of all expressions. Monkeys redden 



Emotions, from passion, but it would require an over- 

 page 310. , 1 . , , . ., r 



whelmmg amount of evidence to make us be- 

 lieve that any animal could blush. The reddening of the 

 face from a blush is due to the relaxation of the muscular 

 coats of the small arteries, by which the capillaries be- 

 come filled with blood ; and this depends on the proper 

 vaso-motor center being afEected. No doubt, if there be 

 at the same time much mental agitation, the general cir- 

 culation will be afEected ; but it is not due to the action 

 of the heart that the net-work of minute vessels covering 

 the face becomes, under a sense of shame, gorged with 

 blood. We can cause laughing by tickling the skin ; 

 weeping or frowning, by a blow ; trembling, from a fear 

 of pain, and so forth ; but we can not cause a blush, as 

 Dr. Burgess remarks, by any physical means — that is, by 

 any action on the body. It is the mind which must be 

 afEected. Blushing is not only involuntary, but the wish 

 to restrain it, by leading to self-attention, actually in- 

 creases the tendency. 



The tendency to blush is inherited. Dr. 

 " ' Burgess gives the case of a family, consisting 

 of a father, mother, and ten children, all of whom, with- 

 out exception, were prone to blush to a most painful de- 

 gree. The children were grown up ; " and some of them 

 were sent to travel, in order to wear away this diseased 

 sensibility, but nothing was of the slightest avail." Even 



