3 2o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



study. Children, too, who may be supposed to represent the earlier 

 acquirements of the race, are proverbially unfettered in the expression 

 of their sentiments. In like manner, in the various ranks of our civ- 

 ilized society, we see that, while a cultivated lady appears to all dis- 

 tant onlookers to have a mind dispassionate and undisturbed by agi- 

 tating feelings, a west-country maid reveals her curiosity and wonder, 

 her alternations of joy and misery, with scarcely a trace of compunc- 

 tion. If we go low enough down the social scale we find the freest 

 utterance of feelings, and it is only when, in retracing our steps, we 

 arrive at a certain stage of culture that we discover signs of an active 

 emotional restraint. Where this self-control is defective we have Mr. 

 Spencer's secondary emotional signs. Higher up, among a few spe- 

 cially cultivated persons, the acquisition of this power of concealment 

 appears to be complete, and we have a type of mind capable of a pro- 

 longed external serenity unruffled by a gust of passionate impulse. 

 The survey of these facts at once prompts the question whether the 

 expression of our feelings by smile, vocal changes, and so on, is des- 

 tined to disappear with a further advance of social organization. To 

 attempt to answer such a question directly and briefly would perhaps 

 betray too much confidence. We may, however, seek to define the 

 various paths of inquiry to be pursued before a final answer can be 

 arrived at, and to hint at the probabilities of the problem under its 

 various aspects. 



First of all, then, with respect to the distinctly unsocial feelings, 

 the answer seems to be tolerably clear. It being generally allowed 

 by biologists that the looks and gestures accompanying anger, jeal- 

 ousy, and pride, are simply survivals of hostile actions, the nascent 

 renewal of an attitude preliminary to attack, it is natural that they 

 should appear only in transitions of society from a barbaric to a civ- 

 ilized condition. When the age of destructive conflict, individual and 

 racial, shall have become the curious research of antiquaries, it may 

 be presumed that any bodily movements known to have grown out of 

 these struggles will cease from sheer desuetude. Indeed, one may 

 perhaps, without too optimist a bias, refer to the fact that all the 

 stronger manifestations of anger and malice have already become un- 

 familiar in real life, so that when we see their imitations on the stage 

 they are apt to appear ridiculously forced. The better part of modern 

 society has put such a ban on the ugly signs of rage that our only 

 means of discovering traces of this passion in a man is some incom- 

 pletely suppressed emotional movement, or some too violent effort to 

 command the muscles of expression. After many more generations 

 shall have practised the difficult art of noiselessly crushing out with 

 the foot an incipient wrath, it will be hard if such offenses to the eye 

 as frowning brow and scornful mouth do not entirely disappear. 



But the progress of social refinement probably affects other ex- 

 pressions than those of the distinctly hostile sentiments. It tends to 



