322 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



serve the semblance of an equanimity which knows nothing of the agi- 

 tation of pleasure or pain, may be expected to give the last touch of 

 refinement to emotional expression. 



If these were all the facts bearing on the future of our emotional 

 life, we might well inquire what effect the habitual suppression of 

 emotional expression is likely to have on the quality of the emotions 

 themselves. It is probably clear to everybody that our feelings are 

 very much affected by the range of free expression accorded them. 

 At least the violent intensity of a passion is destroyed by successful 

 control of all the muscles, and, even if a slow, smouldering fire of hate 

 or jealousy may coexist with a comparatively quiet exterior, the emo- 

 tional force is in this case robbed of its glory. It would thus appear 

 that, with social progress, as men are thrown more and more in each 

 other's society, their feelings will undergo a very considerable trans- 

 formation ; some types of emotion disappearing, it may be, altogether, 

 the rest being so mollified as to be scarcely recognizable as the ven- 

 erable forms of human love, terror, and joy. But, oddly enough, we 

 find another set of influences, due to the very same social conditions 

 as the first, which tends to counteract these, fostering and deepening 

 feeling, and encouraging its manifestations. Mr. Spencer thinks that 

 the habit of expressing pleasure and pain arose as animals became gre- 

 garious. This condition exposed the members of the same flock to 

 common experiences of danger, etc. ; and in this way, from uttering 

 the sounds of terror under like circumstances and at the same times, 

 they would come to interpret them when given forth by their com- 

 panions. At the same time the gregarious mode of life clearly made 

 animals able to assist one another in a large variety of ways. Now, 

 on this supposition, which seems extremely plausible, the habit of ex- 

 pressing feeling is an attainment of social life, and, so far from disap- 

 pearing with the advance of this life, it should, one would think, go 

 on developing. In point of fact, we see in a number of ways how so- 

 cial progress serves to enlarge the area of sympathetic feeling. As a 

 man becomes more of a citizen, he is probably more and more desirous 

 to be in unison of feeling and intention with his fellow-citizens, at least 

 with that section of them whom he most respects. The sympathy he 

 looks for presupposes, it is clear, some expression of his own feelings, 

 and a responsive expression on the part of his neighbors. In this way, 

 then, there are two tendencies of social culture curiously conflicting in 

 their results. By virtue of the one a man seeks to repress feeling and 

 not to obtrude it unnecessarily on his fellow-citizens. By force of the 

 other he is ever craving with more and more vigor for a lively inter- 

 change of sentiments with others. What resultant, it may be asked, 

 do these opposite forces produce ? 



Without trying to determine the precise direction of this com- 

 pound effect, it may be just suggested that a kind of compromise 

 between the opposing forces is frequently effected by means of Ian- 



