PHYSIOLOGY OF THE PASSIONS. 561 



various excitants, the contraction of each particular one of these little 

 muscles. Again, by observing those ready-made experiments which 



we call diseases, he learned what takes place when some of these 

 muscles contract while others are inactive. In this way he has been 

 enabled to see, most clearly, that the contraction of each muscle of 

 the face determines a certain invariable expression ; that is to say, 

 that each passion seems to have at its command a facial muscle 

 which contracts so soon as the soul is moved by this passion. M. 

 Duchenne discourses as follows about the muscle of suffering (souf- 

 france), as he calls the muscle whose contraction indicates pain. 

 " From the very outset I had observed that the partial movement of 

 one of the motor muscles of the eyebrow always produced a complete 

 expression in the human face. For instance, there is one muscle 

 which expresses pain — the superciliary muscle. On causing this to 

 contract by electricity, not only did the eyebrow assume the form ex- 

 pressive of pain, but the other parts and features of the countenance, 

 particularly the mouth and the naso-labial line, seemed also to undergo 

 a profound modification, so as to harmonize with the eyebrow, and, 

 like it, to give expression to this painful state of the soul." So, then, 

 other muscles appear to share with the superciliary in the expression 

 of suffering. M. Duchenne, however, believes that he is authorized 

 by his experiments in holding that the muscular region of the face 

 directly modified by a single passion is very circumscribed. But this 

 modified region acts by a sort of sympathy on the adjacent regions 

 precisely as one color modifies the tint of the colors all around it ; 

 and, just as, in the latter case, there is caused an optical illusion, the 

 result of what Chevreul calls the simultaneous contrast of colors, so 

 with the muscular movements of the face there is produced a kind of 

 mirage which modifies, complicates, and seems to dilate a movement 

 whose real sphere is very restricted. However this may be, M. Du- 

 chenne has succeeded in reproducing, by contractions called forth in 

 a certain number of the facial muscles, nearly all those expressions 

 which answer to the inner states of the soul, and he has thus been 

 enabled to assign to each muscle a psychological in addition to its 

 physiological name. Thus, the frontal muscle is the muscle of atten- 

 tion, surprise, wonder, and alarm, and each of these emotions excites 

 it in a different way. The great zygomatic and the inferior orbicular 

 muscles are the muscles of joy, while the pyramidal muscle of the 

 nose is the muscle of aggression, and so on. In general, the muscles 

 of the eye are adapted to expressions of the higher order, and those 

 of the mouth to expressions of a more gross and material kind. The 

 purely self-satisfied and sensual smile calls into play only the zygo- 

 matic muscle. It is the contraction of the inferior orbicular that gives 

 to the expression of contentment and pleasure a character of good- 

 nature and benevolence. Besides the primary expressions resulting 

 directly from the play of one muscle, M. Duchenne finds that several 



VOL. IV. — 36 



