Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/82

 FEELING AND EMOTION. 71 expressions may impress emotion into its forms. Simulating expression is the actor's art ; but when the simulation is forgotten by either actor or audience, nature appears and art disappears. Simulation of expression leads easily to feeling and to natural expression by the principle of association. Emotion may then be directly stimulated or repressed, or indirectly through expres- sion. Excitement may be stopped by mental measures or by deep inhalations. Expression may be expressive to the indi- vidual and not to others, for example, when the heart jumps into the throat ; to others and not to the individual, as very often in the knitting of the brow ; to both, as in gesture. Darwin relates emotions to expression by three principles : first, principle of survival, or as he terms it, " serviceable associ- ated habits " ; second, principle of antithesis ; third, principle of direct action of nervous system. The evolutionary principle of survival bids fair to be a very important factor in explaining ex- pressions. According to this principle we seek to explain many expressions by studying their history, and many expressions are then found to be what we may term degraded actions. When feeling arises, the old associated actions, now disused, tend to follow as survival in degraded form. The running from feared object was for self-preservation, and this running, of course, ac- celerated the action of the heart and connected organs, with depression of more remote organs. The throbbing of heart, &c., as expression of fear, are then survivals of the running of genera- tions of ancestors. We may remark in this connexion that expression a? partial may act in accumulatory manner, as when in fear there is throbbing of the heart, which acts, not in serving the limbs as originally, but in adding to mental excitement. Sufficient attention has not, perhaps, been paid to what we may term the negative or passive expressions which are due to exces- sive withdrawal of blood from certain organs by other organs for active expression. Emotions in any high degree almost always enhance some function to the depression of others. Just why there should be the particular depression, must be determined by physiological research. Pallor from fear may be regarded as a negative expression. Darwin enumerates as unexplained ex- pressions, " change of colour in the hair from extreme terror or grief the cold sweat and the trembling of the muscles from fear the modified secretions of the intestinal canal and the failure of certain glands to act". (Expression of the Emotions, 350 ; but cp. 81.) It may be that some or all of these are negative or secondary expressions, due to abnormal lowering of certain functions through abnormal heightening of other functions in primary and positive expression. It seems to us at any rate that this distinction of positive and negative expressions is worthy to be made and may be useful. If many expressions of emotion are degraded actions in sur- vival, it is plain that the emotion cannot be the reflex of the