Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/843

Rh pain into sadness, and their sensation into feeling; it sends them back its pain and receives it multiplied; a sad thought soon has a cortege of myriads of painful sensations, from the movements of the heart and chest to the most superficial parts of the organism.

To the association of analogous sensations or emotions may he referred, we think, the third of the laws of expression, which Darwin has studied without exhibiting its real meaning—the law of antithesis. Some states of mind, says Darwin, induce in the animal certain habitual acts which are useful to the support or defense of life; and when a state of mind of a directly inverse character is produced, the animal instinctively and by antithesis performs the opposite acts, even when they are useless. Physiologists have rejected the Darwinian principle of antithesis, and the examples he cites in illustration of it may generally be explained in another way. But we think the principle has a psychological value which Darwin failed to elucidate. The association of states of consciousness takes place by contrast and antithesis as well as by analogy; contraries as well as similars are subject to a law of association, which is especially manifested in the domain of the emotions. There exists a fundamental antithesis between pleasure and pain, between acceptation and repulsion by the will. An organic connection appeal's to be established between these opposites, in such a way as to produce a perpetual bifurcation of movements. It is not, therefore, strange that the contrary of a feeling should be expressed by contrary movements or attitudes, aside from all considerations of utility or all choice of the will. This contrast affords a means of facilitating the interpretation of signs.

The law of antithesis is thus a particular case of the law of association, which itself results from the natural concert of all the organs. This concert, or sociality, is so much the essential character of the emotion and its language, that the absence of accord and consonance between all the parts of the organism gives us the means of distinguishing feigned emotions from i*eal. Thus, in theatrical pain, the expression is exaggerated out of all proportion to the occasion, and the real physical condition is so unlike the assumed that the sham is easily detected, and the illusion may be destroyed by a slight accident. On the other hand, when dissimulation of a real emotion is attempted, it is very hard to keep the current of feeling, which is not allowed to express itself in the natural way, from finding vent in some other way, as in mental excitement, or in movements which apparently have no relation to the suffering experienced. Passions on the point of breaking out may be revealed by rhythmical movements of the fingers, or by forced respiration.

Expressional movements, associated according to the laws we have reviewed, end by fixing themselves and leaving traces, not only in passing attitudes, but also in that permanent attitude which constitutes the form of the features. Persons leading the same life, as man