Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/397

Rh vented. That the association is instinctive, and not acquired through individual or racial education, is shown by the fact that the facial changes which accompany the sentiments of fear, hatred, contempt, merriment, or mockery are practically identical the world over.

The extreme rarity of the man who can always keep his countenance, even when his will is fully awake, is as complete a proof of this intimate and automatic bond between the mental apparatus and the facial muscles as need be brought forward. Are we not all aware of exercising a restraining effort upon our features when we endeavor to hide our emotions? And is not the common phrase, "He gave way to his feelings," a recognition of the fact that the invariable instinctive tendency is, when the emotions are stirred, to yield to those outward manifestations which are obvious to the eye of another, and which are the results of motor nervous impulse?

Now, this fact is most important in the study of what may be called "static physiognomy," which treats of the interpretation of habitual expression when the countenance is at rest. It shows that in all probability every emotion, however slight, sends an impulse to the appropriate muscles, although the immediate nervous provocation may be much too faint to produce any marked movement. That such trivial and evanescent nerve impulses, although their effect may be at the time unfelt by the subject himself and imperceptible to lookers-on, may be, if often repeated, efficient factors in the formation of a habitual cast of countenance, I shall presently show.

It is plain that such effects will become more perceptible when the first rotundity of youth has disappeared. We naturally look at a young face for a prophecy, and at an old one for a record. But the materials from which we attempt to inform ourselves are of a very different character in the two classes. In the one case we see a general arrangement of features, which, according to some utterly inscrutable law, accompanies certain traits of mental and moral character. No satisfactory theory has ever been put forward to account for such facts as that human beings with a certain inherited squareness of jaw are always of a tenacious disposition.

But when we scrutinize an older face, we peruse the linear inscriptions upon its surface as we read a book of which we know the author. Not only do such and such conformations of its lines have a definite meaning, but we can form an opinion as to why and when (if not now) they were written. The caligraphycalligraphy [sic], of course, is not uniform in all cases, and there are various complexities about it which may render an exact interpretation a matter of difficulty. Trouble or passion, which in one instance is