But on the threshold, and is marked through- Mr. Herbert Spencer on an initial point out by illegitimate assumptions and cir- that belongs to the common-place of the cular reasonings of the most flagrant subject. Mr. Herbert Spencer," says kind. It illustrates at every point, in- Mr. Darwin, “has drawn a clear distincdeed, the well-known fact, that when tion between emotions and sensations, those who have been long devoted to the latter being generated in our corpominute external observation, and thus real framework. He classes as feelings accustomed to follow step by step the both emotions and sensations." limited and lower but safe guidance of this is an elementary distinction taken inductive lights once abandon the famil- by others long before Mr. Spencer, and iar path, they wander far more widely more fully developed and applied than by and hopelessly than others whose mental him. Thus, to refer only to an estabtraining and activities have been less ex- lished and easily accessible authority, we clusive. After hugging closely for half a find in the "Encyclopædia Britannica" the century the shore of material fact, navi- following: "It is convenient to lay gation in the open sea of thought be- down at once the broadest of the objeccomes difficult and hazardous, especially tive distinctions separating the kinds of to those unacquainted with the compass feeling. A sensation is a feeling whose and chart of speculative reason, and un- excitant is a phenomenon of the body; accustomed to rule their course by the an emotion is a feeling whose excitant is higher lights in the hemisphere of ex- a phenomenon of the mind or consciousperience the lode-stars of rational but ness of the subject." And again a little severely regulated thought. Many won- later:-"There has been already stated der how it is that Mr. Darwin, being so the distribution of feelings into sensasupreme in the observation, description, tions and emotions, distinguishable by and arrangement of material facts should the character of their antecedents or exbe so inferior in dealing with moral facts citants, these being respectively phenomand reasons, so weak logically, so incon- ena of the bodily organs of the subject, sequent and inconclusive in the region of or of its consciousness." A writer familabstract speculation and reflective proof. iar with the subject would indeed have The explanation is in part supplied by assumed the distinction as commonthe circumstance just adverted to, that he place, without feeling it necessary to made the acquaintance of philosophical quote any authority in support of it. Mr. reasoning too late in life, if this may be Darwin might almost as well have ansaid without offence; and partly also by nounced that Mr. Herbert Spencer, the the fact we have specially noted, that, great exponent of the principle of evolufrom his absorption of mind in his own tion, had made the important and origisubject, he has failed to acquaint himself nal remark that "bodily pain is different with the higher province of inquiry into from mental suffering, and that bruised which he has somewhat rashly ventured. muscles may be discriminated from lacThe present volume supplies fresh evi- erated feelings." Again, in dealing with dence that Mr. Darwin's ignorance of the physical effects of fear, one wellmental science is real and not assumed. known symptom referred to is the partial It appears from the very manner in paralysis of the salivary glands. In illuswhich he uses the authors on which he tration of this Mr. Darwin quotes his exclusively relies for such information as chief psychological authority:-" Mr. he possesses. As his previous work, to Bain explains in the following manner be at all effective or complete, required a the origin of the custom of subjecting minute acquaintance with man's intel- criminals in India to the ordeal of the lectual and moral nature, so the first con- morsel of rice: The accused is made to dition of success in his present undertak- take a mouthful of rice, and after a little ing is a thorough knowledge of the time to throw it out. If the morsel is passions, affections, and emotions. We quite dry the party is believed to be naturally expect, therefore, at the outset guilty, his own evil conscience operating to find some discrimination of the special to paralyze the salivating organs." Here sensibilities which find expression in the both the fact and the cause of it are as countenance and gesture of men and ani- old as the hills, or at least so familiar mals. At least we look for some expla- that they might be at once assumed withnation of what is included under emo- out any special authority. In a manual tion, as well as some classification of the published upwards of thirty years ago distinctively human emotions. Instead of both are stated, indeed, as notorious truthis all we find is a short quotation from isms. "Everybody knows the almost venient, were passed over, so in the interpretation of expression the nobler emotions are treated in the same way, and for the same reason. For the same purpose the very limited expressive element in the countenances and gesture of animals is habitually overstated, while the enormously higher power of expression possessed by man is systematically understated. In relation to the first point, the extent to which Mr. Darwin persistently reads his own theory into the ambiguous muscular twitches and spasms of monkeys and other animals is often amusing in a high degree. The manner in which he continually degrades and vulgarizes human emotion is equally striking. instantaneous effect of fear in blanching the higher mental powers, being inconthe cheeks, and rendering the eye dull, as well as that of any intense emotion in occasioning an immediate suppression of various secretions, such as tears and saliva. The cleaving of the tongue to the mouth from violent emotion the vox hæret faucibus is easily explicable upon the same principles. Everybody knows the story of the detection of a thief, in an establishment of servants, by the dryness of the rice which he, in common with the rest, had been compelled to hold in his mouth, while each was taxed with the theft." Here, again, Mr. Darwin might almost as well have quoted the same authority in support of any familiar factmight have said, for instance, Professor Bain has acutely remarked that a bitter taste produces wryness and contortion of the mouth, just as a bad smell operates most energetically upon the muscles of the nose. But we must pass on to notice Mr. Darwin's method of dealing with the facts of expression, and the principles he lays down for their interpretation. His method of arriving at the facts of human emotion is so characteristic that it well deserves a word or two of special comment. It indicates the presence and active working of a strong preconception in the author's mind. Mr. Darwin tells us that the principle of evolution had occurred to him upwards of thirty years ago, and that he has observed the phenomena of expression at intervals ever since, in order mainly, as it would seem, to find illustrations in confirmation of the principle. But parental attachment to a new principle may be just as disturbing an element in the way of unbiassed observation as partiality for any established method. And it is impossible to read far in the present volume without feeling that the facts have been selected, arranged, and interpreted according to the exigencies of the new theory rather than according to their actual character and the results they spontaneously afford. There is an obvious effort from the first to bring vividly into view not what is most distinctive in the expression of human emotion, but what is common to men and animals. The aim all through is to stretch this common element in every conceivable way, and make it appear as large as possible. For this purpose the higher human emotions are not dealt with at all, or, if incidentally noticed, are at once dismissed as artificial, conventional, and the like. As in "The Descent of Man" But the method of arriving at the facts to be explained shows the working of the same mental preoccupation in a still stronger and more obtrusive form. Mr. Darwin describes minutely the plan he adopted in order to acquire as good a foundation as possible, and ascertain how far particular movements of the features and gestures are really expressive of certain states of mind. The plan consists in obtaining observations from six different sources. These are, first, infants, because they exhibit many emotions with extraordinary force; second, the insane, as they are liable to the strongest passions, and give uncontrolled vent to them; third, galvanism — that is, muscles artificially excited by means of galvanic action; fourth, art, the great masters in painting and sculpture; fifth, ruder and more savage races; sixth, the lower animals. To this last source Mr. Darwin naturally attaches a "paramount importance," as affording "the safest basis for generalization on the causes or origin of the various movements of expression. Now, if the six sources are examined, it will be seen that from only one of them the fourth-could any knowledge of the higher and more complex human emotions be derived. And, curiously enough, this is precisely the one from which Mr. Darwin confesses that he obtained little or nothing suitable to his purpose. The five other sources could illustrate at best only the simpler, ruder, and more violent forms of passion. The higher emotions are associated with the activity of reason, are indeed the reflex or developed intelligence. But in infants reason is wholly undeveloped, mere animal appetites and passions having the supremacy. In the case of the insane rea sions of the mind. These are the mo- son is dethroned, and while they are liable to uncontrolled outbreaks of passion, the passion is necessarily of an irrational and violent kind. Savages, again, are the infants of the race, and the emotions manifested by them will, as a rule, be of a coarse and rudimentary kind. This is still more true of the lower animals. It may be questioned, indeed, whether they have emotions at all in the stricter meaning of the term-whether At such seasons the mask is torn away, they are not always moved by bodily ap- and the man remains; all disguises of petites, passions, and desires, rather than conventional expression disappear, and by purely mental causes and antecedents. the realities of life, the innermost feelThen, again, galvanized muscle can ex-ings and desires, are revealed in their hibit at most only the harsher elements naked depth, truthfulness, and power. of expression, and that too in an isolated and extreme form. Nothing can more vividly illustrate this than the hideous portaits of the galvanized old man whose "skin was little sensitive," which Mr. Darwin employs to illustrate his expositions. In these portraits all the varieties of facial expression are so repulsively unnatural that it is difficult to say which of them is the more inhuman- the grin, the frown, or the gasp. The violent distortion of isolated muscles altogether destroys the fine lines and shades of movement that are the life and soul of spontaneous expression. No wonder, therefore, that many of the illustrations could not be recognized or agreed upon as expressions of any distinctively human emo tion. The result is that from the sources to which Mr. Darwin exclusively refers for his facts, it is impossible to obtain illustrations of the higher and more characteristic human emotions. They are all, no doubt, of use in helping to throw light on the lower appetites and passions. But in studying emotion to restrict attention to such sources is a glaringly partial and one-sided procedure. It is obvious that no adequate knowledge of human expression can be gained from studying only the rude, undeveloped, and abnormal forms of humanity. If the facts of expression are to be dealt with as a whole, humanity must be studied not merely in its dwarfed, diseased, and arrested shapes, but in typical examples of varied faculty and developed power. Men of at least average endowment must be carefully observed under circumstances that call into free and varied play the higher as well as the lower powers of intelligence and sensibility, and especially in the critical moments that give concentrated and intense expression to conflicting desires, or reveal as by a flash of light the master pas Now, apart from long and minute personal observation, the only way of carrying on this study is by means of literature and art in the pages of great poets and prose writers, and the works of the masters of painting and sculpture. The writings of the more eminent authors, who have been careful observers of human nature, and had the profoundest insight into the mysteries of human passion, abound with admirable touches and truthful descriptions of expression. Mr. Darwin, it is true, does not include literature amongst the sources from whence information on the subject may be derived, but he avails himself of it in the body of the work. Happily in this respect, his practice is wider than his precept, or his exposition would be more imperfect than it is. But although he has derived a few graphic delineations from novelists and poets, especially from Shakespeare, this rich vein of illustration is left comparatively unworked. This has mainly arisen from the circumstance that great poets delight to exemplify the higher and nobler aspects of emotion which Mr. Darwin, as a rule, neglects. Had he taken anything like an adequate view of the higher ranges of expression, the illustrative quotations from Shakespeare alone might have been multiplied ten-fold. Then, again, the more intense, susceptible, and keenly observant modern poets, such as Shelley, abound with vivid images of the darker passions, as well as with exquisite descriptions of the kindled and exalted gestures in which the nobler feelings and desires find expression. This, indeed, is what we should naturally expect to find. It is the very nature of the poet that, being richly endowed with sensibility himself, he should be keenly alive to its manifestations in others, discriminating with quick intuitive precision even the more subtle, delicate, and eva nescent forms of emotion. Many writers compare Mr. Darwin's treatise with that of imaginative prose, too, are gifted with just referred to - Sir Charles Bell's such a spirit of minute observation that classical exposition of the philosophy of their pictures of human nature possess a expression. In all vital points of concepkind of photographic truth, distinctness, tion and treatment, indeed, no contrast and reality. This is especially true of could be more striking than that prethe more eminent female novelists, who sented by the two works, or, we need have a rare power of making emotion vis- scarcely add, more strikingly in favour of ible by its external signs, as well as audi-"The Philosophy of Expression in conble by its impassioned utterances. Such nexion with the Fine Arts." Sir Charles women, being endowed with keen and Bell, it is true, deals largely with expresdelicate sensibility, have an extraordinary sion in animals as well as in man; but he power of detecting varying shades of does not, like Mr. Darwin, invert the true expression, and an intuitive perception proportions of the subject, by trying to asof their meaning, amounting almost to similate what is highest in expression to divination. Mr. Darwin has derived a what is meanest and lowest. He preserves few illustrations from this source, but in this, as in other respects, the truth, they might with advantage have been modesty, and balance of nature. While greatly multiplied. Indeed, from the works of George Eliot alone there might easily be selected felicitous descriptive touches embracing almost every kind of human emotion and desire. he studied diligently the lower sources whence a knowledge of expression in its rudimentary forms may be derived, he did not neglect the higher sources, the fullest consideration of which must crown any adequate exposition of the subject. Then, with regard to style and treatment, Sir Charles Bell was not more decisively Mr. Darwin's superior as an anatomist and physiologist than as a man of taste and of literary and philosophical culture. His style is marked by the rarest union of gracefulness and strength, of purity, What is thus true of literature is still more true of art, the main business of great painters and sculptors being to study and portray the more characteristic types of human nature, the more impressive and affecting manifestations of human emotion. The great artists have profoundly studied the play of human feeling, have carefully observed the indi-precision, and admirably co-ordinated cations of passion and affection, for the express purpose of permanently recording them in eloquent light and shadow, in living lines and colours, or in breathing bronze and marble. Their works accordingly are the great store-house of materials for illustrating the entire range of human gesture and expression. This was so fully recognized by Sir Charles Bell, that he entitled his great work "The Anatomy and Philosophy of Expression in connexion with the Fine Arts." Yet from this prolific source Mr. Darwin has not, we believe, derived a single illustration. Nay, as we have seen, he even asserts that, after examining copies of the well-known works of the great painters and sculptors, he found little or nothing suitable to his purpose. We venture to think that with unbiassed judges acquainted with the subject this will be a sufficient condemnation of that purpose, will sufficiently indicate that from the very outset Mr. Darwin has not attempted to consider the whole subject of human emotion, but only those parts of. it which could be readily connected with the manifestations of brute instincts, of animal appetites and desires. In this point of view it is instructive to scientific and literary power. On the other hand, Mr. Darwin's writing is marked by slang phrases, vulgarisms, and a pervading looseness of structure that, apart from the interest of the subject, would often make the mere reading a wearisome task. We only wish there were space at command to exemplify Sir Charles Bell's immense superiority in this respect. But all who are familiar with his essay will remember how happily it illustrates the higher culture that illuminates special knowledge, connects science with history and philosophy, and thus gives to its expositions a distinctively literary character, and a broadly human interest. The author's varied, rich, and refined training as a thinker and critic appears in every part, not only in the style, but in the finished accuracy, fulness, and plastic grouping of the details, in the firm and flexible command of general principles, and in the rare beauty of the illustrations, both literary and artistic. The literary illustrations are so numerous indeed that the more eminent poets, belonging to almost all the great periods of literature - Homer, Virgil, and Ovid; Dante, Petrarch, and Tasso; Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton-are laid under contribution for felicitous' material reflex or manifestation of mind. descriptive touches or more elaborate but It indicates the command of an intelliexquisitely delicate and truthful illustra- gent and sensitive being over the physitions of expression. cal machinery, which is its instrument an instrument admirably adapted in every part for this purpose, and which has an important share in aiding the development of latent power. But that power, once developed through the double instrumentality of speech and gesture, may, and often does, assert its superiority by governing the physical machinery, not of course independently of outward conditions and bodily wants, but in absolute conformity to ideal aims, to a spiritualistic conception of life and labour. Of this outward revelation of powers and capacities, transcending all merely animal elements, great artists are the students and interpreters. As the result of their labours, its essential points are transcribed with ever-increasing fulness and accuracy for the delight and instruction of mankind. At first the interpretation is feeble and faltering, the transcript imperfect, but with the progress of art it advances in delicacy, truthfulness, and power, until it becomes an authentic revelation of the nobler elements of mind, the higher nature of man. Sir Charles Bell traces this progress in his introduction: But the respective relation or attitude of the two writers towards art brings out the vital difference of conception and treatment in the most striking form. Mr. Darwin apparently knows nothing of art, and certainly has no perception of its intimate relation to the subject he undertakes to expound. As we have seen, he professes to have looked into the masterpieces of the great European painters and sculptors without discovering any important elements of expression in their works. With Sir Charles Bell art is so vitally related to expression as to find a place in the very title of his work. Mr. Darwin's studies in art appear to have been restricted to looking over a few photographic copies of the works of great masters. Sir Charles Bell went to Italy for the express purpose of visiting its galleries and studying the splendid monuments of painting and sculpture the country contains. Mr. Darwin has not a single illustration derived from art, no reference to the subject, indeed, except the passage in which he dismisses it from consideration. Sir Charles Bell's work abounds with the happiest illustrations derived from painting and sculpture. We may point to his descriptions of Guer- Church was more happily exercised, and finer cino's Departure of Hagar, in the Gallery feelings prevailed. The subjects were from of Milan, of Raphael's St. Cecilia, of the Scriptures, and noble efforts were made, Guido's Murder of the Innocents, and of attesting a deep feeling of every condition of a Pietà by Michael Angelo as admirable humanity. What we see in the churches of examples. From his perfect knowledge of the sources of expression, moreover, Sir Charles Bell was in this way able not only to appreciate and employ for his own purposes the truthful delineations of the emotions by the great painters and sculptors; he was able to criticize their work, to detect the points where they failed accurately to represent the compiexity or harmony of muscular movement involved in particular emotions, or sacrificed the concensus of expressive form and gesture to the imagined requirements of the composition. In general, however, his finely critical and scientific insight led him to vindicate afresh the wonderfully accurate rendering of emotion in gesture and expression which characterizes the works of the great masters, both in painting and sculpture. The reasons of this widely different treatment of art by the two authors are as worthy of notice as the treatment itself. With Sir Charles Bell expression is the 106 With better times the influence of the Italy, and almost in every church, is the representation of innocence and tenderness in the Madonna and Child and in the young St. John. Contrasted with the truth, and beauty, and innocence of the Virgin, there is the mature beauty and abandonment of the Magdalen. In the dead Christ, in the swooning of the mother of the Saviour, and in the Marys there is the utmost scope for the genius of the painter. We see there, also, the grave character of mature years in the prophets and evangelists, and the grandeur of expression in Moses. In short, we have the whole range of human character and expression, from the divine angels and saints, to the strength, fierceness, loveliness and purity of the infant Saviour, of and brutality of the executioners. This manifestation of inward and higher feeling beautifies even what is physically weak, poor, and unattrac tive: Human sentiments prevailing in the expres sion of a face will always make it agrecable or lovely. Expression is even of more consequence than shape: it will light up features |