We will now consider how the principle of antithesis in expression has arisen. With social animals, the power of intercommunication between the members of the same community—and, with other species, between the opposite sexes, as well as between the young and the old—is of the highest importance to them. This is generally effected by means of the voice, but it is certain that gestures and expressions are to a certain extent mutually intelligible. Man not only uses inarticulate cries, gestures, and expressions, but has invented articulate language; if, indeed, the word invented can be applied to a process completed by innumerable steps, half-consciously made. Any one who has watched monkeys will not doubt that they perfectly understand each other’s gestures and expression, and to a large extent, as Rengger asserts, those of man. An animal when going to attack another, or when afraid of another, often makes itself appear terrible, by erecting its hair, thus increasing the apparent bulk of its body, by showing its teeth, or brandishing its horns, or by uttering fierce sounds.
As the power of intercommunication is certainly of high service to many animals, there is no a priori improbability in the supposition that gestures manifestly of an opposite nature to those by which certain feelings are already expressed should at first have been voluntarily employed under the influence of an opposite state of feeling. The fact of the gestures being now innate would be no valid objection to the belief that they were at first intentional; for, if practiced during many generations, they would probably at last be inherited. Nevertheless, it is more than doubtful, as we shall immediately see, whether any of the cases which come under our present head of antithesis have thus originated.
With conventional signs which are not innate, such as those used by the deaf and dumb and by savages, the principle of opposition or antithesis has been partially brought into play. The Cistercian monks thought it sinful to speak, and, as they could not avoid holding some communication, they invented a gesture language, in which the principle of opposition seems to have been employed. Dr. Scott, of the Exeter Deaf and Dumb Institution, writes to me that “opposites are greatly used in teaching the deaf and dumb, who have a lively sense of them.” Nevertheless I have been surprised how few unequivocal instances can be adduced. This depends partly on all the signs having commonly had some natural origin; and partly on the practice of the deaf and dumb and of savages to contract their signs as much as possible for the sake of rapidity. Hence their natural source or origin often becomes doubtful, or is completely lost; as is likewise the case with articulate language.
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When a cat, or rather when some early progenitor of the species, from feeling affectionate, first slightly arched its back, held its tail perpendicularly upward and pricked its ears, can it be believed that the animal consciously wished thus to show that its frame of mind was directly the reverse of that when, from being ready to fight or to spring on its prey, it assumed a crouching attitude, curled its tail from side to side, and depressed its ears? Even still less can I believe that my dog voluntarily put on his dejected attitude and “hot-house face,” which formed so complete a contrast to his previous cheerful attitude and whole bearing. It can not be supposed that he knew that I should understand his expression, and that he could thus soften my heart and make me give up visiting the hot-house.
Hence, for the development of the movements which come under the present head, some other principle, distinct from the will and consciousness, must have intervened. This principle appears to be that every movement which we have voluntarily performed throughout our lives has required the action of certain muscles; and, when we have performed a directly opposite movement, an opposite set of muscles has been habitually brought into play—as in turning to the right or to the left, in pushing away or pulling an object toward us, and in lifting or lowering a weight.
THE PRINCIPLE OF THE ACTION OF THE EXCITED NERVOUS SYSTEM ON THE BODY.
Expression of the Emotions,
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The most striking case, though a rare and abnormal one, which can be adduced of the direct influence of the nervous system, when strongly affected, on the body, is the loss of color in the hair, which has occasionally been observed after extreme terror or grief. One authentic instance has been recorded, in the case of a man brought out for execution in India, in which the change of color was so rapid that it was perceptible to the eye.