[H]. Professor James has of late largely modified his view (see Psychological Review, Sept., 1894).
While, then, I believe that emotion is the spring of expression, I am far from denying that the expression may not react upon the emotion. Whenever the will in any wise controls expression we mark modifications in the feeling. In the later evolution of life the directing of expression is of great importance, and expression is gradually subjected to the will. Hence, especially with man, it becomes possible to feel in certain ways and yet to repress the signs of feeling, to have strong emotions, and yet not betray them to those who might take advantage of them. When a strong emotion is forcibly and completely checked in its expression there is commonly rankling. At least it is not true, as Darwin states (Ibid., p. 360), that “repression, as far as this is possible, of all outward signs softens our emotions.” Very often, as we all know by personal experience and by observation, the checking the free expression of emotion tends to intensify, rather than soften, the emotion. The school-girl, who, on hearing sad news, rushes away to have a good cry, weeps away her grief, and experiences a deep sense of relief; while the man who sternly represses the expression of grief often suffers acutely and long. Grief, of course, sometimes lies too deep for tears, and we often long to be able to express the pent-up emotion which chokes us. This state is the opposite of the free, natural expression of feeling such as we see in children. Children express themselves without self-control, for this is beyond them; but here is the power to will expression, but the effort is always futile.
By promoting or repressing expression we do certainly influence emotion; but this volition is always for reason, and implies, then, a conflict of feelings. Thus, a feeling for propriety leads the man to control his tears, and this feeling in itself must tend to diminish the strength of the concomitant grief. However, though there is a measure of interference, we would be wrong in supposing that complex mental life is always comparatively weak in its component elements. The distraction of interest due to new feelings checking expression is not always equal to the relieving power of free or promoted expression. The direct checking of the expressional act certainly keeps back the current of energy from its natural channel, and the feeling has increased in duration, if not in quantity. The evanescent character of emotion with young children and with demonstrative people is well known.
But besides the changes which may come to the feeling through direct will-effected changes in the expression, we must also note that the mere consciousness of expression has often a definite influence. Thus, when greatly frightened, I may become conscious of the heart leaping into the throat, the trembling, etc.; and this consciousness of the expression acts in general as a diversion in the feeling which is expressed. Sometimes, indeed, it seems to add to the feeling, as when a girl blushes for her blushes. There is an intensification of self-consciousness which but heightens and renews the expression with renewed sense of expression, and then another flood of embarrassing self-consciousness, and so on in a long series. Here, however, the sense of expression does not in strictness add to the intensity of the original feeling, but it develops a new feeling of the same kind; at each step there is new occasion and a renewed feeling, but a total quantity is constituted, so that we are right enough in saying that the consciousness of her own blushing but added to her embarrassment. Yet it may be stated as a general law that a consciousness of our expressive acts as such tends to decrease the original feeling from which the expression arises, inasmuch as the field of consciousness is thereby divided.
When the will attains control over expression we may not merely repress the impulse to expression when we feel strongly, but having no feeling of a given kind we may voluntarily adopt its expression, and this adoption of the expression very often leads by association to the real feeling. Again, when experiencing a feeling we may simulate the expression of another or even opposite feeling. It is often advantageous in the struggle for existence to throw others off their guard by deceiving them as to the real emotional state; hence, craft and guile have from a tolerably early stage in evolution played a part in the history of life. Animals and men alike soon appreciate the distinction between appearance and reality, that a kind and pleasant expression is often but the lure of malice and hostility, that injury is often meant where there is the show of benefit. Plants, as well as animals, often are quite other than they appear, both for offence and defence; and there is the wide field of mimetic protection which cannot, however, at present be brought under our subject.
Simulation of expression probably arose as an economical makeshift; a mere show which costs the organism little often attains ends which would otherwise require a vast deal of mental force. Thus we see children scared into desired behaviour by assumed anger, grief, etc.; and even animals, as I have noticed with dogs, likewise frequently affect expressions which have no support in real emotion. The unsophisticated, however, learn with great rapidity to distinguish between assumed and real emotion. Any one who has made a pretence of crying before little children must have remarked this. Simulation of expression in order to easily reach desired ends is thus rather limited, but still has a real value and a considerable place under natural selection.
However, expression may sometimes be simulated in order to attain the associated emotion. If we act mad, we often get mad, and thus, as we see in the plays of animals and children, merely assumed expression may lead to the real emotion. This way of attaining emotion by purposely enacting its known expression, we may call impression as the reverse of the expression order. Men may work themselves up into a fury, as well as vigorously express an anger directly occasioned. Actors and public speakers often take advantage of this reaction of expression on emotion, and thereby not merely affect an emotion, but have a certain real emotion, which cannot ever be naïve. Thus Macready as Shylock used to prepare himself and get up “the proper state of white heat” by violently shaking a ladder. Poe in one of his tales makes a detective say, when wishing to know the thoughts of a wicked man, “I fashion the expression of my face as accurately as possible in accordance with the expression of his, and then wait to see what thoughts or sentiments arise in my mind or heart, as if to match or correspond with the expression.” This method of acting like another, that we may have and so know his thoughts and feelings, is a very difficult way of mind-reading.
But expression is often simulated on one or both sides with full understanding of it as such. This enters into play, and is the essence of the dramatic art. That the word play denotes both the sportive imitative actions of animals and men, and also a dramatic representation is not fortuitous or arbitrary. It is noticeable that among the lower animals the earliest and commonest play is playing at being angry or frightened, which corroborates the view of these emotions as probably the earliest and most fundamental in life. The correlated nature of fear and anger is shown by the way they are played at; thus you often see one dog with a show of anger chasing another who simulates fear, and then the parts are exchanged.
The great relation of pursuer and pursued is constantly mimicked among animals with interchanging of parts. So also among children the commonest plays are those of fleeing and chasing, as tag, hare and hound, hide and seek, etc., the fundamental elements of life being re-enacted under the superfluous energy which tends to flow most easily into the oldest and most habitual channels. Thus play has a high historic psychic importance. To attack and to run away are the most necessary and essential of life activities, and play has a certain pedagogic and preparative value, and has thereby been sanctioned by natural selection, for we see that in the evolution of life the tendency has constantly been to lengthen the play period. Among the lowest animals the individual at birth is immediately thrown into the struggle for existence and must battle for itself; there is no play time for it, but at once it enters upon direct life struggle; but in higher life there is a period of spontaneous free dramatic activity.