We have a mass of other testimony of similar effect. Burke, in his treatise on the Sublime and Beautiful, writes as follows of the physiognomist Campanella:
"This man, it seems, had not only made very accurate observations on human faces, but was very expert in mimicking such as were in any way remarkable. When he had a mind to penetrate into the inclinations of those he had to deal with, he composed his face, his gesture, and his whole body, as nearly as he could, into the exact similitude of the person he intended to examine; and then carefully observed what turn of mind he seemed to acquire by the change. So that, says my author, he was able to enter into the dispositions and thoughts of people as effectually as if he had been changed into the very men. I have often observed [Burke now goes on in his own person] that, on mimicking the looks and gestures of angry, or placid, or frightened, or daring men, I have involuntarily found my mind turned to that passion whose appearance I strove to imitate; nay, I am convinced it is hard to avoid it, though one strove to separate the passion from its corresponding gestures."[412]
Against this it is to be said that many actors who perfectly mimic the outward appearances of emotion in face, gait, and voice declare that they feel no emotion at all. Others, however, according to Mr. Wm. Archer, who has made a very instructive statistical inquiry among them, say that the emotion of the part masters them whenever they play it well.[413] Thus:
"'I often turn pale,' writes Miss Isabel Bateman, 'in scenes of terror or great excitement. I have been told this many times, and I can feel myself getting very cold and shivering and pale in thrilling situations.' 'When I am playing rage or terror,' writes Mr. Lionel Brough, 'I believe I do turn pale. My mouth gets dry, my tongue cleaves to my palate. In Bob Acres, for instance (in the last act), I have to continually moisten my mouth, or I shall become inarticulate. I have to "swallow the lump," as I call it.' All artists who have had much experience of emotional parts are absolutely unanimous.... 'Playing with the brain,' says Miss Alma Murray, 'is far less fatiguing than playing with the heart. An adventuress taxes the physique far less than a sympathetic heroine. Muscular exertion has comparatively little to do with it.'... 'Emotion while acting,' writes Mr. Howe, 'will induce perspiration much more than physical exertion. I always perspired profusely while acting Joseph Surface, which requires little or no exertion.'... 'I suffer from fatigue,' writes Mr. Forbes Robertson, 'in proportion to the amount of emotion I may have been called upon to go through, and not from physical exertion.'... 'Though I have played Othello,' writes Mr. Coleman, 'ever since I was seventeen (at nineteen I had the honor of acting the Moor to Macready's Iago), husband my resources as I may, this is the one part, the part of parts, which always leaves me physically prostrate. I have never been able to find a pigment that would stay on my face, though I have tried every preparation in existence. Even the titanic Edwin Forrest told me that he was always knocked over in Othello, and I have heard Charles Kean, Phelps, Brooke, Dillion, say the same thing. On the other hand, I have frequently acted Richard III. without turning a hair.'"[414]
The explanation for the discrepancy amongst actors is probably that which these quotations suggest. The visceral and organic part of the expression can be suppressed in some men, but not in others, and on this it is probable that the chief part of the felt emotion depends. Coquelin and the other actors who are inwardly cold are probably able to affect the dissociation in a complete way. Prof. Sikorsky of Kieff has contributed an important article on the facial expression of the insane to the Neurologisches Centralblatt for 1887. Having practised facial mimicry himself a great deal, he says:
"When I contract my facial muscles in any mimetic combination, I feel no emotional excitement, so that the mimicry is in the fullest sense of the word artificial, although quite irreproachable from the expressive point of view."[415]
We find, however, from the context that Prof. S.'s practice before the mirror has developed in him such a virtuosity in the control of his facial muscles that he can entirely disregard their natural association and contract them in any order of grouping, on either side of the face isolatedly, and each one alone. Probably in him the facial mimicry is an entirely restricted and localized thing, without sympathetic changes of any sort elsewhere.
Third Objection. Manifesting an emotion, so far from increasing it, makes it cease. Rage evaporates after a good outburst; it is pent-up emotions that "work like madness in the brain."