The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin (adult books to read TXT) 📕

At the same time, as I have repeatedly observed, the eyebrows are slightly lowered, which shows that the upper as well as the lower orbiculars contract at least to some degree, though this passes unperecived, as far as our sensations are concerned. If the original photograph of the old man, with his countenance in its usual placid state (fig. 4), be compared with that (fig. 5) in which he is naturally smiling, it may be seen that the eyebrows in the latter are a little lowered.

I presume that this is owing to the upper orbiculars being impelled, through the force of long-associated habit, to act to a certain extent in concert with the lower orbiculars, which themselves contract in connection with the drawing up of the upper lip.

The tendency in the zygomatic muscles to contract under pleasurable emotions is shown by a curious fact, communicated to me by Dr. Browne, with respect to patients suffering from GENERAL PARALYSIS OF THE INSANE.[11] “In this malady there is almost invariably optimism—delusions as to wealth, rank, grandeur—insane joyousness, benevolence, and profusion, while its very earliest physical symptom is trembling at the corners of the mouth and at the outer corners of the eyes. This is a well-recognized fact.

Constant tremulous agitation of the inferior palpebral and great zygomatic muscles is pathognomic of the earlier stages of general paralysis.

The countenance has a pleased and benevolent expression. As the disease advances other muscles become involved, but until complete fatuity is reached, the prevailing expression is that of feeble benevolence.”

As in laughing and broadly smiling the cheeks and upper lip are much raised, the nose appears to be shortened, and the skin on the bridge becomes finely wrinkled in transverse lines, with other oblique longitudinal lines on the sides. The upper front teeth are commonly exposed.

A well-marked naso-labial fold is formed, which runs from the wing of each nostril to the corner of the mouth; and this fold is often double in old persons.

[11] See, also, remarks to the same effect by Dr. J. Crichton Browne in `Journal of Mental Science,’ April, 1871, p. 149.

A bright and sparkling eye is as characteristic of a pleased or amused state of mind, as is the retraction of the corners of the mouth and upper lip with the wrinkles thus produced.

Even the eyes of microcephalous idiots, who are so degraded that they never learn to speak, brighten slightly when they are pleased.[12] Under extreme laughter the eyes are too much suffused with tears to sparkle; but the moisture squeezed out of the glands during moderate laughter or smiling may aid in giving them lustre; though this must be of altogether subordinate importance, as they become dull from grief, though they are then often moist.

Their brightness seems to be chiefly due to their tenseness,[13]

owing to the contraction of the orbicular muscles and to the pressure of the raised cheeks. But, according to Dr. Piderit, who has discussed this point more fully than any other writer,[14]

the tenseness may be largely attributed to the eyeballs becoming filled with blood and other fluids, from the acceleration of the circulation, consequent on the excitement of pleasure.

He remarks on the contrast in the appearance of the eyes of a hectic patient with a rapid circulation, and of a man suffering from cholera with almost all the fluids of his body drained from him.

Any cause which lowers the circulation deadens the eye.

I remember seeing a man utterly prostrated by prolonged and severe exertion during a very hot day, and a bystander compared his eyes to those of a boiled codfish.

[12] C. Vogt, `Memoire sur les Microcephales,’ 1867, p. 21.

[13] Sir C. Bell, `Anatomy of Expression,’ p. 133.

[14] `Mimik und Physiognomik,’ 1867, s. 63-67.

To return to the sounds produced during laughter. We can see in a vague manner how the utterance of sounds of some kind would naturally become associated with a pleasurable state of mind; for throughout a large part of the animal kingdom vocal or instrumental sounds are employed either as a call or as a charm by one sex for the other. They are also employed as the means for a joyful meeting between the parents and their offspring, and between the attached members of the same social community.

But why the sounds which man utters when he is pleased have the peculiar reiterated character of laughter we do not know.

Nevertheless we can see that they would naturally be as different as possible from the screams or cries of distress; and as in the production of the latter, the expirations are prolonged and continuous, with the inspirations short and interrupted, so it might perhaps have been expected with the sounds uttered from joy, that the expirations would have been short and broken with the inspirations prolonged; and this is the case.

It is an equally obscure point why the corners of the mouth are retracted and the upper lip raised during ordinary laughter.

The mouth must not be opened to its utmost extent, for when this occurs during a paroxysm of excessive laughter hardly any sound is emitted; or it changes its tone and seems to come from deep down in the throat.

The respiratory muscles, and even those of the limbs, are at the same time thrown into rapid vibratory movements.

The lower jaw often partakes of this movement, and this would tend to prevent the mouth from being widely opened.

But as a full volume of sound has to be poured forth, the orifice of the mouth must be large; and it is perhaps to gain this end that the corners are retracted and the upper lip raised.

Although we can hardly account for the shape of the mouth during laughter, which leads to wrinkles being formed beneath the eyes, nor for the peculiar reiterated sound of laughter, nor for the quivering of the jaws, nevertheless we may infer that all these effects are due to some common cause.

For they are all characteristic and expressive of a pleased state of mind in various kinds of monkeys.

A graduated series can be followed from violent to moderate laughter, to a broad smile, to a gentle smile, and to the expression of mere cheerfulness. During excessive laughter the whole body is often thrown backward and shakes, or is almost convulsed; the respiration is much disturbed; the head and face become gorged with blood, with the veins distended; and the orbicular muscles are spasmodically contracted in order to protect the eyes.

Tears are freely shed. Hence, as formerly remarked, it is scarcely possible to point out any difference between the tear-stained face of a person after a paroxysm of excessive laughter and after a bitter crying-fit.[15] It is probably due to the close similarity of the spasmodic movements caused by these widely different emotions that hysteric patients alternately cry and laugh with violence, and that young children sometimes pass suddenly from the one to the other state.

Mr. Swinhoe informs me that he has often seen the Chinese, when suffering from deep grief, burst out into hysterical fits of laughter.

[15] Sir T. Reynolds remarks (`Discourses,’ xii. p. 100), it is curious to observe, and it is certainly true, that the extremes of contrary passions are, with very little variation, expressed by the same action.”

He gives as an instance the frantic joy of a Bacchante and the grief of a Mary Magdalen.

I was anxious to know whether tears are freely shed during excessive laughter by most of the races of men, and I hear from my correspondents that this is the case. One instance was observed with the Hindoos, and they themselves said that it often occurred. So it is with the Chinese. The women of a wild tribe of Malays in the Malacca peninsula, sometimes shed tears when they laugh heartily, though this seldom occurs.

With the Dyaks of Borneo it must frequently be the case, at least with the women, for I hear from the Rajah C. Brooke that it is a common expression with them to say “we nearly made tears from laughter.”

The aborigines of Australia express their emotions freely, and they are described by my correspondents as jumping about and clapping their hands for joy, and as often roaring with laughter. No less than four observers have seen their eyes freely watering on such occasions; and in one instance the tears rolled down their cheeks. Mr. Bulmer, a missionary in a remote part of Victoria, remarks, “that they have a keen sense of the ridiculous; they are excellent mimics, and when one of them is able to imitate the peculiarities of some absent member of the tribe, it is very common to hear all in the camp convulsed with laughter.”

With Europeans hardly anything excites laughter so easily as mimicry; and it is rather curious to find the same fact with the savages of Australia, who constitute one of the most distinct races in the world.

In Southern Africa with two tribes of Kafirs, especially with the women, their eyes often fill with tears during laughter.

Gaika, the brother of the chief Sandilli, answers my query on this bead, with the words, “Yes, that is their common practice.”

Sir Andrew Smith has seen the painted face of a Hottentot woman all furrowed with tears after a fit of laughter.

In Northern Africa, with the Abyssinians, tears are secreted under the same circumstances. Lastly, in North America, the same fact has been observed in a remarkably savage and isolated tribe, but chiefly with the women; in another tribe it was observed only on a single occasion.

Excessive laughter, as before remarked, graduates into moderate laughter.

In this latter case the muscles round the eyes are much less contracted, and there is little or no frowning. Between a gentle laugh and a broad smile there is hardly any difference, excepting that in smiling no reiterated sound is uttered, though a single rather strong expiration, or slight noise—

a rudiment of a laugh—may often be heard at the commencement of a smile.

On a moderately smiling countenance the contraction of the upper orbicular muscles can still just be traced by a slight lowering of the eyebrows.

The contraction of the lower orbicular and palpebral muscles is much plainer, and is shown by the wrinkling of the lower eyelids and of the skin beneath them, together with a slight drawing up of the upper lip.

From the broadest smile we pass by the finest steps into the gentlest one.

In this latter case the features are moved in a much less degree, and much more slowly, and the mouth is kept closed. The curvature of the naso-labial furrow is also slightly different in the two cases.

We thus see that no abrupt line of demarcation can be drawn between the movement of the features during the most violent laughter and a very faint smile.[16]

A smile, therefore, may be said to be the first stage in the development of a laugh. But a different and more probable view may be suggested; namely, that the habit of uttering load reiterated sounds from a sense of pleasure, first led to the retraction of the corners of the mouth and of the upper lip, and to the contraction of the orbicular muscles; and that now, through association and long-continued habit, the same muscles are brought into slight play whenever any cause excites in us a feeling which, if stronger, would have led to laughter; and the