INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.
SOME ACCOUNT OF THE NERVES, AS A FOUNDATION FOR THE STUDY
OF EXPRESSION.
T h e changes of the human countenance which accompany the
exercise of the mind, afford at once the most familiar and the most
interesting subject of study. But although we be continually and
deeply conversant with those outward signs of emotion, we are
scarcely conscious of the exertion, until by inquiry into their cause
we try to recover our first impressions and to reason on them.
How is it to be accounted for, that a subject more familiar to us
than our mother tongue, and without which existence to most
people would be indifferent and unprofitable, has not been brought
into some relation with philosophy ? In the author’s opinion, it is
to be attributed to a neglect of that close connexion which is established
betwixt the operations of the mind and of the body, and
to a very mistaken notion which has prevailed, that every thing
interesting in anatomy has long since been discovered—that after
the structure of animal bodies has been studied for so long a time,