E S S A Y II.
ON THE SOURCES OF EXPRESSION IN THE HUMAN COUNTENANCE,
WHICH CANNOT BE EX PLA IN ED ON THE ID EA OF A DIRECT
IN FLU EN C E OF THE MIND UPON THE FEATURES.
In the human countenance, under the influence of passion, there
are characters expressed, and changes of features produced, which
it is impossible to explain on the notion of a direct operation of the
mind upon the features. Ignorance of the source of these changes
of the features, or inattention to the cause which produces them,
has thrown an obscurity over the whole of this subject, which it is
my purpose in the present essay to remove, before advancing to a
description of the characters of passion, as indicated in the face and
in the body.
If, in the examination of the sources of expression, it should be
found that the mind is dependent on the frame of the body, the
discovery ought not to be considered as humiliating, or such as
should affect the belief of the capacity for a separate existence of
that principle on which the changes wrought in the body are