limited motion: the eye is almost uniformly mild, and the lips are
unmoved by passion.
It is in the carnivorous animals, with whose habits and manner
of life ferocity is instinctively connected, as the great means of their
subsistence, that rage is distinguished by the most remarkable
strength of expression. The eyeball is terrible, and the retraction
of the flesh of the lips indicates the most savage fury. The excitement
of the respiratory organs, the heaving and agony of breathing,
the deep and harsh motion of the air drawn through the throat in
the savage growl, indicate the universal excitement of the animal.
It is quite wrong to imagine that the whole of this is a mere preparatory
exposure of the canine teeth. I believe brutes to have
expression, properly so called, as well as man, though in a more
limited degree. In them, however, the expression is so moulded
to their natures and their necessities, that, on a superficial consideration,
it seems accessory to their needful and voluntary actions.
But if expression in them were a mere voluntary act, and the snarl
of the carnivorous animal a mere uncasing of the fangs, like the
unsheathing of the sword, then would the expression be perfect as
long as the voluntary power remained in the muscles. Yet this is
not the case.
The horse is universally considered a noble animal, as he
possesses the expression of courage without the ferociousness of
the beast of prey; and as there is expression in his eye and nostril,
accompanied by that consent between the motions of the ear and
the eye, which so much resembles the exertion of mind, and the
movements of the human countenance. But even this more
perfect expression is the result of an incidental consent of animal
motions, and is no more a proof of peculiar intelligence than the
diminutive eye and the unexpressive face of the elephant. We
admire it because there is as much animation as in the tiger,
without the ferocity. The consent of motions between the eye and
the ear of the horse is a physical consequence of the necessities of
the animal. His defence lies in the hind feet, and there is a peculiar
provision both in the form of the skull, and in the muscles,
for that retroverted direction of the eye, which seems so peculiarly
expressive in the horse, but which is merely intended to guide the
blow: and from the connexion of muscles, the ear must consent in
its motion with this expression of the eye. The fleshiness of the
lips, and of the nostrils of a horse, and the inflation of the nostril,
are merely incidental to the peculiar provisions for the animal’s
respiration, and to the necessary motions of the lips, suited to the
habits of his life.
In man we see united not only all the capacities for expression,
and all the incidental and necessary effects of the several motions of
features, which are to be found in the several classes of quadrupeds,
but we find besides, several peculiar muscles, to which no other
office can be assigned, than to act as organs of expression; to serve
as instruments of that universal language which has been called