ACTION-LANGUAGE CULTURE AND EXPRESSION. CHAPTER I. EXPRESSION BY ACTION. UNDER the good English term of Action, will be discussed the language of Attitude, Gesture, and Facial expression. It is desirable in the first place to understand how the body becomes expressive of states of the mind. Sir Charles Bell has shown how intimately the vital organs, the heart and lungs especially, are united to each other, and to the muscles of the neck, face, and chest by a system of nerves. He has also shown how they are affected by the emotions of the mind. "Thus the frame of the body, constituted for the support of the vital functions, becomes the instrument of expression; and an extensive class of passions, by influencing the heart, by affecting that sensibility which governs the muscles of respiration, calls them into operation, so that they become an undeviating mark of certain states or conditions of the mind. They are the organs of expression." Darwin, after an extensive study, treats the subject in his volume on the "Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals,” and deduces three principles, which are valuable to students of expression, as showing the uniformity of the language of expression, and the importance of habit as a factor in the subject when practised as an art. They are as follows: I. Serviceable, habitual action. Certain actions are originated because of their serviceableness. "Whenever the same state of mind is induced, however feebly, there is a tendency, through the force of habit and association, for the same movements to be performed, whether or not of service in each particular case." II. Antithetic action. Certain acts are serviceable. "Now, when a directly opposite state of mind is induced, there is a strong and involuntary tendency to the performance of movements of a directly opposite nature, though these are of no use; and such movements are in some cases highly expressive." III. Constitution of the nervous system, independently from the will, and to a certain extent independent of habit, as trembling, loss of color, etc. In addition to the above principles, which account for a large class of emotional expressions, there is a limited class of expressions purely volitional, and less emotional. They may be classified as follows: (1.) Descriptive, as in representing the course of the rising or setting sun, or as in suggesting height, length, etc. (2.) Location, as in indicating the place or position of any object. Past action is also frequently reproduced. Eschines said of The Oratorical Value of Action. Demosthenes, that when asked for the prime requisite in oratory, he replied, "Action," when asked for the second, he replied, "Action;" and for the third, "Action."* The "action" of Demosthenes may have included the particulars and sum of man's whole activities; but it seems quite probable that it was a strong way to express an important oratorical truth. Though dispensable to some degree, yet a perfect orator cannot be imagined without action. If a man feels the truth he attempts to express, he must and will have some actions of face and gesture. We have occasionally seen speakers quite without action, and they have always been as insipid as "expressionless" people. The language of action and form primarily reveals the heart, or inner states, of the man. A life of sin inevitably * Cicero de Orat., c. 56. |