But, within the limits in which it can be verified, experience corroborates rather than disproves the corollary from our theory, upon which the present objection rests.Every one knows how panic is increased by flight, and how the giving way to the symptoms of grief or anger increases those passions themselves.Each fit of sobbing makes the sorrow more acute, and calls forth another fit stronger still, until at last repose only ensues with lassitude and with the apparent exhaustion of the machinery.In rage, it is notorious how we 'work ourselves up' to a climax by repeated outbreaks of expression.Refuse to express a passion, and it dies.Count ten before venting your anger, and its occasion seems ridiculous.Whistling to keep up courage is no mere figure of speech.On the other hand, sit all day in a moping posture, sigh, and reply to everything with a dismal voice, and your melancholy lingers.There is no more valuable precept in moral education than this, as all who have experience know: if we wish to conquer undesirable emotional tendencies in ourselves, we must assiduously, and in the first instance cold-bloodedly, go through the outward movements of those contrary dispositions which we prefer to cultivate.The reward of persistency will infallibly come, in the fading out of the sullenness or depression, and the advent of real cheerfulness and kindliness in their stead.Smooth the brow, brighten the eye, contract the dorsal rather than the ventral aspect of the frame, and speak in a major key, pass the genial compliment, and your heart must be frigid indeed if it do not gradually thaw!
This is recognized by all psychologists, only they fail to see its full import.Professor Bain writes, for example:
"We find that a feeble wave...is suspended inwardly by being arrested outwardly; the currents of the brain and the agitation of the centres die away if the external vent is resisted at every point.
It is by such restraint that we are in the habit of suppressing pity, anger, fear, pride -- on many trifling occasions.If so, it is a fact that the suppression of the actual movements has a tendency to suppress the nervous currents that incite them, so that the external quiescence is followed by the internal.The effect would not happen in any case if there were not some dependence of the cerebral wave upon the free outward vent or manifestation....By the same interposition we may summon up a dormant feeling.By acting out the external manifestations, we gradually infect the nerves leading to them, and finally waken up the diffusive current by a sort of action ab extra....Thus it is that we are sometimes able to assume a cheerful tone of mind by forcing a hilarious expression.
We have a mass of other testimony of similar effect.Burke, in his treatise on the Sublime and Beautiful, writes as follows of the physiognomist Campanella:
"This man, it seems, had not only made very accurate observations on human faces, but was very expert in mimicking such as were in any way remarkable.
When he had a mind to penetrate into the inclinations of those lie had to deal with, he composed his face, his gesture, and his whole body, as nearly as he could, into the exact similitude of the person he intended to examine; and then carefully observed what turn of mind he seemed to acquire by the change.So that, says my author, he was able to enter into the dispositions and thoughts of people as effectually as if he had been changed into the very men.I have often observed that, on mimicking the looks and gestures of angry, or placid, or frightened, or daring men, I have involuntarily found my mind turned to that passion whose appearance I strove to imitate; nay, I am convinced it is hard to avoid it, though one strove to separate the passion from its corresponding gestures."
Against this it is to be said that many actors who perfectly mimic the outward appearances of emotion in face, gait, and voice declare that they feel no emotion at all.Others, however, according to Mr.Wm.Archer, who has made a very instructive statistical inquiry among them, say that the emotion of the part masters them whenever they play it well. Thus:
"I often turn pale,' writes Miss Isabel Bateman, 'in scenes of terror or great excitement.I have been told this many times, and I can feel myself getting very cold and shivering and pale in thrilling situations.' 'When I am playing rage or terror,' writes Mr.Lionel Brough, 'I believe I do turn pale.My mouth gets dry, my tongue cleaves to my palate.In Bob Acres, for instance (in the last act), I have to continually moisten my mouth, or I shall become inarticulate.I have to "swallow the lump,"
as I call it.' All artists who have had much experience of emotional parts are absolutely unanimous....'Playing with the brain,' says Miss Alma Murray, 'is far less fatiguing than playing with the heart.An adventuress taxes the physique far less than a sympathetic heroine.Muscular exertion has comparatively little to do with it.'...'Emotion while acting,'
writes Mr.Howe, 'will induce perspiration much more than physical exertion.
I always perspired profusely while acting Joseph Surface, which requires little or no exertion.'...'I suffer from fatigue,' writes Mr.Forbes Robertson, 'in proportion to the amount of emotion I may have been called upon to go through, and not from physical exertion.'...'Though I have played Othello,' writes Mr.Coleman, 'ever since I was seventeen (at nineteen I had the honor of acting the Moor to Macready's Iago), husband my resources as I may, this is the one part, the part of parts, which always leaves me physically prostrate.I have never been able to find a pigment that would stay on my face, though I have tried every preparation in existence.
Even the titanic Edwin Forrest told me that he was always knocked over in Othello, and I have heard Charles Kean, Phelps, Brooke, Dillion, say the same thing.On the other hand, I have frequently acted Richard III.
without turning a hair.'"
