We raise our
eyebrows when we wish to see quickly all round us, and we often
do the same, when we earnestly desire to remember something;
acting as if we endeavoured to see it.
[5] `De la Physionomie,' pp. 15, 144, 146. Mr. Herbert Spencer
accounts for frowning exclusively by the habit of contracting
the brows as a shade to the eyes in a bright light:
see `Principles of Physiology,' 2nd edit. 1872, p. 546.
_Abstraction. Meditation_.--When a person is lost in thought
with his mind absent, or, as it is sometimes said, "when he is
in a brown study," he does not frown, but his eyes appear vacant.
The lower eyelids are generally raised and wrinkled, in the same manner
as when a short-sighted person tries to distinguish a distant object;
and the upper orbicular muscles are at the same time slightly contracted.
The wrinkling of the lower eyelids under these circumstances has been
observed with some savages, as by Mr. Dyson Lacy with the Australians
of Queensland, and several times by Mr. Geach with the Malays of the
interior of Malacca. What the meaning or cause of this action may be,
cannot at present be explained; but here we have another instance
of movement round the eyes in relation to the state of the mind.
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