BLUSHING is the most peculiar and the most human of all expressions.
Monkeys redden from passion, but it would require an overwhelming
amount of evidence to make us believe that any animal could blush.
The reddening of the face from a blush is due to the relaxation
of the muscular coats of the small arteries, by which the capillaries
become filled with blood; and this depends on the proper vaso-motor
centre being affected. No doubt if there be at the same time much
mental agitation, the general circulation will be affected; but it is
not due to the action of the heart that the network of minute vessels
covering the face becomes under a sense of shame gorged with blood.
We can cause laughing by tickling the skin, weeping or frowning by a blow,
trembling from the fear of pain, and so forth; but we cannot cause
a blush, as Dr. Burgess remarks,[1] by any physical means,--that is
by any action on the body. It is the mind which must be affected.
Blushing is not only involuntary; but the wish to restrain it,
by leading to self-attention actually increases the tendency.
[1] `The Physiology or Mechanism of Blushing,' 1839, p. 156.
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