The far greater number of the movements of expression, and all
the more important ones, are, as we have seen, innate or inherited;
and such cannot be said to depend on the will of the individual.
Nevertheless, all those included under our first principle were at
first voluntarily performed for a definite object,--namely, to escape
some danger, to relieve some distress, or to gratify some desire.
For instance, there can hardly be a doubt that the animals which fight
with their teeth, have acquired the habit of drawing back their ears
closely to their heads, when feeling savage, from their progenitors
having voluntarily acted in this manner in order to protect their ears
from being torn by their antagonists; for those animals which do not
fight with their teeth do not thus express a savage state of mind.
We may infer as highly probable that we ourselves have acquired the habit
of contracting the muscles round the eyes, whilst crying gently,
that is, without the utterance of any loud sound, from our progenitors,
especially during infancy, having experienced, during the act of screaming,
an uncomfortable sensation in their eyeballs. Again, some highly
expressive movements result from the endeavour to cheek or prevent other
expressive movements; thus the obliquity of the eyebrows and the drawing
down of the corners of the mouth follow from the endeavour to prevent
a screaming-fit from coming on, or to cheek it after it has come on.
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