Therefore it seems to me that an innate feeling must have told
him that the pretended crying of his nurse expressed grief;
and this through the instinct of sympathy excited grief in him.
[2] `La Physionomie et la Parole,' 1865, pp. 103, 118.
[3] Rengger, `Naturgeschichte der Saugethiere von Paraguay,' 1830, s. 55.
M. Lemoine argues that, if man possessed an innate knowledge
of expression, authors and artists would not have found it
so difficult, as is notoriously the case, to describe and depict
the characteristic signs of each particular state of mind.
But this does not seem to me a valid argument.
We may actually behold the expression changing in an unmistakable
manner in a man or animal, and yet be quite unable, as I
know from experience, to analyse the nature of the change.
In the two photographs given by Duchenne of the same old man
(Plate III. figs. 5 and 6), almost every one recognized
that the one represented a true, and the other a false smile;
but I have found it very difficult to decide in what the whole
amount of difference consists. It has often struck me as a
curious fact that so many shades of expression are instantly
recognized without any conscious process of analysis on our part.
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