No one, I believe, can clearly describe a sullen or sly expression;
yet many observers are unanimous that these expressions can be
recognized in the various races of man. Almost everyone to whom I
showed Duchenne's photograph of the young man with oblique eyebrows
(Plate II. fig. 2) at once declared that it expressed grief
or some such feeling; yet probably not one of these persons,
or one out of a thousand persons, could beforehand have told anything
precise about the obliquity of the eyebrows with their inner
ends puckered, or about the rectangular furrows on the forehead.
So it is with many other expressions, of which I have had
practical experience in the trouble requisite in instructing
others what points to observe. If, then, great ignorance
of details does not prevent our recognizing with certainty
and promptitude various expressions, I do not see how this
ignorance can be advanced as an argument that our knowledge,
though vague and general, is not innate.
I have endeavoured to show in considerable detail that all the chief
expressions exhibited by man are the same throughout the world.
This fact is interesting, as it affords a new argument in favour of
the several races being descended from a single parent-stock, which must
have been almost completely human in structure, and to a large extent
in mind, before the period at which the races diverged from each other.
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