The explanation for the discrepancy amongst actors is probably that which these quotations suggest.The visceral and organic part of the expression can be suppressed in some men, but not in others, and on this it is probable that the chief part of the felt emotion depends.
Coquelin and the other actors who are inwardly cold are probably able to affect the dissociation in a complete way.Prof.Sikorsky of Kieff has contributed an important article on the facial expression of the insane to the Neurologisches Centralblatt for 1887.Having practised facial mimicry himself a great deal, he says:
"When I contract my facial muscles in any mimetic combination, I
feel no emotional excitement , so that the mimicry is in the fullest sense of the word artificial, although quite irreproachable from the expressive point of view.''
We find, however, from the context that Prof.S.'s practice before the mirror has developed in him such a virtuosity in the control of his facial muscles that he can entirely disregard their natural association and contract them in any order of grouping, on either side of the face isolatedly, and each one alone.Probably in him the facial mimicry is an entirely restricted and localized thing, without sympathetic changes of any sort elsewhere.
Third Objection.Manifesting an emotion, so far from increasing it, makes it cease.Rage evaporates after a good outburst; it is pent-up emotions that "work like madness in the brain."
Reply.The objection fails to discriminate between what is felt during and what is felt after the manifestation.During the manifestation the emotion is always felt.In the normal course of things this, being the natural channel of discharge, exhausts the nerve-centres, and emotional calm ensues.But if tears or anger are simply suppressed, whilst the object of grief or rage remains unchanged before the mind, the current which would have invaded the normal channels turns into others, for it must find some outlet of escape.It may then work different and worse effects later on.Thus vengeful brooding may replace a burst of indignation;
a dry heat may consume the frame of one who fain would weep, or he may, as Dante says, turn to stone within; and then tears or a storming fit may bring a grateful relief.This is when the current is strong enough to strike into a pathological path when the normal one is dammed.When this is so, an immediate outpour may be best.But here, to quote Prof.Bain again:
"There is nothing more implied than the fact that an emotion may be too strong to be resisted, and me only waste our strength in the endeavor.
If we are really able to stem the torrent, there is no more reason for refraining from the attempt than in the case of weaker feelings.And undoubtedly the habitual control of the emotions is not to be attained without a systematic restraint, extended to weak and strong."
When we teach children to repress their emotional talk and display, it is not that they may feel more -- quite the reverse.It is that they may think more; for, to a certain extent, whatever currents are diverted from the regions below, must swell the activity of the thought-tracts of the brain.In apoplexies and other brain injuries we get the opposite condition -- an obstruction, namely, to the passage of currents among the thought-tracts, and with this an increased tendency of objects to start downward currents into the organs of the body.The consequence is tears, laughter, and temper-fits, on the most insignificant provocation, accompanying a proportional feebleness in logical thought and the power of volitional attention and decision, -- just the sort of thing from which we try to wean our child.It is true that we say of certain persons that "they would feel more if they expressed less." And in another class of persons the explosive energy with which passion manifests itself on critical occasions seems correlated with the way in which they bottle it up during the intervals.But these are only eccentric types of character, and within each type the law of the last paragraph prevails.The sentimentalist is so constructed that 'gushing' is his or her normal mode of expression.
Putting a stopper on the 'gush' will only to a limited extent cause more 'real' activities to take its place; in the main it will simply produce listlessness.On the other hand, the ponderous and bilious 'slumbering volcano,' let him repress the expression of his passions as he will, will find them expire if they get no vent at all; whilst if the rare occasions multiply which he deems worthy of their outbreak, he will find them grow in intensity as life proceeds.On the whole, I cannot see that this third objection carries any weight.
If our hypothesis is true, it makes us realize more deeply than ever how much our mental life is knit up with our corporeal frame, in the strictest sense of the term.Rapture, love, ambition, indignation, and pride, considered as feelings, are fruits of the same soil with the grossest bodily sensations of pleasure and of pain.But the reader will remember that we agreed at the outset to affirm this only of what we then called the 'coarser' emotions, and that those inward states of emotional sensibility which appeared devoid at first sight of bodily results should be left out of our account.We must now say a word or two about these latter feelings, the 'subtler' emotions, as we then agreed to call them. THE SUBTLER EMOTIONS.
