Note 86 — Chapter IX · THE EXTERNAL CONDITIONS OF EMOTION

Duchenne has the following curious passage:—"The Creator, not being obliged to study mechanical requirements, was able, according to His wisdom or (if I may be pardoned for using this form of expression) by a Divine fantasy, to put in action this or that muscle—a single one, or several at once, when it was His will that the signs of the passions, even the most evanescent, should be temporarily inscribed on the human countenance. This physiognomic language once created, it was sufficient, in order to render it universal and immutable, to give to every human being the instinctive faculty of always expressing his feelings by the contraction of the same muscles." Thus, for this writer, the question remains within the region of first causes. He has ascertained a relation of coexistence between a determinate emotion and certain movements of the muscles, but without seeking the reason and the natural explanation of this nexus. We know that certain philosophers hold the theory of the Divine institution of language; this is its equivalent, being a theory of a divinely instituted gesture-language.