In a similar way there is significance in the sudden closing of the
mouth by either the accused or the witness. Resolution and the shutting
of the mouth are inseparable; it is as impossible to imagine a
vacillating, doubting person with lips closely pressed together, as a
firm and resolute person with open mouth. The reason implies Darwin’s
first law: that of purposeful associated habits. When a man firmly
resolves upon some deed the resolution begins immediately to express
itself in movements which are closely dependent upon bodily actions.
Even when I suddenly resolve to face some correctly-supposed
disagreeable matter, or to think about some joyless thing, a bodily
movement, and indeed quite an energetic one, will ensue upon the
resolution--I may push my chair back, raise my elbows, perhaps put my
head quickly between my hands, push the chair back again, and then begin
to look or to think. Such actions, however, require comparatively little
bodily exertion; much more follows on different types of resolutions--in
short, a firm resolution requires a series of movements immediately to
follow its being made. And if we are to move the muscles must be
contracted. And it is, of course, obvious that only those muscles can be
set in action which are, according to the immediate situation of the
body, free to move. If we are sitting down, for example, we can not
easily make our feet conform to the movement of a march forward; nor can
we do much with the thighs, hence the only muscles we can use are those
of the face and of the upper limbs. So then, the mouth is closed because
its muscles are contracted, and with equal significance the arms are
thrust outward sharply, the fist clenched, and the forearm bent. Anybody
may try the experiment for himself by going through the actions
enumerated and seeing whether he does not become filled with a sense of
resolution. It is to be especially observed, as has already been
indicated, that not only are mental states succeeded by external
movements, but imitated external movements of any kind awaken, or at
least plainly suggest, their correlated mental states.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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