The same thing is true about blushing.[78] It consists in a sort of transitory crippling of those nerves that end in the walls of small arteries. This causes the relaxation of the muscle-fibers of the blood vessels which are consequently filled in a greater degree with blood. Blushing also may be voluntarily created by some individuals. In that case the chest is fully expanded, the glottis is closed and the muscles of expiration are contracted. But this matter again has no particular value for us since the simulation of a blush is at most of use only when a woman wants to appear quite modest and moral. But for that effect artificial blushing does not help, since it requires such intense effort as to be immediately noticeable. Blushing by means of external assistance, e.g., inhaling certain chemicals, is a thing hardly anybody will want to perform before the court. With regard to guilt or innocence, blushing offers no evidence whatever. There is a great troop of people who blush without any reason for feeling guilty. The most instructive thing in this matter is self-observation, and whoever recalls the cause of his own blushing will value the phenomenon lightly enough. I myself belonged, not only as a child, but also long after my student days, to those unfortunates who grow fire-red quite without reason; I needed only to hear of some shameful deed, of theft, robbery, murder, and I would get so red that a spectator might believe that I was one of the criminals. In my native city there was an old maid who had, I knew even as a boy, remained single because of unrequited love of my grandfather. She seemed to me a very poetical figure and once when her really magnificent ugliness was discussed, I took up her cause and declared her to be not so bad. My taste was laughed at, and since then, whenever this lady or the street she lives in or even her furs (she used to have pleasure in wearing costly furs) were spoken of, I would blush. And her age may be estimated from her calf-love. Now what has occurred to me, often painfully, happens to numbers of people, and it is hence inconceivable why forensic value is still frequently assigned to blushing. At the same time there are a few cases in which blushing may be important.