With some sects, both past and present, religion and love have been strangely combined; and it has even been maintained, lamentable as the fact may be, that the holy kiss of love differs but little from that which a man bestows on a woman, or a woman on a man. Devotion is chiefly expressed by the face being directed toward the heavens, with the eyeballs upturned. Sir C. Bell remarks that, at the approach of sleep, or of a fainting-fit, or of death, the pupils are drawn upward and inward; and he believes that “when we are rapt in devotional feelings, and outward impressions are unheeded, the eyes are raised by an action neither taught nor acquired”; and that this is due to the same cause as in the above cases. That the eyes are upturned during sleep is, as I hear from Professor Donders, certain. With babies, while sucking their mother’s breast, this movement of the eyeballs often gives to them an absurd appearance of ecstatic delight; and here it may be clearly perceived that a struggle is going on against the position naturally assumed during sleep. But Sir C. Bell’s explanation of the fact, which rests on the assumption that certain muscles are more under the control of the will than others, is, as I hear from Professor Donders, incorrect. As the eyes are often turned up in prayer, without the mind being so much absorbed in thought as to approach to the unconsciousness of sleep, the movement is probably a conventional one--the result of the common belief that Heaven, the source of Divine power to which we pray, is seated above us. A humble kneeling posture, with the hands upturned and palms joined, appears to us, from long habit, a gesture so appropriate to devotion, that it might be thought to be innate; but I have not met with any evidence to this effect with the various extra-European races of mankind. During the classical period of Roman history it does not appear, as I hear from an excellent classic, that the hands were thus joined during prayer. Mr. Hensleigh Wedgwood has apparently given the true explanation, though this implies that the attitude is one of slavish subjection. “When the suppliant kneels and holds up his hands with the palms joined, he represents a captive who proves the completeness of his submission by offering up his hands to be bound by the victor. It is the pictorial representation of the Latin _dare manus_, to signify submission.” Hence it is not probable that either the uplifting of the eyes or the joining of the open hands, under the influence of devotional feelings, is an innate or a truly expressive action; and this could hardly have been expected, for it is very doubtful whether feelings such as we should now rank as devotional affected the hearts of men while they remained during past ages in an uncivilized condition. FROWNING. [Expression of the Emotions, page 225.]