How to Read Human Nature: Its Inner States and Outer Forms — John Shaqi
How to Read Human Nature: Its Inner States and Outer FormsAtkinson, William Walker
Science
How to Read Human Nature: Its Inner States and Outer Forms
Atkinson, William Walker
Character; Personality; Phrenology; Physiognomy
Prof. Halleck says: "By inducing an expression we can often cause its
allied emotion.... Actors have frequently testified to the fact that
emotion will arise if they go through the appropriate muscular
movements. In talking to a character on the stage, if they clench the
fist and frown, they often find themselves becoming really angry; if
they start with counterfeit laughter, they find themselves growing
cheerful. A German professor says that he cannot walk with a
schoolgirl's mincing step and air without feeling frivolous."
Prof. Wm. James says: "Whistling to keep up courage is no mere figure of
speech. On the other hand, sit all day in a moping posture, sigh, and
reply to everything with a dismal voice, and your melancholy lingers. If
we wish to conquer undesirable emotional tendencies in ourselves, we
must assiduously, and in the first instance coldbloodedly, go through
the _outward movements_ of those contrary dispositions which we wish to
cultivate. Smooth the brow, brighten the eye, contract the dorsal rather
than the ventral aspect of the frame, and speak in a major key, pass the
genial compliment, and your heart must indeed be frigid if it does not
gradually thaw."
Dr. Wood Hutchinson, says: "To what extent muscular contractions
condition emotions, as Prof. James has suggested, may be easily tested
by a quaint and simple little experiment upon a group of the smallest
voluntary muscles of the body, those that move the eyeball. Choose some
time when you are sitting quietly in your room, free from all disturbing
influences. Then stand up, and assuming an easy position, cast the eyes
upward and hold them in that position for thirty seconds. Instantly and
involuntarily you will be conscious of a tendency toward reverential,
devotional, contemplative ideas and thoughts. Then turn the eyes
sideways, glancing directly to the right or to the left, through
half-closed lids. Within thirty seconds images of suspicion, of
uneasiness, or of dislike will rise unbidden to the mind. Turn the eyes
on one side and slightly downward, and suggestions of jealousy or
coquetry will be apt to spring unbidden. Direct your gaze downward
toward the floor, and you are likely to go off into a fit of reverie or
abstraction."
Prof. Maudsley says: "The specific muscular action is not merely an
exponent of passion, but truly an essential part of it. If we try while
the features are fixed in the expression of one passion to call up in
the mind a different one, we shall find it impossible to do so."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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