| Show FACE AS AM INDEX Its Appearance during emotions BRAVE MEN THEN PALE in the presence of great dan ger the opinions of I 1 learned men that only cowards turn pale and tremble in the face of danger is one of the popular fallacies that unthinking people cling to with all the tenacity of ignorance by many persons the man who pales and trembles under great ex citar ont is called white livered what ever that may mean and is looked upon as a coward in fact there are but few people who do not hold that excessive pallor is one of the distinguishing marks of a mean dastardly spirit an egregious error this and one that should have been dispelled along with the belief in witches the divine right of kings and similar popular monstrosities well grounded in this belief a reporter of the san francisco chronicle set out to secure data on the subject from reliable sources do the brave turn pale of course they do said dr J F gibbon of that city to whom the inquiry was propounded and red too for that it then only the cowards who turn pale and tremble in the face of danger by no means said the doctor 1 I have saen the bravest men get as white as death when laboring under intense excitement I 1 have seen men calp tremble under the excitement caused by intense pain and they were men too who showed their braveness braven by refusing to to put under the influence of an an aesthetic and who did not utter a single cry when the knife was inflicting the most excruciating tortures under the same circumstances I 1 have seen other men turn red the blood seeming to burst through their skin the truth is that the various expressions pres of emotions shown by men can not be made a guide as to his inner thoughts and feelings the only bilings these expressions do show is that the individual is undergoing intense excitement but whether of fear anger valor or pleasure can only be determined by the indi rations dr S B clevenger the famous writer on nervous diseases in a recent publication says is abe condition of the heart has much to do with these manifestations as has the irritability of the brain rage fright pleasure or pain or excessive emotion of any kind often produces pallor in persons healthy or unhealthy again these same emotions or any one of them may be habitually displayed by great redness or flushing of the face or as if to make matters steil more complex a person may pale at one time and blush at another from identically the same cause so extreme in some persons are these exhibitions of their emotions as to be positive sources of misery but neither the blushing nor the paling as a rule has any thing to do with the bravery or cowardice of the individual during the war I 1 remember the remarkable effect of a cannon ball passing within an inch of my colonels head while he was on horseback in the field his whole head and neck became as red as a boiled lobster As a broad rule it might be said that pallor is more apt to accompany intense emotion and blushing the milder emotion but there can be no cast iron rule in the matter As a rule I 1 have observed that men going into action for the first time usually exhibit great pallor on the other hand though I 1 have seen cowards shrink away from the fields in mortal terror with faces red as beets or without exhibiting any signs of emotion whatever As the soldier sees more service and becomes more used to the danger the bloodshed and carnage of the battlefield battle field these scenes arouse in him less intense emotions herbert spencer in his Principles of psychology sums up these emotional expressions as the undirected of nerve force while it is thus seen that psychologists and and men of scientific research arc agreed that the expressions pres of emotions do not manifest themselves the same way in the same individuals tho question as to the origin of these forms of expressions and their various causes has not been so definitely settled or so clearly defined nei in the discussion of this subject charles darwin the great evolutionist gives some very interesting data in his expressions of emotions in man and animals he says the most striking case though a rare and abnormal one which can be adduced of the direct influence of the nervous system when strongly affected on the body is the loss of color in the hair which has occasionally been observed after extreme terror or grief one authentic case has been recorded in the case of a man brought out for execution in which the change of color of the hair was so rapid as to be perceptible to the eye another good case is that of the trembling of the muscles of all emotions fear notoriously is the most apt to produce trembling but so do often great joy and anger I 1 remember once seeing a boy who had shot his first snipe on the wing and his hands trembled a degree from delight that he could not for some time reload his crun |
