Darwin from Descent of Man to Emotions Darwin from Descent of Man to Emotions Between 1868 and 1872, the life and work of Charles Darwin from "Descent of Man" to "Emotions" continued with aspects of his intended "Big Book" on evolution through natural selection. He had by then hurriedly published an "abstract" of this work as "On the Origin of Species" in 1859, and following the immediate reaction to Darwin's theory his earlier work included demonstrating the utility of the flowers of Orchids in directing insect pollination to achieve cross fertilisation, and a summing up of thirteen years of experiments in "The Variation of Animals and Plants
The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals the actor Henry Siddons in his "Practical Illustrations of Rhetorical Gesture and Action" (1807) and by the anatomist Robert Knox in his "Manual of Artistic Anatomy" (1852) – but abandoned them as unreliable, although the text of "The Expression" is littered with quotations from Shakespeare. Darwin opens the book with three chapters on "the general principles of expression", introducing the rather Lamarckist phrase "serviceable associated habits". With this phrase, Darwin seeks to describe the initially voluntary actions which come together to constitute the complex expressions of emotion. He then invokes a principle of "antithesis", through which opposite states of mind