The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals the issues at play, writing: "The force of language is much aided by the expressive movements of the face and body" - hinting at a neurological intimacy of language with psychomotor function (body language),and underscoring the social value of expression. Darwin's Sources on Emotional Expression: Darwin had listened to a discussion about emotional expression at the Plinian Society in December 1826 when he was a medical student at Edinburgh University. This had been prompted by the publication of Sir Charles Bell's "Anatomy and Philosophy of Expression"; and in his presentation, the phrenologist William A.F. Browne (in a spirited account of
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