The Artist's Repository, Or, Encyclopedia of the Fine Arts (Band 1): The Human Figure (London, 1808)

lect. vii."] of expression.

169

LECTURE VII.

OF EXPRESSION.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The principles of expression must be drawn
from the operations of Nature, and Nature alone;
no reasonings a priori can avail us here, or discover
wherefore one part of the person is more affected by
certain sensations of the mind than another, or, why
that part is not differently affected from what it is.
That the various emotions of all parts of the person
are really the effects of mental affections is indubita-
ble, though we are ignorant of the manner in which
those affections act upon the various members of the
body, or by what secret springs these inert composi-
tions of clay are impelled by the energy of a spi-
ritual agent: but that they are so impelled is beyond
denial.

However various the opinions, or apprehensions,
of mankind may be on certain subjects, yet on others
they are perfectly correspondent, and similar; a sense
of the same wants, the same weaknesses, the same
desires, obtains among all men, when those wants,
weakue ses, and desires are natural. By this sym-
pathy mankind ^knowledge their mutual relation ;

Edit. 7. Z and