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An essay by Alice Meynell |
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Expression |
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Title: Expression Author: Alice Meynell [More Titles by Meynell] Strange to say, the eyes of children, whose minds are so small, express intelligence better than do the greater number of adult eyes. David Garrick's were evidently unpreoccupied, like theirs. The look of intelligence is outward--frankly directed upon external things; it is observant, and therefore mobile without inner restlessness. For restless eyes are the least observant of all--they move by a kind of distraction. The looks of observant eyes, moving with the living things they keep in sight, have many pauses as well as flights. This is the action of intelligence, whereas the eyes of intellect are detained or darkened. Rational perception, with all its phases of humour, are best expressed by a child, who has few second thoughts to divide the image of his momentary feeling. His simplicity adds much to the manifestation of his intelligence. The child is the last and lowest of rational creatures, for in him the "rational soul" closes its long downward flight with the bright final revelation. He has also the chief beauty of the irrational soul of the mind, that is, of the lower animal--which is singleness. The simplicity, the integrity, the one thing at a time, of a good animal's eyes is a great beauty, and is apt to cause us to exaggerate our sense of their expressiveness. An animal's eyes, at their best, are very slightly expressive; languor or alertness, the quick expectation, even the aloofness of doubt they are able to show, but the showing is mechanical; the human sentiment of the spectator adds the rest. All this simplicity the child has, at moments, with the divisions and delicacies of the rational soul, also. His looks express the first, the last, and the clearest humanity. He is the first by his youth and the last by his lowliness. He is the beginning and the result of the creation of man. [The end] GO TO TOP OF SCREEN |