ments shift their relative
places, some forcing their way to the front, others being pushed to the
rear; and the prominent beacon-lights change correspondingly. Ancient
ones go out, new ones appear; and the art of portraiture, which is the
undying historian of the human countenance, is subject to this shifting
law of the birth and death of its material.

"Perhaps more ancient lights have died out of human faces than modern
lights have been kindled to replace them. Do you understand why? The
reason is this: throughout an immeasurable time the aim of nature was to
make the human countenance as complete an instrument of expression as it
could possibly be. Man, except for his gestures and wordless sounds, for
ages had nothing else with which to speak; he must speak with his face.
And thus the primitive face became the chronicle of what was going on
within him as well as of what had taken place without. It was his
earliest bulletin-board of intelligence. It was the first parchment to
bear tidings; it was the original newspaper; it was the rude, but vivid,
primeval book of the woods. The human face was all that. Ages more had
to pass before spoken language began, and still other ages before
written language began. Thus for an immeasurable time nature developed
the face and multiplied its expressions to enable man to make himself
understood. At last this development was checked; what we may call the
natural occupation of the face culminated. Civilization began, and as
soon as civilization began, the decline in natural expressiveness began
with it. Gradually civilization supplanted primeval needs; it contrived
other means for doing what the face alone had done frankly,
marvelously. When you can print news on paper, you may cease to print
news on the living countenance. Moreover, the aim of civilization is to
develop in us the consciousness not to express, but to suppress. Its aim
is not to reveal, but to conceal, thought and emotion; not to make the
countenance a beacon-light, but a muffler of the inner candle, whatever
that candle for the time may be. All our ruling passions, good or bad,
noble or ignoble, we now try publicly to hide. This is civilization. And
thus the face, having started out expressionless in nature, tends
through civilization to become expressionless again.

"How few faces does any one of us know that frankly radiate the great
passions and moods of human nature! What little is left of this ancient
tremendo