The Face of God by Roger Scruton

Author:Roger Scruton
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: The Gifford Lectures 2010
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2011-01-19T16:00:00+00:00

Looks are voluntary. But the full revelation of the subject in the face is not, as a rule, voluntary. Milton’s observation, that ‘smiles from reason flow’, is fully compatible with the fact that smiles are usually involuntary, and ‘gift smiles’, as one might call them, always so. Likewise laughter, to be genuine, must be involuntary – even though laughter is something of which only creatures with intentions, reason, and self-consciousness are capable. Laughter is a topic in itself, and I must pass over it here.10 The important point is that, while smiling and laughing are movements of the mouth, the whole face is infused by them, so that the subject is revealed in them as ‘overcome’. The light grey eye of Isabel Archer, as Henry James describes her, ‘had an enchanting softness when she smiled’ – a softness that could be noticed only by the person who also saw the smile on her lips, and felt the change in her features as an involuntary outflow of pleasure.

Tears of merriment flow from the eyes, so too do tears of grief and pain. Hence tears are symbols of the spirit: it is as though something of me is lost with them. For this reason people have since ancient times felt the impulse to collect their tears in lachrymatories. Psalm 56, v. 8, laments to God ‘Thou tellest my wanderings, put Thou my tears in Thy bottle; are they not in Thy Book?’ Tears are like pains: they cannot be voluntary, even if you can do something else in order to produce them. Although there are actors and hypocrites who can produce tears at will, that does not make tears into intentional actions; it just means that there are ways of making the eyes water without producing ‘real tears’. But laughing and smiling can be willed, and when they are willed they have a ghoulish, threatening quality, as when someone laughs cynically, or hides behind a knowing smile. Voluntary laughter may also be a kind of spiritual armour, with which a person defends himself against a treacherous world.

Similar observations apply to blushes, which are more like tears than laughter in that they cannot be intended. What Milton says about smiles could equally be said of blushes. Blushes from reason flow, to brute denied, and are of love the food. Only a rational being can blush, even though nobody can blush voluntarily. Even if, by some trick, you are able to make the blood flow into the surface of your cheeks, this would not be blushing but a kind of deception. And it is the involuntary character of the blush that conveys its meaning. Mary’s blush upon meeting John, being involuntary, impresses him with the sense that he has summoned it – that it is in some sense his doing, just as her smile is his doing. Her blush is a fragment of her first person perspective, called up onto the surface of her being and made visible in her face. In our experience

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