第153章
It must be confessed that there are cases of morbid fear in which objectively the heart is not much perturbed.These, however, fail to prove anything against our theory, for it is of course possible that the cortical centres normally percipient of dread as a complex of cardiac and other organic sensations due to real bodily change, should become primarily excited in brain-disease, and give rise to an hallucination of the changes being there.-- an hallucination of dread, consequently, coexistent with a comparatively calm pulse, etc.I say it is possible, for I am ignorant of observations which might test the fact.Trance, ecstasy, etc., offer analogous examples, -- not to speak of ordinary dreaming.Under all these conditions one may have the liveliest subjective feelings, either of eye or ear, or of the more visceral and emotional sort, as a result of pure nerve-central activity, and yet, as I believe, with complete peripheral repose.
R.M.Bucke: Man's Moral Nature (N.Y., 1879), p.97.
Lange, op.cit.p.61.
I am inclined to think that in some hysteriform conditions of grief, rage, etc., the visceral disturbances are less strong than those which go to outward expression.We have then a tremendous verbal display with a hollow inside.Whilst the bystanders are wrung with compassion, or pale with alarm, the subject all the while lets himself go, but feels his insincerity, and wonders how long he can keep up the performance.The attacks are often surprisingly sudden in their onset.The treatment here is to intimidate the patient by a stronger will.Take out your temper, if he takes out his -- ''Nay, if thou'lt mouth, I'll rant as well as thou.''
These are the cases of apparently great bodily manifestation with comparatively little real subjective emotion, which may be used to throw discredit on the theory advanced in the text.-- It is probable that the visceral manifestations in these cases are quite disproportionately slight, compared with those of the vocal organs.The subject's state is somewhat similar to that of an actor who does not feel his part.
Op.cit.p.72.-- Lange lays great stress on the neurotic drugs, as parts of his proof that influences of a physical nature upon the body are the first thing in order in the production of emotions.
Emotions and Will, pp.361-2.
Quoted by Dugald Stewart, Elements, etc.(Hamilton's ed.), III.140.Fechner (Vorschule der Aesthetik,156) says almost the same thing of himself: "One may find by one's own observation that the imitation of the bodily expression of a mental condition makes us understand it much better than the merely looking on....When I walk behind some one whom I do not know, and imitate as accurately as possible his gait and carriage, I get the most curious impression of feeling as the person himself must feel.To go tripping and mincing after the fashion of a young woman puts one, so to speak, in a feminine mood of mind."
'The Anatomy of Acting,' in Longman's Magazine, vol.XI.pp.266, 375, 498 (1888), since republished in book form.
P.394.
P.496.
Even the feelings of the lower senses may have this secondary escort, due to the arousing of associational trains which reverberate.A flavor may fairly shake us by the ghosts of 'banquet halls deserted,' which it suddenly calls up; or a smell may make us feel almost sick with the waft it brings over our memory of 'gardens that are ruins, and pleasure-houses that are dust.' "In the Pyrenees," says M.Guyau, "after a summer-day's tramp carried to the extreme of fatigue, I met a shepherd and asked him for some milk.He went to fetch from his hut, under which a brook ran, a jar of milk plunged in the water and kept at a coldness which was almost icy.In drinking this fresh milk into which all the mountain had put its perfume, and of which each savory swallow seemed to give new life, I certainly experienced a series of feelings which the word agreeable is insufficient to designate.It was like a pastoral symphony, apprehended by the taste instead of by the ear" (quoted by F.
Paulhan from 'Les Problèmes de l'Æsthétique Contemporaine, p.63).-- Compare the dithyrambic about whiskey of Col.R.Ingersoll, to which the presidential campaign of 1888 gave such notoriety: "I send you some of the most wonderful whiskey that ever drove the skeleton from a feast or painted landscapes in the brain of man.It is the mingled souls of wheat and corn.In it you will find the sunshine and shadow that chase each other over the billowy fields, the breath of June, the carol of the lark, the dews of the night, the wealth of summer, and autumn's rich content -- all golden with imprisoned light.Drink it, and you will hear the voice of men and maidens singing the 'Harvest Home,' mingled with the laughter of children.Drink it, and you wilt feel within your blood the star-lit dawns, the dreamy, tawny dusks of many perfect days.For forty years this liquid joy has been within the happy staves of oak, longing to touch the lips of man." -- It is in this way that I should reply to Mr.Gurney's criticism on my theory.My "view," this writer says (Mind, IX.425), "goes far to confound the two things which in my opinion it is the prime necessity of musical psychology to distinguish -- the effect chiefly sensuous of mere streams or masses of finely colored sound, and the distinctive musical emotion to which the form of a sequence of sound, its melodic and harmonic individuality, even realized in complete silence, is the vital and essential object.It is with the former of these two very different things that the physical reactions, the stirring of the hair -- the tingling and the shiver -- are by far most markedly connected....If I may speak of myself, there is plenty of music from which I have received as much emotion in silent representation as when presented by the finest orchestra;