2 8o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



directly following a stimulus, whether this be one exciting bodily 

 pain, as a blow, or mental, as a shocking sight or piece of news 

 But, when we examine the mind of man in its highest development 

 we find in the highly-intellectual individual certain emotions, which 

 are clearly the feelings corresponding to the very complex ideas ac- 

 quired and organized by years of culture and training. We read of 

 the Ethical Emotion, or moral sense ; of the ^Esthetic Emotion ; of 

 other emotions arising out of the Intellect. But all these appear to 

 illustrate and to be illustrated by what I have said concerning the sim- 

 ple emotions. Here, instead of a single and simple idea-centre which, 

 when excited, at once responds in outward bodily movement, we have 

 an extremely complex chain of ideas. The training and preparation 

 of years, as well as previous organization, are required to bring about 

 in the brain that complex series of ideas which represents a knowledge 

 of the tine arts, and which is presupposed when we speak of experi- 

 encing aesthetic emotion. Instead of a single and lowly-endowed cen- 

 tre, such as we may find in children or animals, we have a coordinated 

 and complex chain of high centres, which, when excited, respond not 

 in immediate bodily movement accompanied by bodily feeling, but in 

 deliberate action, the result of reflection ; in intellectual, rather than 

 bodily movement. For the activity of thought must be due to a stim- 

 ulus applied to the intellectual centres, no less than the activity of 

 body : and not only the activity of thought, but action in thought, the 

 desire for action of body which would become action, did not some 

 other reflection intervene, must also be set down as an outcome of 

 nerve-force emitted by some centre or centres, which have been set in 

 motion by a stimulus. Repressed action, whether in thought alone, 

 or in the clinched hands and quivering lips of suppressed passion, 

 must be taken as an emission of force. The complex coordination of 

 ideas arrived at after years of study and experience, which causes the 

 connoisseur the keen delight experienced when he gazes at a rare 

 Rembrandt etching or a matchless coin, must include within itself the 

 feelings belonging to it. The uninitiated cannot feel the delight, be- 

 cause he possesses not the ideas. We cannot suppose that the feeling 

 resides in one part of the brain, and the ideas in another ; rather 

 would it appear that the stimulation of the ideas by the sight of the 

 object causes the feeling. The ideas exist in the brain as knowledge, 

 but when called into action we have the feeling of pleasure or pain 

 which is special and appropriate to such a group of ideas, in addition 

 to the knowledge and the ideas themselves. It may be said that 

 emotions are so varied that they must require a special organization ; 

 that the emotion of delight just named is something totally different 

 from such a feeling as self-denial. But we must remember that ideas 

 are formed in the educated mind into large and complex groups 

 associated ideas, as they are called and that these act as units, just 

 as groups of muscles always act together; and the association of the 



