774 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



cause the whistling of the bullet has a significance to him. He knows, 

 without having thought long about it, that it is death passing by him. 

 And before he has performed any conscious reasoning concerning the 

 effects of a whistling bullet, the association of ideas has worked in his 

 mind and determined his sudden movement. 



If, while an athlete was performing his exercises on the trapeze, 

 one of the cords should break, the host of spectators would be over- 

 come by great emotion. Some of the women would turn away sick, 

 and others would scream ; and the bravest would shiver and turn pale. 

 These phenomena are certainly involuntary and reflexive ; but they 

 could not exist without some intelligent comprehension of what has 

 taken place. The breaking of a cord is not an excitant of reflex 

 actions, and, if there were no man's life in the case, the crowd would 

 not feel them. 



The lower animals are not susceptible of having psychical reflex 

 emotions, only simple ones ; for they have no knowledge, and no judg- 

 ment respecting the nature of the. exciting cause. Many of man's re- 

 flex acts are of similar character, as the flow of tears, the reddening, 

 and the vigorous winking when one gets a speck in his eye. Nearly 

 all the psychical reflex acts have as their starting point an excitation 

 of the senses. Such excitations can not of themselves be competent 

 to provoke an organic reflex movement ; but, if they are comprehended 

 by an intelligence, and are accompanied by a notion of the exterior 

 phenomenon, they can then determine a reflex act which is the con- 

 sequence of that notion. 



Thus, fear, as a psychical reflex emotion, results doubly : first, in a 

 phenomenon of consciousness, or the fright felt by the me ; and, sec- 

 ond, in a series of characteristic reflex motive phenomena. The whole 

 central nervous system is disturbed, and the disturbance is communi- 

 cated to all the motive and glandular apparatus : to the heart, whose 

 beatings are arrested or accelerated ; to the muscles, which vibrate ; 

 to the salivary glands, which cease to produce saliva ; to the intestines, 

 which contract with force ; to the vessels of the pallid face ; to the 

 sudoriferous glands ; to the dilating pupil ; and to the features, which 

 reflect the distress of the consciousness. 



M. Brown-Sequard has proved by numerous experiments that the 

 nervous system, when it has been subjected to an exterior stimulation, 

 may be excited or paralyzed. The emotions of fear are likewise either 

 stimulating or paralyzing, or inhibitory. Examples of both kinds of 

 effect are numerous. Thus, when a rabbit is overtaken by a dog, it 

 runs away immediately, the faster the more it is frightened. It will 

 leap over wide ditches, pass through almost impenetrable hedges, and 

 strike against objects it would ordinarily avoid, so much is its course 

 precipitated by fear. If the dog pursues it, it leaps and bounds here 

 and there, frightened out of its wits, but more agile and fleet in conse- 

 quence of its very terror. Another rabbit, under precisely similar 



