THE RHYTHM OF MOTION. 275 



each melody. And then we have, further, the alternation 

 of piano and forte passages. That these several kinds of 

 rhythm, characterizing aesthetic expression, are not, in the 

 common sense of the word, artificial, but are intenser forms 

 of an undulatory movement habitually generated by feeling 

 in its bodily discharge, is shown by the fact that they are all 

 traceable in ordinary speech ; which in every sentence has its 

 primary and secondary emphases, and its cadence contain- 

 ing a chief rise and fall complicated with subordinate rises 

 and falls; and which is accompanied by a more or less 

 oscillatory action of the limbs when the emotion is 

 great. Still longer undulations may be observed by 



every one, in himself and in others, on occasions of extreme 

 pleasure or extreme pain. Note, in the first place, that pain 

 having its origin in bodily disorder, is nearly always percep- 

 tibly rhythmical. During hours in which it never actually 

 ceases, it has its variations of intensity — fits or paroxysms; 

 and then after these hours of suffering there usually come 

 hours of comparative ease. Moral pain has the like smaller 

 and larger waves. One possessed by intense grief does not 

 utter continuous moans, or shed tears with an equable rapid- 

 ity; but these signs of passion come in recurring bursts. 

 Then after a time during which such stronger and weaker 

 waves of emotion alternate, there comes a calm — a time of 

 comparative deadness; to which again succeeds another in- 

 terval, when dull sorrow rises afresh into acute anguish, 

 with its series of paroxysms. Similarly in great delight, es- 

 pecially as manifested by children who have its display less 

 under control, there are visible variations in the intensity of 

 feeling shown — fits of laughter and dancing about, sepa- 

 rated by pauses in which smiles, and other slight manifesta- 

 tions of pleasure, suffice to discharge the lessened excite- 

 ment. Nor are there wanting evidences of mental 

 undulations greater in length than any of these — undula- 

 tions which take weeks, or months, or years, to complete 

 themselves. We continually hear of moods which recur 



