772 Dynamic Theory. 



these memories than in others; and in this respect the organs range all 

 the way from comparative indifference, to a condition in which the 

 memory is a register of personal incidents, or relationships, of such a 

 violently inharmonious and unhappy nature, that their recollection pro- 

 duces extreme nervous agitation and painful excitement. Between 

 these two extremes there are the organs whose recollections furnish the 

 the stimulations for the great majority of our actions. These recollec- 

 tions are for the most part satisfactory and pleasurable in various de- 

 grees, and the stimulations arising from them keep in operation the or- 

 dinary activities of life. Any of the organs, even those ordinarily 

 giving pleasurable recollections, ma} r be stimulated to a painful degree 

 by sudden and violent agitations. We sometimes hear of a person 

 being killed by a sudden joy; as when a mother, plunged into the deep- 

 est grief by the supposed violent death of a son, is suddenly allowed to 

 see him alive and well. We may' suppose that the incoming stimulus, 

 which in its relations to many of the organs would be harmonious and 

 productive of joy, is in relation to the one registering the unhappy 

 memory radically and violently antagonistical, and therefore tends to its 

 rupture and disintegration. This, if done slowly, would do no harm, 

 and would give rise to pleasurable sensations, but performed with a vio- 

 lent suddenness it causes a lesion of cerebral or nervous tissue or of 

 blood vessels, or shocks the heart by an excessive and fatal nervous 

 stimulation. The converse is also true, in which the already differenti- 

 ated organ of pleasurable memories is suddenly antagonized by an in- 

 coming stimulus of a diametrically opposite sort. Antagonistical or- 

 gans of the most radical sort, may be and often are, introduced by a 

 gradual process in which a later so far subverts a former, that its re- 

 actions no longer produce a vivid sensation But when such antagon- 

 isms are too sudden and violent, mischief is apt to result. 



Almost every person has one or more organs of grievous memory 

 which time and diversion of attention may soften and obscure, 

 but which cannot be entirely obliterated or buried. Whenever a 

 new sensory stimulation is of a nature to connect itself with one of 

 these, it fastens attention upon it and revives the painful memory. 

 There are some people whose lives have been so full of bitter griefs, 

 disappointments and reverses, that they are liable to be unpleasantly re- 

 minded and depressed by a great many sorts of stimulations, often even 

 those which usually give joy and satisfaction to people in good health. 

 These organs of painful memories may become so abnormally erethised 

 and excited that their influence upon the life and cerebral actions are 

 morbidly excessive and dominating, and the subject of them becomes 

 emotionally unsound. Those pursuits called purely intellectual, arc 

 always connected with our personality by sensations of satisfaction, 



