307 



the defects of theobject of his hatred, and sees crimes in his slightest 

 faults. 



The affections of the soul, or the passions, whether they come by the 

 sense, or some disposition of the vital organs favour their birth and 

 growth, may be ranged in two classes, according to their effects on their 

 economy. Some heighten organic activity ; such are joy, courage, hope, 

 and love; whilst others slacken the motions of life, as fear, grief, and 

 hatred. And others there are, that produce the two effects alternately, 

 or together. So ambition, anger, despair, pity, assuming, like the other 

 passions, an infinite variety of shades, according to the intensity of their 

 causes, individual constitution, age, sex, &c. at times increase, at times 

 abate, depress or exalt the vital action, and exalt or depress the power of 

 the organs. 



The instances which establish the powerful influence of the passions on 

 the animal economy are too frequent to need reciting. Writers, in every 

 department furnish such as show that excess of pleasure, like excess of 

 pain, joy too lively or too sudden, as grief too deep and too unexpected, 

 may bring on the most fatul accidents and even death. Without collect- 

 ing in' this place* all the observations of the sort with which books swarm, 

 I shall content myself with referring to those who have brought together 

 the greatest number of facts under one point of view; as Haller, in his 

 Physiology; Tissot, in his Treatise on Diseases of the Nerves; Lecamus, 

 in his work on Diseases of the Mind; Bonnefoy, in a paper on the Pas- 

 sions of the Soul; inserted in the fifth volume of the Collection of Prizes, 

 adjudged by the Academy of Surgery. 



The effects of the passions are not, for their uniformity, the less inex- 

 plicable. How, and why does anger give rise to madness, to suppres- 

 sion of urine, to sudden death ? How does fear determine paralysis, con- 

 vulsions, epilepsy, 8cc. ? Why does excessive joy, a sense of pleasure 

 carried to extremity, produce effects as fatal as sad and afflicting impres- 

 sions? In what way can violence of laughter lead to death ? Excess of 

 laughter killed the painter Zeuxis and the philosopher Chrysippus, ac- 

 cording to the relation of Pliny. The conversion of the reformed of the 

 Cevennes, under Louis XIV. was effected by binding them on a bench, 

 and tickling the soles of their feet, till overpowered by this torture, they 

 abjured their creed : many died in the convulsions and immoderate 

 laughterj which the tickling excited*. A hundred volumes would be in- 

 sufficient to detail all the effects of the passions on physical man ; how 

 many would it take to tell their history, in moral man, from their dark 

 origin, through all their stages of growth, in the infinite variety of their 

 characters* and in all their evanescent shades ! 



The inquiries of Physiology are directed to the functions that are car- 

 ried on in physical man, to the functions of life : the study of the nobler 

 parts of ourselves, of those wonderful faculties which place our kind 

 above all that have motion or life ; in a word the knowledge of moral and 

 intellectual man belongs to the science known by the name of metaphy- 



* This instance, however, does not illustrate the influence of the passions on the vital 

 functions. It showsmerely the effects of irritation of the extremities of nerves upon the 

 functions of other nerves either of the same, or of a different order, which effects are 

 either produced by a direct medium of communication with the nerves first affected, or 

 then by means 01' the nervous centres. Copland. 



