LAURA BRIDGEMAN. 5 



it remains forever almost exclusively emotional ; in some rare cases it ap- 

 proaches the character of language. 



All emotion excites the nervous system, or consists in an excitement of the 

 nervous system, which, so long as we remain in the body, is linked to the mind 

 by such mysterious laws. This excitement becomes apparent by a variety of 

 phenomena. A person in joyful surprize before a Correggio, exclaims "Ah !" 

 and quickly brings both hands together : an irritable person says, " Come here, 

 I say," rapping the table in quick succession, beating repeatedly the floor with 

 his foot, and knitting his brows with the contraction of impatience : a frightened 

 dog runs howling away, and drops the ears and tail ; or, however lazily he may 

 be lying on the ground, he slightly moves the tip of the tail at hearing his mas- 

 ter's footsteps : an orator winds up by saying, " But the people will suffer it no 

 longer," opening wide his eyes, shaking his lifted right hand, moving his head 

 with an inclination of his whole person, and pronouncing his words slowly, sol- 

 emnly, and in a deep tone : a hungry cat, sitting by the table, utters plaintive 

 sounds, and looks steadily at the child who is in the habit of feeding it, moving 

 one of the forepaws, as if in the act of grasping something. All these respec- 

 tive signs which accompany the utterances, and the utterances themselves, are 

 phenomena arising in each case from one and the same cause. I would call 

 them, therefore, symphenomena — a legitimate word, it seems, both in point of 

 etymology and meaning. Our accent, our intonation, our gestures, the shrug- 

 ging of the shoulders, the opening wide or half shutting of the eyes, the curling 

 of the lip, the pointing involuntarily at objects, the rubbing the head in cases 

 of perplexity, the accompanying our words by depictive signs, laughing, blush- 

 ing, smiling, w^eeping, moaning, with hundreds of other phenomena, are symphe- 

 nomena of the idea or emotion prevailing at the time within us, and affecting 

 the brain and nervous system. I would call, then, symphasis the manifestation 

 of two or more phenomena conjointly produced by the same cause. 



It will appear at once how important the whole subject of symphany is, when 

 we consider that that which is originally the pure symphenomenon of an emo- 

 tion, becomes, in the beholder, who cannot know of the emotion by direct com- 

 munion from mind to mind, a sign^ indicating or conveying the emotion from 

 the original sentient to his fellow-creature. Crying, wringing the hands, and 

 uttering plaintive sounds, are the spontaneous symphenomena of despair. He 

 in whom they appear does not intentionally produce them. He, however, who 

 beholds them, knows them, because they are spontaneous, and because he is 

 endowed with the same nature and organization ; and thus they become signs 

 of despair. Henceforth rational beings may intentionally produce them, when 

 they desire to convey the idea of despair. There is no invention in this case ; 

 no conventional agreement upon an arbitrary sign ; but there is, nevertheless, a 

 development of a sign by rational beings out of that which they, at first, pro- 

 duced involuntarily as sentient creatures. The latter man has in common with 

 the brute. The animal world is full of symphenomena. The first, however — the 

 transformation of the symphenomenon into an intentional sign — belongs to the 



