THE MMOTIOAS, 



457 



for the assumption that particular perceptions do produce 

 wide-spread bodily effects by a sort of immediate physical 

 influence, antecedent to the arousal of an emotion or emo- 

 tional idea. 



Reply. There is most assuredly such evidence. In 

 listening to poetry, drama, or heroic narrative we are often 

 surprised at the cutaneous shiver which like a sudden wave 

 flows over us, and at the heart-swelling and the lachrymal 

 efl"usion that unexpectedly catch us at intervals. In listen- 

 ing to music the same is even more strikingly true. If we 

 abruptly see a dark moving form in the woods, our heart 

 stops beating, and we catch our breath instantly and before 

 any articulate idea oi danger can arise. If our friend goes 

 near to the edge oi a precipice, we get the well-known feel^ 

 ing of ' all-overishness.' and we shrink back, although we 

 positively knoiu him to be safe, and have no distinct imagi- 

 nation of his fall. The writer well remembers his aston- 

 ishment, when a boj' of seven or eight, at fainting when he 

 saw a horse bled. The blood was in a bucket, with a stick 

 in it, and, if memory does not deceive him, he stirred 

 it round and saw it drip from the stick with no feeling 

 save that of cliildish curiosity. Suddenly the world grew 

 black before his eyes, his ears began to buzz, and he knew 

 r>o more. He had never heard of the sight of blood pro- 

 ducing faintness or sickness, and he had so little repugnance 

 to it, and so little apprehension of any other sort of danger 

 from it, that even at that tender age, as he well remembers, 

 he could not help wondering how the mere physical pres- 

 ence of a pailful of crimson fluid could occasion in him 

 such formidable l^odily effects. 



Professor Lange writes: 



" No one has ever thought of separating the emotion produced by 

 an unusually loud sound from the true inward affections. No one 

 hesitates to call it a sort of fright, and it shows the ordinary signs of 

 fright. And yet it is by no means combined with the idea of danger, 

 or in any way occasioned by associations, memories, or other mental 

 processes. The phenomena of fright follow the noise immediately with- 

 out a trace of ' spiritual ' fear. Many men can never grow used to 

 standing beside a cannon when it is fired off, although they perfectly 

 know that there is danger neither for themselves nor for others — the 

 bare sound is too much for them." * 



* Od. cit. p. 63. 



