458 PSYCHOLOOT. 



Imagine two steel knife-blades with their keen edges 

 crossing each other at right angles, and moving to and fro. 

 Our whole nervous organization is ' on-edge ' at the thought ; 

 ind yet what emotion can be there except the unpleasant 

 dervous feeling itself, or the dread that more of it may come ? 

 The entire fund and capital of the emotion here is the 

 senseless bodily effect which the blades immediately arouse. 

 This case is typical of a class : where an ideal emotion 

 seems to precede the bodily symptoms, it is often nothing 

 but an anticipation of the symptoms themselves. One who 

 has already fainted at the sight of blood may witness the 

 preparations for a surgical operation with uncontrollable 

 heart-sinking and anxietj-. He anticipates certain feelings, 

 and the anticipation precipitates their arrival. In cases of 

 morbid terror the subjects often confess that what possesses 

 them seems, more than anything, to be fear of the fear itself. 

 In the various forms of what Professor Bain calls ' tender 

 emotion,' although the appropriate object must usually be 

 lirectly contemplated before the emotion can be aroused, 

 yet sometimes thinking of the symptoms of the emotion 

 itself may have the same effect. In sentimental natures 

 the thought of 'yearning' will produce real 'j'earning.' 

 And, not to speak of coarser examples, a mother's imagi- 

 nation of the caresses she bestows on her child may arouse 

 a spasm of parental longing. 



Jn such cases as these we see plainly how the emotion 

 both begins and ends with what we call its effects or mani- 

 festations. It has no mental status except as either the 

 vivid feeliug of the manifestations, or the idea of them ; 

 an:l the latter thus constitute its entire material, and sum 

 and substance. And tliese cases ought to make us see 

 how in all cases the feeling of the manifestations may play 

 a much deeper part in the constitution of the emotion than 

 we are wont to suppose. 



The best proof that the immediate cause of emotion is 

 a physical effect on the nerves is furnished by those patko- 

 logical cases in ivhich the emotion is objectless. One of the 

 chief merits, in fact, of the view which I propose seems 

 to be that we can so easily formulate by its means patho- 



