THE EMOTIOIsti. 475' 



An emotional temperament on the one haTid., and a 

 lively imagination for objects and circumstances on the other,, 

 are thus the conditions, necessary and sufficient, for an 

 abundant emotional life. No matter how emotional the- 

 temperament may be, if the imagination be poor, tlie oc- 

 casions for touchiug off the emotional trains will fail to be 

 realized, and the life will be pro tanto cold and dry. This 

 is perhaps a reason why it may be better that a man of 

 thought should not have too strong a visualizing power.. 

 He is less likely to have his trains of meditation disturbed 

 by emotional interruptions. It will be remembered that 

 Mr. Galton found the members of the Royal Society and of 

 the French Academy of Sciences to be below par in visual- 

 izing power. If I may speak of myself, I am far less able 

 to visualize now, at the age of 46, than in my earlier years ; 

 and I am strongly inclined to believe that the relative slug- 

 gishness of my emotional life at present is quite as much 

 connected with this fact as it is with the invading torpor of 

 hoary eld, or with the omnibus-horse routine of settled pro- 

 fessional and domestic life. I say this because I occasion- 

 ally have a flash of the old stronger visual imagery, and I 

 notice that the emotional commentary, so to call it, is then 

 liable to become much more acute than is its present wont. 

 Charcot's patient, whose case is given above on p. 58 ff.^ 

 complained of his incapacity for emotional feeling after his. 

 optical images were gone. His mother's death, which in 

 former times would have wrung his heart, left him quite> 

 cold ; largely, as he himself suggests, because he could formi 

 no definite visual image of the event, and of the effect of 

 the loss on the rest of the family at home. 



One final generality about the emotions remains to be 

 noted : They blunt themselves by repetition more rapidly than 

 any other sort of feeling. This is due not only to the gen- 

 eral law of ' accommodation ' to their stimulus which we 

 saw to obtain of all feelings whatever, but to the peculiar 

 fact that the ' diffusive wave ' of reflex effects tends always^ 

 to become more narrow. It seems as if it were essentially- 

 meant to be a provisional arrangement, on the basis of 

 which precise and determinate reactions might arise. The 

 more we exercise ourselves at anything, the fewer muscles. 



