THE FEELING OP EFFOET. 3^9 



That one set of ideas should compel the vascular, respiratory, and gesticulatory symp- 

 toms of shame, another those of anger, a third those of grief, a fourth those of laughter, 

 and a fifth those of sexual excitement, is a most singular fact of our organization, which 

 the labors of a Darwin have hardly even begun to throw light upon. Where such a pre- 

 arrangement of the nerve centres exists, the way to awaken the motor symptoms is to 

 awaken first the idea and then to dwell upon it. The thought of our enemy soon 

 brings with it the bodily ebullition, of our loss the tears, of our blunder the blush. We 

 even read of persons who can contract their pupils -voluntarily by steadily imagining a 

 brilliant light — that being the sensation to which the pupils normally respond. 



" It is possible to weep at will by trying to recall that peculiar feeling in the trigeminal 

 nerve which habitually precedes tears. Some can even succeed in sweating voluntarily, 

 by the lively recollection of the characteristic skin sensations, and the voluntary repro- 

 duction of an indescribable sort of feeling of relaxation, which ordinarily precedes the 

 flow of perspiration. Fuaally, it is well known how easily the thought of gustatory stim- 

 uli excites the activity of the salivary glands. This capacity to indirectly excite activi- 

 ties usually involuntary, is much more pronounced in certain diseases. Hypochondriacs 

 know well how easily the heart-beat may be made to alter, or even cramps of single mus- 

 cles, feelings of aura, and so forth, be brought about in this way, which no doubt in the 

 jeligious epidemics of the Middle Ages, led to the imitative spread of ecstatic convulsions, 

 from one person to another." ^ It sufl&ces to think steadily of the feeling of yawning, to 

 provoke the act in most persons ; and in every one in certain states, to imagine vomiting 

 is to vomit. 



The great play of individual idiosyncracy in all these matters, shows that the 

 following or not following of action upon representation is a matter of connections 

 among nervous centres, which connections may fluctuate widely in extent. The 

 ordinary " voluntary " act results in this way : First, some feeling produces a 

 movement in a reflex, or as we say, accidental way. The movement excites a sensorial 

 tract, causing a feeling which, whenever the sensorial tract functions again, revives as an 

 idea. Now the sensorial and motor tracts, thus associated in their actions, remain 

 associated forever afterwards, and as the motor originally aroused the sensory, so the 

 sensory may now arouse the motor (provided no outlying ideational tracts in connection 

 with it prevent it from so doing). Voluntary acts are in fact nothing but acts whose motor 

 centres are so constituted that they can be aroused by these sensorial centres, whose 

 excitement was originally their efiect. Acts, the "innervation of which pannot thus run 

 up its primal stream, are not voluntary. But the line of division runs differently in 

 different individuals. 



Now notice that in aU this, whether the act do follow or not upon the representation 

 is a matter quite immaterial so far as the willing of the act represented goes. I will to 

 write, and the act follows. I will to sneeze, and it does not. I will that the distant table 

 slide over the floor towards me ; it also does not. My willing representation can no 

 more instigate my sneezing centre, than it can instigate the table, to activity. But in 



1 Lotze, Medicinische Psychologie, p. 303. 



