266 PSYCHOLOGY. 



by the mind, and are only noticed by those who are in the habit of 

 observing. 



When I had the spasm in my heart upon the smallest exertion of the 

 body, as in walking up a small ascent, or upon the least anxiety about 

 an event, such as bees swarming, yet I could tell a story that called np 

 the finer feelings, which I could not tell without crying, obliging me to 

 stop several times in the narration, yet the spasm did not in the least 

 take place [then]. Therefore those feelings of the mind we have for 

 other people are totally different operations of the mind from that anxiety 

 about events, whether of our own or of others ; because its effects on our 

 bodies are very different. 



Laughing and crying are two natural involuntary actions in or of the 

 body, both arising either from sensations of the body itself, or sensations 

 only of the mind. Laughing arises from sensations of the body, as from 

 tickling, and crying from that sensation called pain ; but such effects 

 are more common to the young than either the middle-aged or the 

 old. This arises from the mind becoming more accustomed to sensa- 

 tions of the body ; it is therefore less affected by them, excepting when 

 the mind gets into the habit of those actions, which habit may rather 

 increase than diminish them, as in spoiled children. The mind being 

 pleased, and in a peculiar manner, produces laughter, and the mind 

 being in distress, produces crying ; but the same cause in the mind shall 

 produce either or both, one following tbe other, as crying with joy. 

 However, joy may produce crying much sooner than sorrow produce 

 laughter, except when it runs into disease ; so far [these emotional 

 actions are] natural ; but we have this carried into disease of the mind, 

 but not of the body; we have either laughing or crying, called ' hysterics,' 

 which are diseased involuntary acts ; and the same cause shall produce 

 either nearly equally, and much sooner than in the natural state ; or 

 the one shall run into the other ; for instance, crying terminating in 

 laughing, or laughing terminating in ciying, which I believe is peculiar 

 to this diseased state. 



Joy and grief are, perhaps, the strongest affections of the mind, and 

 what the mind has the greatest facility to fall into. They arise from an 

 impression being made by some external object, or the mind sympa- 

 thizing with the state of mind in some other object. 



So far there is a visible and even reasonable cause, such as reason 

 agrees to, [for those affections, and they then] might be called voluntary. 



But the state of mind is often such as goes of its own accord into such 

 affections, having no object for their cause, so that the mind passes from 

 the one into the other almost instantaneously. These may, then, be 

 called involuntary ; the mind being as it is when some voluntary 



