Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 1.djvu/291

Rh to children, how they display emotion in a similar manner, how they instantaneously respond to a stimulus, whether it call forth joy, anger, or grief. Then there is the uneducated and unenlightened pauper of many an agricultural district of our own land, and there is the idiot, and the insane, whose self-feeling is predominant, whose whole life is centred in self, as much as is the child's. If after these we consider adult and educated man, we shall see that his sensations, feelings, and emotions, each mental state, in fact, which is called up in his brain, may be, and for the most part are, attended with muscular movement voluntary or involuntary, indicating the pleasure or pain which accompanies the mental stimulation. The amount of movement will often be the measure of the amount of force extricated and emitted from the centre on the application of a stimulus.

The first thing we notice is that most of the emotions of man are the same in kind as those of children, or even the inferior animals, the same in kind, though varying in complexity and specialty, according to the infinite variety of the acquirements of the human brain. The emotion of admiration, awe, and wonder, which fills our breast on seeing some marvellous spectacle or hearing some great news, what is it but the wonder which we see depicted in the animal when it sees for the first time something entirely novel and strange? I once saw a leveret meet face to face a young dog in a covert. Probably neither had previously encountered such an object. They stood for a moment transfixed with surprise; this, changing in the hare to fear, caused it to turn and fly; the dog, not quite so timorous, pursued, his wonder being converted, by the leveret's flight, into the emotion of pursuit. The animal's emotions we recognize by its motions; we could not otherwise assert that it experienced emotions at all. Its brain, when stimulated, at once converts its force into motion. And, if we strictly analyze the feelings and emotions of man, we shall find that here also action or motion of some kind is almost invariably the concomitant of emotion—at any rate, when this is at all intense, or, as we rightly say, powerful. With regard to many of our feelings and emotions, this is at once apparent. If some sudden disaster occurs to a man, his countenance, probably his limbs, will denote his terror, grief, or anger. He is said to be devoid of feeling, if this be not the case. His mode of speech, his tone of voice, is affected by it, and he may be led into immediate and violent action, so involuntary that it may almost be called automatic. On the other hand, pleasant sights and news will produce corresponding traits in countenance and movements of limbs. The latter will be less marked than those set in motion by pain or grief, inasmuch as a pleasant stimulus will set up less violent action than one that is painful.

When we look at the simple emotions and feelings of man, we find him exactly on a par with the child or the animal. A violent stimulus produces at once violent, or at any rate manifest, action, facial or other. There is a conversion of nerve-force into muscular movement,