Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/754

736, or incident of any kind evokes, in different persons, a response that varies in intensity, celerity, and quality. An observer watching children, heart and soul at their games, would soon collect enough material to enable him to class them according to the quantity of emotion that they showed. I will not attempt to describe particular games of children or of others, nor to suggest experiments, more or less comic, that might be secretly made to elicit the manifestations we seek, as many such will occur to ingenious persons. They exist in abundance, and I feel sure that, if two or three experimenters were to act zealously and judiciously together as secret accomplices, they would soon collect abundant statistics of conduct. They would gradually simplify their test conditions and extend their scope, learning to probe character more quickly and from more of its sides.

It is a question by no means to be decided off-hand in the negative, whether instrumental measurements of the magnitude of the reflex signs of emotion in persons who desire to submit themselves to experiment are not feasible. The difficulty lies in the more limited range of tests that can be used when the freedom of movement is embarrassed by the necessary mechanism. The exciting cause of emotion, whatever it be, a fright, a suspense, a scold, an insult, a grief, must be believed to be genuine, or the tests would be worthless. It is not possible to sham emotion thoroughly. A good actor may move his audience as deeply as if they were witnessing a drama of real life, but the best actor can not put himself into the exact frame of mind of a real sufferer. If he did, the reflex and automatic signs of emotion excited in his frame would be so numerous and violent that they would shatter his constitution long before he had acted a dozen tragedies.

The reflex signs of emotion that are perhaps the most easily registered are the palpitations of the heart. They can not be shammed or repressed, and they are visible. Our poet-laureate has happily and artistically exemplified this. He tells us that Launcelot, returning to court after a long illness, through which he had been nursed by Elaine, sent to crave an audience of the jealous queen. The messenger utilizes the opportunity for observing her in the following ingenious way like a born scientist:

"Low drooping till he well-nigh kissed her feet For loyal awe, saw with a sidelong eye The shadow of a piece of pointed lace In the queen's shadow, vibrate on the wall, And parted, laughing in his courtly heart."

Physiological experimenters are not content to look at shadows on the wall, that depart and leave no mark. They obtain durable traces by the aid of appropriate instruments. Maret's pretty little pneumo-cardiograph is very portable, but not so sure in action as the more bulky apparatus. It is applied tightly to the chest in front of the heart, by a band passing round the body. At each to-and-fro