Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/161

136 afresh long after the sense of the ridiculous has passed away, so that to begin laughing may mean total exhaustion before he can stop.

Imitation rests at least in part upon this tendency. An act is performed, we witness it, we see or know how it is done, we conceive the effort that would lead to the performance of it, and forthwith this conception becomes the performance. We imitate the gesture of the actor or of the story-teller before us, and we feel an inner imitation of many acts, even though we suppress the outward signs. In general, for us to realize an act means that we shall do it, either in outward fact, or through a nascent performance that is not outwardly visible. Much of the recently so-called “mind-reading,” more accurately named by some psychologists “muscle-reading,” rests upon this foundation. For the conception of acts that are not outwardly performed is often indicated by slight motions or tensions of arm or of fingers, or of the whole body, and the muscle-reader, getting some close contact with his subject, amuses a company by interpreting these unseen, but readily felt signs of the thoughts of his subject. Very deeply do such facts enter into the structure of our mental life. Mr. Galton, investigating word-associations, found in many cases that the idea immediately aroused by a word was a sort of dramatic reproduction of the act expressed by the word. This dramatic reproduction consisted, at least in part, in the feeling of effort in those muscles that would be concerned in performing the act itself. If the momentary association first aroused by the sudden and unexpected sight of the