It is to be accounted for partly by the exhaustion of the nervous organism, to which I have so often referred as being the issue of excited feeling. This explains how the persons fall into a relaxed state after the period of agitation. But this cause would not hinder the return of the great sorrow again and again, after the prostration is over. In order to understand the process, we must take along with us two other laws. One is the natural shrinking from pain, and therefore from those overwhelming bursts which do so agitate and distract the mind. Then, secondly, the association of ideas calls in a number of other feelings tending to divert the mind. The very departed friend comes to be associated with ideas different from the loss, and these, if they do not remove the grief, tend to alleviate it, by mixing it with other emotions, so that the widow, who in the first instance could not speak of her departed husband without a burst of sorrow, can now talk of his kindness and of his virtues. In matters fitted to awaken feelings of shame, the person studiously banishes the humiliating thoughts as effectively as possible, and seeks, encourages, and cherishes ideas of a different kind, fitted to restore the self-esteem. It is astonishing how speedily persons with no very acute moral sense will outlive their deeds of dishonor, and mingle once more in society with the utmost self-complacency and assurance.

Let us look at the case of a man who has hitherto sustained a high business reputation becoming unexpectedly bankrupt, or of a woman hitherto of pure character committing an act which brings her into disgrace. At first the feeling of mortification is intense, and is rendered more so when there is a sense of guilt. The spirit is so wounded that it feels it cannot bear it (Prov. xviii. 14), and the torture must be got rid of at all hazards. There

are means of effecting this. Time brings along with it new avocations and new associations of ideas, and the painful occurrence is remembered as seldom as possible. Excuses will present themselves and be welcomed: there are others as bad as they are, there were palliating circumstances, or the acknowledged faults should be lost sight of amidst the many virtues which are possessed. Or the person may determine unblushingly to face the reproach and defy the world, and will find grounds for fighting with old friends, or with the community generally, and this may be persevered in till the spirit is cauterized by the searing process and becomes insensible. In the course of time new companionships will be formed, and lines of defense set up to stand the assaults of conscience In the end the guilty man or woman may walk unabashed through the world, mortified only on rare occasions, when the moral monitor is awakened for a brief space from its torpor, or when society bites with its scorpion stings.

CHAPTER IV.

FOURTH ELEMENT OR ASPECT: THE ORGANIC AFFECTION.

It is of importance to place the discussion as to the organic affection at this place rather than in an earlier chapter. The mental emotions are not the effect, they are rather the cause, of the bodily movements. Some physiologists write as if emotion were a sort of reflex act, like the sneezing which follows the tickling of the nostrils. This is a very apposite example of Bacon's idolum specus, in which the student of the nerves applies a law which he notices in his own province, to an entirely different class of phenomena. They speak as if, when a mother faints on hearing that her son has been drowned, that it is simply a reaction of the mind evoked by the intelligence from without. But the intelligence of the death as reaching the ear is merely the mean - Malebranche would call it the occasion of calling into action. the mental activity; the idea of the son as dead, and the disappointment of a deep and long cherished affection, these constitute the true cause of the bodily effects of the tremor and agitation. In all cases the emotion begins within, in an appetence or affection of some kind, and in the idea of something to favor or to thwart it. In many cases there is no external occasion to call it forth, as when the mother in the midst of the night awakes, thinks of her drowned son and weeps, or when a man sitting in his room suddenly recalls a past deed of folly.

I. There is a general law as to the soothing or irritating effects of emotion on the body. When the idea contemplates the good, that is, the appetible, both the psychical and the organic affections are pleasant, less or more. This is the case with contentment, cheerfulness, hope, and joy. On the other hand, when it regards what is supposed to be evil, the sensibility is to a less or greater extent disagreeable. It is so with anger, remorse, fear, and grief, under all their forms. Generally it may be held that a moderate degree of emotion is favorable to the health, both of mind and body. It should be observed, however, of all intense and vehement feeling, whether it be painful or pleasant when in a moderate degree, wearies and exhausts the frame and is apt to issue in listlessness and apathy. Our feelings are meant to be breezes to wait us along on the voyage of life, but we are ever to guard against allowing them to rise into gales and hurricanes, to overwhelm us in depths from which we cannot be extricated. By the causes now indicated we can account for the reaction which commonly succeeds a period of high excitement, whether among individuals or communities—the tide has run its course and the ebb sets in. It has not been so frequently observed, though it is equally true, that among persons of life and spirit there is apt, after a period of lassitude, to be a reawakening, and a craving for enterprise which searches for a channel in which to flow, and will find an outlet. The hungry lion will not more certainly go forth in search of prey than the man who has any force of character will, after a period of relaxation, be impelled to set out on new activities.

Hygiene takes advantage of this law, and will profit by it more and more as science advances. The physician should, in the first place, seek to put and keep in a

healthy state those organs of the body whose derangement affects the mind, such as the heart, which tends to make us excitable, the stomach, which produces irritation, and the liver, which inclines to melancholy. This may often be done by appropriate medicines. In healing these organs we soothe the temper and prevent the rise of other diseases. When children are cross-tempered the nurse gives them a dose of medicine. But secondly, and more especially, the physician should endeavor to raise those feelings which give stimulus to the frame, such as hope, which casts sunshine on the landscape and stirs up motives which lead to exertion and activity; and take all pains to remove those affections which tend to depress and to sink the soul into inactivity.

II. While we cannot at present specify scientifically the influence exercised on the body by the various kinds of emotion, we can enumerate a few laws, chiefly of an empirical character, full of interest and importance.

The emotions through the nerves act particularly on the heart and lungs, and thence on the organs of breathing, the nerves of which spread over the face, which may thus reveal the play of feeling. Every sudden emotion quickens the action of the heart and consequently the respiration, which may produce involuntary motions. If our organs of respiration and circulation had been different our expression would also have been different. "Dr. Beaumont had the opportunity of experimenting for many months on a person whose stomach was exposed to inspection by accident, and he states that mental emotion invariably produced indigestion and disease of the lining membrane of the stomach--a sufficient demonstration of the direct manner in which the mind may disorder the blood."1 Certain emotions, such as

1 Moore on The Power of the Soul over the Body, p. iii. ch. viii.