FOOTNOTE:

[14] Pleasure and pain are always absolute sensations, but they may depend upon relative circumstances; that degree of cold, for example, does not incommode the inhabitant of Spitzbergen, which would be very painful to a man from a temperate climate. In order to understand how habit produces these effects, we must recollect that the repetition of the same sensations on the same part exhausts at length the sensibility of it. Hence we may conceive how the contact of a body upon a living surface may cease to be painful, while any division or solution of continuity of one of our organs will be always more or less so, because the nerves that are divided are unaccustomed to this sensation, and still possess their whole sensibility. The sense of sight furnishes us with a striking example of sensibility being exhausted by the continuation of the sensation; if we look for a long time with the same eye upon a white surface with a red spot in the middle of it, and then look upon a part that is all white, we shall perceive there a greenish spot; for the part of the retina which has been a long time in contact with the red rays, loses the peculiar sensibility that enables it to transmit this sensation perfectly; and of all the coloured rays which compose the white rays that now go to it, it transmits only those to which it is unacquainted; hence results the sensation of green.

[CHAPTER VI.]
GENERAL DIFFERENCES OF THE TWO LIVES WITH RESPECT TO MENTAL AFFECTION.

It is necessary to consider, under two relations, those acts, which little connected with the material organization of animals, are derived from this principle so little known in its nature, but so remarkable as to its effects, the centre of all their voluntary motions, and on the subject of which, there would have been less dispute, if philosophers, instead of attempting to reach its essence, had been contented with analyzing its operations. These actions, which we shall consider more especially in man, with whom they are the most perfect, are either purely intellectual, and relative to the understanding only; or they are the immediate product of the passions. Examined under the first point of view, they are the exclusive attribute of the animal, under the second of the organic life.

I. Whatever relates to the understanding belongs to the animal life.

It would be useless for me to insist on proving that meditation, reflection, the judgment, and all the operations of the mind depending upon an association of ideas are under the dominion of the animal life. We judge from impressions formerly or actually received, or from those which we ourselves create. Perception, memory, and the imagination are the principal bases, on which are founded the operations of the mind, but these very bases themselves repose upon the action of the senses.

Let us suppose a man at his birth to be deprived of all that exterior apparatus, which is destined to establish his connexions with surrounding objects; such man will not altogether be the statue of Condillac, because, as we shall see hereafter, other causes besides the sensations, may occasion within him the motions of the animal life; but at least will he not be able, a stranger as he is to every thing surrounding him, to form any judgment with respect to things. The intellectual functions with him will be null; volition, which is the consequence of these functions, will not have place, and consequently, that very extensive class of motions which has its immediate seat in the brain, and which itself is but an effect of the impressions made there, will in nowise belong to him.

It is by means of the animal life that man is so great, so superior to the beings, which surround him; by means of this that he possesses the sciences, the arts, and every thing which places him at a distance from the gross elements under which we represent brute matter; by this that he approaches spirituality; for industry and commerce, and whatever enlarges the narrow circle within which the efforts of other animals are confined, are exclusively under the dominion of the animal life of man.

The actual state of society then is nothing but a more regular development, a more marked perfection of the exercise of the different functions of this life; for one of its greatest characters as I shall hereafter prove, consists in its capability of being unfolded, while, in the organic life, there does not exist a part, which in the least degree may pass the limits which are set to it by nature. We live organically in as perfect, in as regular a way, when infants, as when men; but what is the animal life of the child compared with that of the man of thirty years of age?

We may conclude that the brain, the central organ of the animal life, is the centre of whatever relates to the understanding. I might here proceed to speak of its volume in man, and in animals, whose intelligence appears to decrease in proportion as the facial angle is diminished, and expatiate upon the different alterations of which the cerebral cavity is the seat, as well as on the disorders of the intellectual functions arising thence. But these things are all of them well enough understood. Let us pass to that order of phenomena, which though as foreign as the preceding to the ideas which we form of material appearances, are elsewhere seated.

II. Whatever relates to the passions belongs to the organic life.

My present object is not to consider the passions metaphysically. It little matters, whether they be all of them the modifications of a single passion, or dependent each of them upon a separate principle. We shall only remark, that many physicians in discussing their influence on the organic phenomena, have not sufficiently distinguished them from the sensations; the latter are the occasion of the passions, but differ from them widely.

It is true that anger, joy, and sorrow, would not affect us, were we not to find their causes in our connexions with external objects. It is true also, that the senses are the agents of these relations, that they communicate the causes of the passions, but in this they act as simple conductors only, and have nothing in common with the affections, which they produce; for sensation of every kind has its centre in the brain, sensation of every kind supposing impression and perception. If the action of the brain be suspended, sensation ceases; on the contrary, the brain is never affected by the passions; their seat is in the organs of the internal life.[15]

It is undoubtedly surprising that the passions, essentially as they enter into our relations with the beings which are placed about us, that modifying as they do at every moment these relations, that animating, enlarging, and exalting the phenomena of the animal life, which without them would be nothing but a cold series of intellectual movements; it is astonishing, I say, that the passions should neither have their end, nor beginning in the organs of this life, but on the contrary, that the parts which serve for the internal functions, should be constantly affected by them, and even occasion them according to the state in which they are found. Such notwithstanding is the result of the strictest observation.

I shall first observe, that the effect of every kind of passion is at all times to produce some change in the organic life. Anger accelerates the circulation of the blood, it multiplies the efforts of the heart. The passion of joy has not indeed so marked an influence upon the circulation, but alters it notwithstanding, and carries it lightly towards the skin. Terror acts inversely; this passion being characterized by a feebleness in the vascular system, a feebleness, which in hindering the blood from arriving at the capillary vessels, occasions the paleness which at such time is so particularly remarked. The effects of sadness and sorrow are nearly analogous.

So great indeed is the effect which the passions occasion upon the organs of the circulation, as even to arrest them altogether in their functions, where the affection is very powerful. In this way is syncope produced, for the primitive seat of syncope is always, as I shall soon prove it to be, in the heart, and not in the brain. In this the latter organ ceases to act, only because it ceases to receive the excitant necessary to its action. Hence also may happen death itself, the sometimes sudden effect of extreme emotion, whether such emotion as in anger so far exalts and exhausts the powers of the circulation, as not to leave them any further excitability, or whether as in the death occasioned by excessive grief, the powers at once excessively debilitated, are no longer capable of returning to their usual condition.

If the total and instantaneous cessation of the circulation be not occasioned by this debility, a variety of lesions in the blood vessels may be, notwithstanding, the effect of it. Desault has remarked that diseases of the heart, and aneurisms of the aorta, were augmented in number during the revolution, in proportion to the evils which it produced.

Nor does respiration depend less immediately upon the passions; that oppression, that anxiety, and sense of suffocation, which is the sudden effect of profound sorrow, must imply in the lungs a remarkable change and sudden alteration. In that very long series of chronic or acute affections, the sad attribute of the pulmonary system, must we not often look to the passions to find the principle of the disease?

And that lively sensation at the pylorus under strong emotion, that ineffaceable impression which sometimes remains there, from whence succeed the schirri of which it is the seat, that sentiment of stricture, as it were, about the stomach, about the cordia in particular; under other circumstances those spasmodic vomitings, which sometimes follow the loss of a beloved object, the news of a fatal accident, or any kind of trouble, the cause of which are the passions; that sudden interruption of the digestive phenomena either in consequence of agreeable or disagreeable news, those affections of the bowels, those organic lesions of the intestines, of the spleen observed in cases of melancholy, or hypochondria, diseases which are always preceded by sad forebodings and the darker affections of the mind; do not all these indicate the very strict connexion of the digestive viscera with the state of the passions?

They do; and the secreting organs have not a less connexion with them. Sudden fear suspends the course of the bile, and is the occasion of jaundice; sudden anger is often the origin of bilious fever. In a state of sorrow or joy, sometimes even in that of admiration, our tears flow abundantly: the pancreas is not less frequently affected in hypochondria.

But the functions of the circulation, of digestion, respiration and secretion, are those which are most directly under the influence of the passions; those of exhalation, absorption and nutrition appear to be less so. Doubtless, the reason of this is, that these functions have not as the former any principal focus, or essential viscera, the state of which may be compared with that of the mind. Their phenomena disseminated throughout all the organs belong exclusively to none, and cannot be observed as well as those, the effects of which are confined within a narrow compass.

Nevertheless, the alterations, which these functions experience are not less real, do not become less apparent after a certain time; let the man, whose hours are marked by sorrow, be compared with him, who lives in peace of mind, and the difference of the process of nutrition in the one and in the other will easily be seen.

Let us, for a moment, approximate the times, when the terrible passions of sorrow, of fear and revenge seemed to brood over our country, and those, when safety and abundance continually supplied us with the gayer ones so natural to us; we may then recall what at the two periods were the outward appearances of our countrymen, and appreciate the influence of the passions on the process of nutrition. The very expressions which are continually in our mouths that such a one is dried up with envy, preyed upon by remorse, consumed and wasted away with sorrow, do not even these announce how much the nutritive functions are modified by the passions?

I know not for what reason the powers of absorption and exhalation should not be subject to the same influence, though they appear to be less so; may not dropsies, and all infiltrations of the cellular membrane, the peculiar vices of these two functions, depend on mental affection?

In the midst of these disturbances, of these partial or general revolutions which are produced by the passions in the organic phenomena, let us consider the actions of the animal life; they constantly remain unaltered, or if they do experience any derangement, such derangement has ever its source in the internal functions.

From so many considerations we may conclude that it is upon the organic and not upon the animal life that the passions exercise their influence. Accordingly, whatever serves to paint them must relate to the former. Of this assertion, our gestures which are the mute expressions both of the sentiment and understanding are a remarkable proof. Thus if we indicate any operation of the memory, imagination or judgment, the hand is carried to the head; do we wish to express either love or hatred, or joy or sorrow, it is to the seat of the heart, the stomach or intestines, that it is then directed.

The actor, who should mistake in this respect, who in speaking of sorrow should refer his gestures to his head, or carry them to his heart, for the purpose of announcing an effort of genius, would be ridiculed for a reason which we should better feel than comprehend.

The very language of the vulgar, at a time when the learned referred to the brain, as the seat of the soul, affections of all kinds, distinguished the respective attributes of the two lives. We have always said a strong head, a head well organized to denote perfection of mind; a good heart, a sensible heart, to indicate proper feeling. The expressions of fury circulating in the veins, and stirring up the bile; of joy making the heart leap, of jealousy distilling its passions into the heart, are by no means poetical expressions, but the enunciation of that which actually takes place in nature. In this way do all these expressions, the language of the internal functions enter into our poetry, which in consequence is the language of the passions or the organic life, as ordinary speech, is that of the understanding or the animal life. Declamation holds a middle place between the two, and animates the cold language of the brain by the expressive language of the inward organs.

I shall even venture to assert that anger and love inoculate, if I may so express myself, into the humours, into the saliva particularly, a radical vice, which renders dangerous the bite of animals at such times; for these passions do really distil into the fluids a poison, as we indicate the fact by our common expressions. The violent passions of the nurse have frequently given her milk a pernicious quality, from whence disease has followed to the child; and in the same way shall we explain from the modifications which the blood of the mother receives under strong emotion, the manner, in which these emotions operate on the nutrition, the conformation, and even on the life of the fœtus. And not only do the passions essentially influence the organic functions, in affecting their respective viscera, but the state of these viscera, their lesions, the variation of their forces concur in a decided way to the production of the passions themselves. Their relations with age and temperament, establish incontestably this fact.

Who does not know for instance, that the individual of the sanguine temperament, whose expansion of lungs is great, whose circulatory system is large and strong; who does not know that such a man is possessed of a disposition to anger and violence? that when the bilious system prevails, the passions of envy and hatred are more particularly developed? that when the lymphatic system is pronounced, are pronounced also the inactivity and dulness of the individual?

In general that which characterises any particular temperament, consists in a correspondent modification on one hand of the passions, and on the other of the state of the organic viscera. The animal life is almost always a stranger to the attributes of the temperaments.

The same may be said of age; the weakness of the organization of the child coincides with his timidity. The development of the pulmonary and vascular system, with the courage and temerity of the youth; that of the liver, and the gastric system with the envy, ambition and intrigue of manhood.

In considering the passions as affected by climate and season, the same relations are observed between them and the organic functions; but physicians have sufficiently noticed these analogies, and it would be useless to repeat them.

At present, if from man in a state of health, we look to man in a state of disease, we shall see that the lesions of the liver, of the stomach, of the spleen, the intestines and heart produce a variety of alterations in our affections, which all of them cease together with their causes.

The ancients, better than our modern mechanicians, then were acquainted with the laws of the economy, in supposing that our bad affections were evacuated by purgatives, together with the noxious humours of the body. By disembarrassing the primæ viæ they got rid of these affections. In fact how dark a tint does the fulness of the gastric viscera cast upon the countenance! the errors of the first physicians on the subject of the atrabilis, were a proof of the precision of their observations on the connexion of these organs with the state of the mind.

In this way every thing tends to prove, that the organic life, is the term, in which the passions end, and the centre from whence they originate. But we shall be asked perhaps, why vegetables, which live organically, do not offer any vestige of them? the reason seems to be, that besides their want of the natural excitants of the passions, namely the external apparatus of the senses, they are wanting also in those internal organs, which concur most especially to their production, such as the digestive system, that of the general circulation, and that of the great secretions, which are remarked in animals.

Such are the reasons also why the passions are so obscure in the Zoophytes, in worms, &c. and why in proportion as the organic life becomes more simple in the series of animals, and loses its important viscera, the passions are less observable.

III. The passions modify the actions of the animal life though seated in the organic life.

Although the passions are the especial attributes of the organic life, they nevertheless exert an influence over the animal life, which it is necessary to examine. The muscles of volition are frequently brought into play, and their actions sometimes exalted, sometimes lowered by them; the strength for instance of the man in anger is doubled, and tripled; is exercised with an energy, of which he is not himself the master. The source of this augmented power is manifestly in the heart.

This organ, as I shall prove hereafter, is the natural excitant of the brain, by means of the blood, which it sends thither. The energy of the cerebral action is in proportion to the energy of the stimulus applied to it, and we have seen that the effect of anger is to impress a great vivacity upon the circulation; hence, a larger quantity of blood than usual is thrown upon the brain in a given time. The consequence is an effect analogous to that which happens in the paroxysm of ardent fever, or the immoderate use of wine.

It is then, that the brain being excited strongly, excites as strongly the muscles which are submitted to its influence; accordingly their motions must be involuntary, for the will is a stranger to those spasms, which are determined by a cause which irritates the medullary organ. Such cause may be a splinter of bone, blood, pus, the handle of a scalpel as in our experiments; in short of various kinds.

The analogy is exact, the blood being transmitted to the brain in greater quantity than usual, produces upon it the effect of the different excitants above mentioned. In these different motions then, the brain is passive; it engenders indeed at all times the necessary irradiations for producing such motions, but these irradiations in the present instance are not the effect of the will.

It may be observed also, that under the influence of anger, a constant relation exists between the contractions of the heart and the locomotive organs; they both increase at the same time, and at the same time resume their equilibrium. In every other case on the contrary there is no appearance of this relation; the action of the heart is uniformly the same, whatever the affection of the muscular system. In convulsion and palsy, the circulation is neither impeded nor accelerated.

In the passion of anger, in fact, we see the very mode of the influence, which the organic life exercises over the animal life. In the passion of fear also, where on the one hand the enfeebled heart directs a less quantity of blood, and consequently a smaller cause of excitement to the brain, and where on the other hand a debility may be observed in the external muscles, we may perceive the connexion of cause and effect. This passion offers in the first degree the phenomenon, which in the last degree is shewn by those lively emotions, which suspending altogether the efforts of the heart, occasion a sudden cessation of the animal life and syncope.

But in what way shall we account for those modifications of the motions of the animal life, which are the effect of the passions? In what way shall we explain the cause of those infinite varieties, which succeed each other in the moveable picture of the face?

All the muscles which are the agents of these motions receive their nerves from the brain and lie under the influence of the will. What is the reason then, that when acted on by the passions, they cease to do so, and enter under the class of those motions of the organic life, which are put forth without our direction or consciousness. The following if I mistake not is the best explanation of the fact.

The most numerous sympathies exist between the internal viscera, and the brain or its different parts. Every step which we make in practice presents us with affections of the brain originating sympathetically from those of the liver, stomach and intestines. Now as the effect of every kind of passion is to produce a change of power in one or the other of these viscera, such change will sympathetically excite either the whole of the brain or some of its parts, whose re-action upon the muscles, which receive from thence their nerves, will produce the motions, which are then observed. In the production of these motions the cerebral organ accordingly must be passive, it is active only when the will presides over its efforts.

The effects indeed of the passions are similar to those diseases of the internal organs, which by sympathy are the causes of atony, palsy, and spasm.

But perhaps the inward organs act upon the voluntary muscles, not by means of the immediate excitement of the brain, but by direct nervous communication. Of what importance to us is the manner? We are not at present occupied on the so much agitated question of the manner of sympathetic communication.

The essential thing is the fact itself. Now in this fact, there are two things evident; the affection of an internal organ by the passions, and secondly a motion produced in consequence of such affection in muscles, on which this organ in the common series of the phenomena of the two lives has no kind of influence. This is surely a sympathy, for between it, and those with which convulsion, or spasm of the face present us, when occasioned by any lesion of the phrenic centre, or the stomach, the difference is only in the cause, which affects the internal organ.

Any irritation of the uvula, or the pharynx convulsively agitates the diaphragm. The too frequently repeated use of fermented liquors occasions a general trembling of the body. But that which happens in one mode of gastric affection, may happen in another. What matters it, whether the stomach or liver be irritated by passion or by some material cause? It is from the affection, and not from the cause of the affection that results the sympathy.

Such in general is the manner in which the passions withdraw from the empire of the will, those motions which by nature are voluntary. Such is the manner in which they appropriate to themselves, if I may so express myself, the phenomena of the animal life, though they possess their seat essentially in the organic life.

When very strong, the very lively affection of the internal organs produces so impetuously the sympathetic motions of the muscles, that the action of the brain is absolutely null upon them; but the first impression past, the ordinary mode of locomotion returns.

A man is informed by letter and in presence of company, of a piece of news, which it is his interest to conceal. All on a sudden his brows become contracted, he grows pale, and his features are moulded according to the nature of the passion, which has been excited. These are sympathetic phenomena produced by the abdominal viscera which have been affected by the passions, and which in consequence belong to the organic life. But in a short time the man is capable of putting a constraint upon himself, his countenance clears up, his colour returns. Meanwhile the interior sentiment continues to subsist however, but the voluntary have overpowered the sympathetic motions, the action of the brain has surmounted that of the stomach or the liver; the animal life of the man has resumed its empire.

In almost all the passions the movements of the animal life are mingled with those of the organic life, or succeed to them; in almost all the passions, the muscular action is in part directed by the brain, in part by the organic viscera. The two centres alternately overpowered the one by the other, or remaining in a state of equilibrium, constitute by the modifications of their influence, those numerous varieties which are seen in our mental affections.

And not only on the brain, but on all the other parts of the body also do the viscera affected by the passions exercise their sympathetic influence. Fear affects the stomach in the first place, as is proved by the sense of stricture felt there at such time.[16] But when thus affected, the organ re-acts upon the skin, with which it has so strict a connexion, and the skin immediately becomes the seat of the cold and sudden sweat, which is then so often felt. This sweat is still however of the same nature with that which is occasioned by tea, or warm liquids. Thus a glass of cold water, or a current of cold air, will suppress this excretion by means of the relation, which exists between the skin, and the mucous surfaces of the stomach or bronchiæ. We must carefully distinguish between sympathetic sweating, and that, of which the cause is directly made upon the skin.

Hence though the brain be not the only term of the re-action of the internal viscera which are affected by the passions, it is nevertheless the principal one, and in this respect may always be considered as a focus at all times in opposition to that which is centered in the internal organs.

IV. Of the epigastric centre.—It does not exist in the sense, which Authors have pretended.

Authors have never been at variance with respect to the cerebral focus. The voluntary motions have ever been regarded as an effect of its irradiations. They do not equally agree upon the subject of the epigastric focus; some of them place it in the diaphragm, others in the pylorus, others in the plexus of the great sympathetic nerve.[17]

But on this point, they appear to me to be all of them in the wrong. They assimilate or rather identify the second with the first focus—they think, that the passions, as well as the sensations have their seat in an invariable centre. That, which has led them to this opinion has been the sentiment of oppression, which is felt at the cardia under all painful affection.

But it is to be remarked, that in the internal organs, the sentiment produced by the affection of a part is always an unfaithful index of the seat and extent of such affection. For example, hunger must undoubtedly affect the whole of the stomach, but the sensation of hunger is transmitted to us only by the cardia. A large inflamed surface in the pleura for the most part gives rise to a pain, which is felt only in a point. How often does it happen that in the head or the abdomen a pain which is referred but to a very limited space coincides with a largely disseminated affection, with an affection possessing even a different seat from that which is presumed. We should never consider the place to which we refer the sentiment as a sure index of that which the affection occupies, but only as a sign that it exists either there or thereabouts.

From all this it follows, that to form a judgment of the organ, to which such or such a passion relates, we ought to recur to the effect produced in the functions of the organ by the influence of the passion, and not to the feelings of the patient. In setting out from this principle it will be easy to see, that it is sometimes the stomach and alimentary canal, sometimes the sanguiferous system, sometimes the viscera belonging to the secretions which experience a change.

I shall not repeat the proofs of this assertion, but supposing it to be demonstrated, I shall assert that there does not exist for the passions as there does for the sensations a fixed and constant centre; that on the contrary the liver, the lungs, the spleen, the stomach, and the heart, are turn by turn affected, and at such time form that epigastric centre so celebrated in modern works; and if in general we refer to this region the sensible impression of all our affections, the reason is that all the important viscera of the organic life, are there concentrated. In fact, if nature had separated these viscera, had the liver for instance been placed in the pelvis, and the stomach in the neck, the heart and spleen remaining as they now are seated, in such case the epigastric focus would disappear, and the local sentiment of our passions vary according to the part affected.

In determining the facial angle, Camper has thrown much light upon the proportion of intelligence enjoyed by the several classes of animals. It appears that not only the functions of the brain, but that all those of the animal life which are centred there, have this angle for the measure of their perfection.

It would be a very pleasing thing could we indicate in the same way a measure, which assumed from the organs of the internal life, might fix the rank of each species with regard to the passions. The dog is much more susceptible than other animals of the sentiments of gratitude, of joy, of sorrow, of hatred, and of friendship; has he any thing more perfect in his organic life? the monkey astonishes us by his industry, his disposition to imitate, and by his intelligence; his animal life is certainly superior to that of every other species. Other animals, such as the elephant, interest us by their attachment, their affection, their passions; they delight us also with their address, and the extent of their intelligence. With them the cerebral centre and the organic viscera are perfect alike.

A rapid glance over the series of animals will show us also, that in some of them the phenomena, which arise from sensation predominate over those which have their origin in the passions; in others we shall see the latter superior in power to the former, and in others again, a balance established between the two. These circumstances, which we remark in the long chain of animated beings, we may remark in the human species when considered individually. In one man the passions are the great principle of motion; the influence of his animal life is continually surpassed by that of his organic life, and incessantly induces him to act in a way to which the will is almost a stranger, and which often entails upon him the bitterest regret, when his animal life resumes its empire. In another man, the animal life is the stronger of the two. In such case, the understanding seems to be augmented at the expense of the passions, the latter remaining in that silence, to which the organization of the individual has condemned them.

That man enjoys the happiest constitution in whom the two lives are balanced, in whom the cerebral and epigastric centres exercise the one upon the other an equal action, whose intellect is warmed, exalted, and animated by the passions, but whose judgment makes him at all times master of their influence.

It is this influence of the passions over the actions of the animal life, which composes what is named the character. Character as well as Temperament depends upon the organic life; possesses all its attributes, and is a stranger to the will in all its emanations; for our exterior actions form a picture of which the ground and design do indeed belong to the animal life, but upon which the organic life extends the shading and colouring of the passions. The character of the individual is constituted by such shades and colours.