When monkeys are touched in the arm-pit they twist and writhe, laugh, and emit sounds like human cries. The nerve-centres are very susceptible to the mechanical excitation of certain nerves, to contacts which fill us with the most pleasant and delicious sensations, or burst like a storm upon the organism.
We have heard of persons who let themselves be tickled to death, and there are many sensitive natures that can scarcely bear the most ardent enjoyments of life.
Here are prayers for pity, unconscious denials, entreaties in tearful tones, exclamations of astonishment, humble or clamorous voices, cries of joy or unsuppressed sighs, lamentations as of those who suffer, moans with which human nature seems to succumb.
Voluptuous enjoyment causes a vibration of the nerves, and forces from our lips the same moans as pain, which dulls the fire of life.
The respiratory movements are accelerated and panting, sometimes arrested, then recommencing irregularly; the breath pours stormily from the dilated nostrils, there is a singing in the ears, the heart beats more rapidly, and its pulsations resound with such violence that we wonder how a slight tickling of the nerves can produce such inward agitation.
The vital centres are stunned by a mysterious emotion—by a charm which deadens the senses and slackens the reins of control. With the cessation of the moderating force of the brain, the harmony of aim is destroyed, oppression seizes us, and words almost unconsciously spoken are now interrupted and repeated, anon breathless and drawn out, and are at last extinguished in the languor of a swoon. The dim eyes look upwards or hide moodily behind their lids, roll frightened in their orbits, or fill with tears of joy and close with the uncertain glance of the dying. The arms move convulsively, wildly, clutching, grasping, writhing. The teeth gnash and show themselves; there is a moaning and howling as though in man the animal soul had reawakened.
And at last, when the storm is past, the convulsions and trembling die away gradually like the flashes of lightning that follow the roar of retreating thunder. But the languid glance, the flaccid features, the moisture of the skin, the fatigue of the limbs, the spasmodic contractions of the muscles, the quivering of the voice, the thirst, the palpitation, the weakness, the lethargy of the senses, remain like the traces of a morbid paroxysm, like the depression after a great misfortune.