Sobbing and weeping, in grief, afford a similar instance. What we call grief, is the existence of certain trains of Ideas. The Ideas exist: the weeping follows.
The swallowing of the saliva affords a good experiment. If a friend assures you that you cannot refrain, for the space of a minute, from this act, and you are tempted to try, you are almost sure to fail. By the attention fixed on the act, the ideas of the feelings, which precede the act, are so strongly called up by association, that the act follows of course.[61]
[61] This is a pure example of the “fixed idea,” or of the tendency to work out into full actuality whatever is strongly presented in idea. The case also shows this power in conflict with the Will; we are supposed to be trying hard to prevent the act (which is volition), and yet there is, in the intense possession of an idea, a power greater than the will. The fact of being strongly excited to avoid swallowing the saliva, increases the force of the idea of swallowing it, and makes that idea almost omnipotent to work itself out. The same baffling of the will, the making it recoil upon itself, is shown in our attempt to forget or banish a painful idea. The more intensely we will to forget the idea, the more do we stamp it on the mind, through the excitement engendered by the volition.—B.
There are many acts of familiar occurrence to shew, that those actions of our organs which are the most 341 habitually produced by sensations, are capable of being strongly modified by Ideas. The effect of Fear, for example, on the action of the heart, is known to be very remarkable. So it is on the action of the bowels, of the kidneys, and of the skin. One of its effects is perspiration; another, paleness: another, cold.[11*]
[11*] The operation of Ideas on the internal parts of the body is so familiar, that we meet everywhere with pleasant stories of it. Zachary Gray, in one of his notes on Butler’s Hudibras, alluding to the story of the countryman, who, receiving a prescription from the doctor, and being told by him to take that, swallowed the paper, asks, “And why might not this operate upon a strong imagination, as well as the ugly parson, the very sight of whom in a morning (Oldham’s Remains) would work beyond Jalap or Rhubarb; and a Doctor prescribed him to one of his patients as a remedy against costiveness: Or what is mentioned by Dr. Daniel Turner (De Morbis Cutaneis), that the bare imagination of a purging potion has wrought such an alteration in sundry persons, as to bring on several stools like those they call physical; and he mentions a young gentleman, his patient, who having occasion to take many vomits, had such an antipathy to them, that ever after he would vomit as strongly by the force of imagination, by the bare sight of the emetic bolus, as most could do by medicine. The application of a clyster-pipe, without the clyster, has had the same effect upon others.”—(Author’s Note.)
The cases which we have just adduced, of yawning, and contagious convulsions, may be regarded as belonging to an extensive class; which obtains the general name of Imitation. There is more or less of a propensity to Imitation in all men, that is, to perform the act which we see another man performing. In most children the propensity is very strong; and 342 to it they owe much of the celerity with which they make certain acquirements; to that of imitating sounds, for example, the celerity with which they learn to speak. The propensity to imitate musical sounds so adheres to persons of a musical ear, even in mature age, that they can scarcely forbear humming every tune which they hear. Children learn to stutter and to squint, from imitation of their companions. We know how universally it happens that young persons acquire the manner and the air of those with whom they habitually live. These are cases not only of action, but of habits of action, produced by the agency of Ideas. It requires only cases of strong association to produce analogous effects, at all periods of life. “When we see a stroke,” says Mr. Smith, “aimed and just ready to fall upon the leg or arm of another person, we naturally shrink and draw back our own leg, or our own arm. The mob, when they are gazing at a dancer on the slack rope, naturally writhe and twist, and balance their own bodies as they see him do. Persons of delicate fibres and a weak constitution of body, complain, that in looking on the sores and ulcers which are exposed by beggars in the streets, they are apt to feel an itching or uneasy sensation in the correspondent part of their own bodies. Men of the most robust make, observe, that in looking upon sore eyes, they often feel a very sensible soreness in their own.” There are few persons who do not put on a cheerful countenance, upon the sight of the cheerful countenances of their friends; still fewer whose countenance is not made sorrowful by sight of the sorrowful countenances of their friends. It is well known, that Tears are contagious; and upon 343 this some well-known rules for the countenance both of the orator and the actor are prescribed. It is not necessary further to accumulate instances of this description; nor further to enter into the analysis of them, than to remark, that the action, the idea of which is conveyed to us by what we thus hear or see, calls up, by association, the idea of the feelings which precede the action. The Idea of the feelings exists, and the action follows.
There is a case of the action of the muscles which requires particular attention; that in which we learn to make use of them; in which we acquire what we call command over them only by degrees. There is more or less, probably, of this process in all the sorts of muscular action which are not performed originally by sensation; and the process seems to be longer or shorter according as the number of muscles, which must act together in order to the production of the effect, is greater or less. We know how slowly the child acquires the power of so balancing his body as to hold it erect. To this Effect the action of a great number of muscles is required. Yet, before the age at which reflection begins, the power is so completely acquired, that the mental process escapes our attention. To be erect, seems the posture into which our body puts itself of its own accord. There are circumstances, however, in which we become distinctly conscious of the powerful effort, which is required for that purpose, though, from its being habitual, we are in ordinary circumstances wholly insensible of it. If we allow sleep to come upon us, while we are in an erect posture, so far, that the ideas which maintain the muscular action begin to give way, we have 344 immediately the sensation of falling, and a strong perception of the effort required to keep the body erect.
We observe how slowly the child learns to perform, with the requisite precision, the contractions on which the operation of walking depends. And every man can remember the difficulty with which he has learned to perform any new combination of contractions. Whoever has learned to dance, knows how imperfectly, till after a multitude of repetitions, he performed the simplest steps. Whoever has been drilled, as they call it; that is, trained to perform with the firelock the acts required of the soldier, knows with what difficulty, each of them, however simple, was originally performed.
There is another very familiar instance, that of learning to write. Most men can remember, when they began this process, how imperfectly the hand obeyed them; and how awkwardly they made even the simple strokes. Every man can make the experiment with his left hand. After the habit of performing with the right hand is completely attained, he is almost unable to form a letter with the left. The cases of this incapacity of the left hand to perform the acts which we perform habitually with the right are innumerable; and afford decisive illustration of the great fact which is now the subject of our attention. To perform the contractions of a number of muscles, the contractions of all of which must be combined in the action, the idea whereon each of the contractions depends must previously exist, and in the requisite order. That is to say, a certain association of Ideas must be performed. But we know, that no new 345 association of Ideas is easily or steadily performed. This is the effect of Repetition. As soon as the association of the ideas is completely established by repetition, the process, both bodily and mental, goes on with ease; and where the habit is great, with so much ease, as even to escape attention. The process of learning to play on a musical instrument is slow and difficult. By habit the associations become so close, that an expert performer can execute the most difficult pieces, and carry on another and even an intricate process of thought at the same time.
How slowly, and with how much difficulty do children acquire command over the organs of speech? And how totally without effort on our part in after life does the sound appear immediately to cling to the Idea of the word? Yet, in learning the new sounds of a foreign language we become abundantly sensible of the difficulty, sometimes altogether insurmountable, of performing the precise combination of contractions which a particular sound requires.