To begin with, _particular perceptions certainly do produce wide-spread
bodily effects by a sort of immediate physical influence, antecedent to
the arousal of an emotion or emotional idea_. In listening to poetry,
drama, or heroic narrative we are often surprised at the cutaneous
shiver which like a sudden wave flows over us, and at the heart-swelling
and the lachrymal effusion that unexpectedly catch us at intervals. In
hearing music the same is even more strikingly true. If we abruptly see
a dark moving form in the woods, our heart stops beating, and we catch
our breath instantly and before any articulate idea of danger can arise.
If our friend goes near to the edge of a precipice, we get the
well-known feeling of 'all-overishness,' and we shrink back, although we
positively _know_ him to be safe, and have no distinct imagination of
his fall. The writer well remembers his astonishment, when a boy of
seven or eight, at fainting when he saw a horse bled. The blood was in a
bucket, with a stick in it, and, if memory does not deceive him, he
stirred it round and saw it drip from the stick with no feeling save
that of childish curiosity. Suddenly the world grew black before his
eyes, his ears began to buzz, and he knew no more. He had never heard of
the sight of blood producing faintness or sickness, and he had so little
repugnance to it, and so little apprehension of any other sort of danger
from it, that even at that tender age, as he well remembers, he could
not help wondering how the mere physical presence of a pailful of
crimson fluid could occasion in him such formidable bodily effects.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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