The next thing to be noticed is this, that _every one of the bodily
changes, whatsoever it be, is_ FELT, _acutely or obscurely, the moment
it occurs_. If the reader has never paid attention to this matter, he
will be both interested and astonished to learn how many different local
bodily feelings he can detect in himself as characteristic of his
various emotional moods. It would be perhaps too much to expect him to
arrest the tide of any strong gust of passion for the sake of any such
curious analysis as this; but he can observe more tranquil states, and
that may be assumed here to be true of the greater which is shown to be
true of the less. Our whole cubic capacity is sensibly alive; and each
morsel of it contributes its pulsations of feeling, dim or sharp,
pleasant, painful, or dubious, to that sense of personality that every
one of us unfailingly carries with him. It is surprising what little
items give accent to these complexes of sensibility. When worried by any
slight trouble, one may find that the focus of one's bodily
consciousness is the contraction, often quite inconsiderable, of the
eyes and brows. When momentarily embarrassed, it is something in the
pharynx that compels either a swallow, a clearing of the throat, or a
slight cough; and so on for as many more instances as might be named.
The various permutations of which these organic changes are susceptible
make it abstractly possible that no shade of emotion should be without a
bodily reverberation as unique, when taken in its totality, as is the
mental mood itself. The immense number of parts modified is what makes
it so difficult for us to reproduce in cold blood the total and integral
expression of any one emotion. We may catch the trick with the voluntary
muscles, but fail with the skin, glands, heart, and other viscera. Just
as an artificially imitated sneeze lacks something of the reality, so
the attempt to imitate grief or enthusiasm in the absence of its normal
instigating cause is apt to be rather 'hollow.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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