In the life of self-contained educated men we do not generally meet with this phenomenon in so distinct a form. But even here the fragmentary pantomimes into which a man often falls when mastered by a quite indistinct feeling—we need only refer to the erotic character of embraces and other gestures of joy—show us that expression always adds an element of definiteness to the psychical state expressed. When treating of the reactions consequent upon bodily pain, we have already had to take into account the species of imaginative materialisation, as though pain were a concrete thing, a shirt of Nessus, by which a sufferer is generally induced to explain his automatic movements. Here we need only point out that a similar, so to speak, mythogenic influence, a natural tendency to personification, results not only from reactions to pain, but also from all expressive activities. An indistinct mood of pleasure thus generally passes over into a joy—that is, a feeling which is referred to some cause, imaginary or real—when the functional enhancement has reached our voluntary muscles. An oppression, which in its origin may be purely physiological, is transformed, when the bodily modifications become more differentiated,[133] into fear of something unknown—for instance, some impending danger. Since it is so difficult for the individual himself to perceive a mental state as one of pure sensation with no element of thought, we need not wonder that his expression always transmits to the spectator something more than the mere excitement or depression of simple feeling. However strictly we try to isolate the pure rhythm of a lyrical performance, there will always slip into it an element of mimetic expression—we do not know of a better adjective—which suggests a mental state, distincter and better defined than that of pure feeling. In reality, therefore, the dramatic forms of dancing are no less primordial than those purely rhythmical manifestations which the necessities of treatment have compelled us to consider as a separate group.[134] It is also evident that the dramatic or mimetic element will increase in importance as the endeavour to represent mental states and transmit them to outsiders becomes more conscious and deliberate.