Every impression which impinges on the incoming nerves produces some discharge down the outgoing ones, whether we be aware of it or not. Using sweeping5 terms and ignoring exceptions, we might say that every possible feeling produces a movement, and that the movement is a movement of the entire organism, and of each and all its parts. What happens patently when an explosion or a flash of lightning startles us, or when we are tickled6, happens latently with every sensation which we receive. The only reason why we do not feel the startle or tickle7 in the case of insignificant8 sensations is partly its very small amount, partly our obtuseness9. Professor Bain many years ago gave the name of the Law of Diffusion10 to this phenomenon of general discharge, and expressed it thus: "According as an impression is accompanied with Feeling, the aroused currents diffuse11 themselves over the brain, leading to a general agitation12 of the moving organs, as well as affecting the viscera."
In cases where the feeling is strong the law is too familiar to require proof. As Prof. Bain says:
"Each of us knows in our own experience that a sudden shock of feeling is accompanied with movements of the body generally, and with other effects. When no emotion is present, we are quiescent13; a slight feeling is accompanied with slight manifestations14; a more intense shock has a more intense outburst. Every pleasure and every pain, and every mode of emotion, has a definite wave of effects, which our observation makes known to us; and we apply the knowledge to infer other men's feelings from their outward display. . . . The organs first and prominently affected15, in the diffused16 wave of nervous influence, are the moving members, and of these, by preference, the features of the face (with the ears in animals), whose movements constitute the expression of the countenance17. But the influence extends to all the parts of the moving system, voluntary and involuntary; while an important series of effects are produced on the glands18 and viscera -- the stomach, lungs, heart, kidneys, skin, together with the sexual and mammary organs. . . . The circumstance is seemingly universal, the proof of it does not require a citation19 of instances in detail; on the objectors is thrown the burden of adducing unequivocal exceptions to the law."1
There are probably no exceptions to the diffusion of every impression through the nerve-centres. The effect of the wave through the centres may, however, often be to interfere20 with processes, and to diminish tensions already existing there; and the outward consequences of such inhibitions may be the arrest of discharges from the inhibited21 regions and the checking of bodily activities already in process of occurrence. When this happens it probably is like the draining or siphoning of certain channels by currents flowing through others. When, in walking, we suddenly stand still because a sound, sight, smell, or thought catches our attention, something like this occurs. But there are cases of arrest of peripheral22 activity which depend, not on central inhibition, but on stimulation23 of centres which discharge outgoing currents of an inhibitory sort. Whenever we are startled, for example, our heart momentarily stops or slows its beating, and then palpitates with accelerated speed. The brief arrest is due to an outgoing current down the pneumogastric nerve. This nerve, when stimulated24, stops or slows the heart-beats, and this particular effect of startling fails to occur if the nerve be cut.
In general, however, the stimulating25 effects of a sense-impression preponderate26 over the inhibiting27 effects, so that we may roughly say, as we began by saying, that the wave of discharge produces an activity in all parts of the body. The task of tracing out all the effects of any one incoming sensation has not yet been performed by physiologists28. Recent years have, however, begun to enlarge our information; and although I must refer to special treatises29 for the full details, I can briefly30 string together here a number of separate observations which prove the truth of the law of diffusion.
First take effects upon the circulation. Those upon the heart we have just seen. Haller long ago recorded that the blood from an open vein31 flowed out faster at the beat of a drum.2 In Chapter III. (p. 98) we learned how instantaneously, according to Mosso, the circulation in the brain is altered by changes of sensation and of the course of thought. The effect of objects of fear, shame, and anger upon the blood-supply of the skin, especially the skin of the face, are too well known to need remark. Sensations of the higher senses produce, according to Couty and Charpentier, the most varied32 effects upon the pulse-rate and blood-pressure in dogs. Fig33. 81, a pulse-tracing from these authors, shows the tumultuous effect on a dog's heart of hearing the screams of another dog. The changes of blood-pressure will occurred when the pneumogastric nerves were cut, showing the vaso-motor effect to be direct and not dependent on the heart. When Mosso invented that simple instrument, the plethysmograph, for recording34 the fluctuations35 in volume of the members of the body, what most astonished him, he says, "in the first experiments which he made in Italy, was the extreme unrest of the blood-vessels of the hand, which at every smallest emotion, whether during waking or sleep, changed their volume in surprising fashion."3 Figure 82 (from Féré4 ) shows the way in which the pulse of one subject was modified by the exhibition of a red light lasting36 from the moment marked a to that marked b.
Fig. 81.
The effects upon respiration37 of sudden sensory38 stimuli are also too well known to need elaborate comment. We 'catch our breath' at every sudden sound. We 'hold our breath' whenever our attention and expectation are strongly engaged, and we sigh when the tension of the situation is relieved. When a fearful object is before us we pant and cannot deeply inspire; when the object makes us angry it is, on the contrary, the act of expiration39 which is hard. I subjoin a couple of figures from Féré which explain them- selves. They show the effects of light upon the breathing of two of his hysteric patients.
As regards effects of the abdominal46 viscera, they unquestionably exist, but very few accurate observations have been made.8
The bladder, bowels47, and uterus respond to sensations, even indifferent ones. Mosso and Pellicani, in their plethysmographic investigations48 on the bladder of dogs, found all sorts of sensorial stimuli to produce reflex contractions49 of this organ, independent of those of the abdominal walls. They call the bladder 'as good an æsthesiometer as the iris,' and refer to the not uncommon51 reflex effects of psychic52 stimuli in the human female upon this organ.9 M. Féré has registered the contractions of the sphincter ani which even indifferent sensations will produce. In some pregnant women the fœtus is felt to move after almost every sensorial excitement received by the mother. The only natural explanation is that it is stimulated at such moments by reflex contractions of the womb.10 That the glands are affected in emotion is patent enough in the case of the tears of grief, the dry mouth, moist skin, or diarrhœa of fear, the biliary disturbances53 which sometimes follow upon rage, etc. The watering of the mouth at the sight of succulent food is well known. It is difficult to follow the smaller degrees of all these reflex changes, but it can hardly be doubted that they exist in some degree, even where they cease to be traceable, and that all our sensations have some visceral effects. The sneezing produced by sunshine, the roughening of the skin (gooseflesh) which certain strokings, contacts, and sounds, musical or non-musical, provoke, are facts of the same order as the shuddering54 and standing55 up of the hair in fear, only of less degree.
Effects on Voluntary Muscles. Every sensorial stimulus not only sends a special discharge into certain particular muscles dependent on the special nature of the stimulus in question -- some of these special discharges we have studied in Chapter XI, others we shall examine under the heads of Instinct and Emotion -- but it innervates the muscles generally. M. Féré has given very curious experimental proofs of this. The strength of contraction50 of the subject's hand was measured by a self-registering dynamometer. Ordinarily the maximum strength, under simple experimental conditions, remains56 the same from day to day. But if simultaneously57 with the contraction the subject received a sensorial impression, the contraction was sometimes weakened, but more often increased. This reinforcing effect has received the name of dynamogeny. The dynamogenic value of simple musical notes seems to be proportional to their loudness and height. Where the notes are compounded into sad strains, the muscular strength diminishes. If the strains are gay, it is increased. -- The dynamogenic value of colored lights varies with the color. In a subject11 whose normal strength was expressed by 23, it became 24 when a blue light was thrown on the eyes, 28 for green, 30 for yellow, 35 for orange, and 42 for red. Red is thus the most exciting color. Among tastes, sweet has the lowest value, next comes salt, then bitter, and finally sour, though, as M. Féré remarks, such a sour as acetic58 excites the nerves of pain and smell as well as of taste. The stimulating effects of tobacco-smoke, alcohol, beef-extract (which is innutritious), etc., etc., may be partly due to a dynamogenic action of this sort. -- Of odors, that of musk59 seems to have a peculiar60 dynamogenic power. Fig. 85 is a copy of one of M. Féré's dynamographic tracings, which explains itself. The smaller contractions are those without stimulus; the stronger ones are due to the influence of red rays of light.
Everyone is familiar with the patellar reflex, or jerk upwards61 of the foot, which is produced by smartly tapping the tendon below the knee-pan when the leg hangs over the other knee. Drs. Weir62 Mitchell and Lombard have found that when other sensations come in simultaneously with the tap, the jerk is increased.12 Heat, cold, pricking63, itching64, or faradic stimulation of the skin, sometimes strong optical impressions, music, all have this dynamogenic effect, which also results whenever voluntary movements are set up in other parts of the body, simultaneously with the tap.13
These 'dynamogenic' effects, in which one stimulation simply reinforces another already under way, must not be confounded with reflex acts properly so called, in which new activities are originated by the stimulus. All instinctive65 performances and manifestations of emotion are reflex acts. But underneath66 those of which we are conscious there seem to go on continually others smaller in amount, which probably in most persons might be called fluctuations of muscular tone, but which in certain neurotic67 subjects can be demonstrated ocularly. M. Féré figures some of them in the article to which I have already referred.14
Looking back over all these facts, it is hard to doubt the truth of the law of diffusion, even where verification is beyond reach. A process set up anywhere in the centres reverberates68 everywhere, and in some way or other affects the organism throughout, making its activities either greater or less. We are brought again to the assimilation which was expressed on a previous page of the nerve-central mass to a good conductor charged with electricity, of which the tension cannot be changed anywhere without changing it everywhere.
Herr Schneider has tried to show, by an ingenious and suggestive zoological review,15 that all the special movements which highly evolved animals make are differentiated69 from the two originally simple movements, of contraction and expansion, in which the entire body of simple organisms takes part. The tendency to contract is the source of all the self-protective impulses and reactions which are later developed, including that of flight. The tendency to expand splits up, on the contrary, into the impulses and instincts of an aggressive kind, feeding, fighting, sexual intercourse70, etc. Schneider's articles are well worth reading, if only for the careful observations on animals which they embody71. I cite them here as a sort of evolutionary72 reason to add to the mechanical a priori reason why there ought to be the diffusive73 wave which our a posteriori instances have shown to exist.
I will now proceed to a detailed74 study of the more important classes of movement consequent upon cerebromental change. They may be enumerated75 as --
1) Instinctive or Impulsive76 Performances;
2) Expressions of Emotion; and
3) Voluntary Deeds;
and each shall have a chapter to itself.
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1
purely
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| adv.纯粹地，完全地 | |
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neural
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| adj.神经的，神经系统的 | |
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physiologically
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| ad.生理上，在生理学上 | |
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stimuli
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| n.刺激（物） | |
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sweeping
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| adj.范围广大的，一扫无遗的 | |
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tickled
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| （使）发痒( tickle的过去式和过去分词 )； （使）愉快，逗乐 | |
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tickle
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| v.搔痒，胳肢；使高兴；发痒；n.搔痒，发痒 | |
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insignificant
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| adj.无关紧要的，可忽略的，无意义的 | |
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obtuseness
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| 感觉迟钝 | |
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diffusion
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| n.流布；普及；散漫 | |
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diffuse
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| v.扩散；传播；adj.冗长的；四散的，弥漫的 | |
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agitation
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| n.搅动；搅拌；鼓动，煽动 | |
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quiescent
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| adj.静止的，不活动的，寂静的 | |
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manifestations
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| n.表示，显示（manifestation的复数形式） | |
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15
affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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diffused
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| 散布的，普及的，扩散的 | |
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countenance
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| n.脸色，面容；面部表情；vt.支持，赞同 | |
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glands
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| n.腺( gland的名词复数 ) | |
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citation
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| n.引用，引证，引用文；传票 | |
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interfere
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| v.(in)干涉，干预；(with)妨碍，打扰 | |
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inhibited
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| a.拘谨的，拘束的 | |
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peripheral
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| adj.周边的，外围的 | |
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stimulation
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| n.刺激，激励，鼓舞 | |
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stimulated
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| a.刺激的 | |
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stimulating
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| adj.有启发性的，能激发人思考的 | |
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preponderate
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| v.数目超过；占优势 | |
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inhibiting
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| 抑制作用的，约束的 | |
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physiologists
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| n.生理学者( physiologist的名词复数 )；生理学( physiology的名词复数 )；生理机能 | |
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treatises
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| n.专题著作，专题论文，专著( treatise的名词复数 ) | |
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briefly
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| adv.简单地，简短地 | |
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vein
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| n.血管，静脉；叶脉，纹理；情绪；vt.使成脉络 | |
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varied
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| adj.多样的，多变化的 | |
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fig
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| n.无花果(树) | |
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recording
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| n.录音，记录 | |
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fluctuations
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| 波动，涨落，起伏( fluctuation的名词复数 ) | |
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lasting
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| adj.永久的，永恒的；vbl.持续，维持 | |
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respiration
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| n.呼吸作用；一次呼吸；植物光合作用 | |
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sensory
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| adj.知觉的，感觉的，知觉器官的 | |
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expiration
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| n.终结，期满，呼气，呼出物 | |
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applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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exertion
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| n.尽力，努力 | |
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stimulus
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| n.刺激，刺激物，促进因素，引起兴奋的事物 | |
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awakening
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| n.觉醒，醒悟 adj.觉醒中的；唤醒的 | |
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dilate
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| vt.使膨胀，使扩大 | |
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fatigue
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| n.疲劳，劳累 | |
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abdominal
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| adj.腹（部）的，下腹的；n.腹肌 | |
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bowels
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| n.肠，内脏，内部；肠( bowel的名词复数 )；内部，最深处 | |
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48
investigations
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| （正式的）调查( investigation的名词复数 )； 侦查； 科学研究； 学术研究 | |
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49
contractions
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| n.收缩( contraction的名词复数 )；缩减；缩略词；（分娩时）子宫收缩 | |
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50
contraction
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| n.缩略词，缩写式，害病 | |
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51
uncommon
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| adj.罕见的，非凡的，不平常的 | |
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52
psychic
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| n.对超自然力敏感的人；adj.有超自然力的 | |
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disturbances
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| n.骚乱( disturbance的名词复数 )；打扰；困扰；障碍 | |
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54
shuddering
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| v.战栗( shudder的现在分词 )；发抖；（机器、车辆等）突然震动；颤动 | |
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55
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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56
remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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simultaneously
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| adv.同时发生地，同时进行地 | |
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acetic
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| adj.酸的 | |
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59
musk
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| n.麝香, 能发出麝香的各种各样的植物，香猫 | |
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peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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61
upwards
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| adv.向上，在更高处...以上 | |
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weir
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| n.堰堤，拦河坝 | |
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63
pricking
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| 刺，刺痕，刺痛感 | |
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64
itching
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| adj.贪得的，痒的，渴望的v.发痒( itch的现在分词 ) | |
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instinctive
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| adj.(出于)本能的；直觉的；(出于)天性的 | |
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underneath
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| adj.在...下面，在...底下；adv.在下面 | |
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neurotic
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| adj.神经病的，神经过敏的；n.神经过敏者，神经病患者 | |
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reverberates
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| 回响，回荡( reverberate的第三人称单数 )； 使反响，使回荡，使反射 | |
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69
differentiated
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| 区分，区别，辨别( differentiate的过去式和过去分词 )； 区别对待； 表明…间的差别，构成…间差别的特征 | |
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intercourse
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| n.性交；交流，交往，交际 | |
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71
embody
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| vt.具体表达，使具体化；包含，收录 | |
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evolutionary
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| adj.进化的；演化的，演变的；[生]进化论的 | |
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diffusive
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| adj.散布性的，扩及的，普及的 | |
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detailed
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| adj.详细的，详尽的，极注意细节的，完全的 | |
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enumerated
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| v.列举，枚举，数( enumerate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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impulsive
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| adj.冲动的，刺激的；有推动力的 | |
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