TENDENCY OF AN IDEA TO BECOME REALITY. 341 The brings about the flow of saliva in a hungry animal. physiologist obtains saliva for experimental purposes, by presenting a savoury morsel to the view of a dog. These and other cases that might be quoted, clearly confirm what has been said, as to the return of the nervous currents exactly on their own tracks, in revived sensation. We see that when the revival is energetic, it goes the length of exciting even the surface of sense itself by a sort of backmovement. We might think of a blow on the hand, until the skin were actually irritated and inflamed. The attention. very much directed to any part of the body, as the great toe, for instance, is apt to produce a distinct feeling in the part, which we account for only by supposing a revived nervecurrent to flow there, making a sort of false sensation, an influence from within mimicking the influences from without in sensation proper.-(See the writings of Mr. Braid, of Manchester, on Hypnotism, &c.) 10. The emotions and passions distinct from, but often accompanying sensations, are likewise similarly manifested. in the reality and in the idea. Anger takes exactly the same course in the system whether with a person present, or with some one remembered or imagined. Nobody ever supposes in this case that the ideal passion is in any way different from the actual, or has any other course or seat in the brain. So with affection, egotism, fear, or any other sentiment or passion. In like manner, the remembrance of being angry, or puffed up, or terrified, will be a resuscitation of the identical state, and will actuate the same part, although the centrifugal wave may not be strong enough to agitate the surface as strongly as the original did. The recollection of the intenser feelings is necessarily weaker than the reality; of some of the less agitating sensations and feelings manifested in action, the recollection may be quite equal to the reality. We can better afford the expenditure necessary for reviving mild and gentle emotions. 11. The tendency of an idea to become the reality is a distinct source of active impulses in the mind. Our chief active faculty is expressed by Will, or Volition, whose nature it is to urge us from pain or to pleasure. But the disposition to proceed from a mere recollection, imagination, or idea, to the action that it represents,—not merely to think an act, but to do it,-is also a determining principle of human conduct, and often sets itself in opposition to the regular action of the will, as above defined. For the most part, the tendency is kept in check; in ordinary circumstances, indeed, it does not manifest itself with any great energy, so that we may omit it from our reckoning of a man's motives. There are, however, circumstances that bring it forward as a considerable, and even preponderating, influence in individual conduet. The extreme illustration is seen under the mesmeric sleep, which has this curious effect, among others, that the patient is open to the reception of ideas suggested by another person, while the senses and the mind are unsusceptible to the external situation generally, and are to that extent asleep or unconscious. The wakefulness to our actual environment at each moment is necessarily the foremost circumstance in regulating our actions; the influence of our ideas is usually subordinated to the influence of present realities. In sleep, the mind is dead to reality, and more or less awake to the current of ideas; and in somnambulism and mesmeric sleep, and to a less extent in ordinary dreams, we act our ideas out to the full, the usual restraining power being dormant. In waking moments, the general rule is that ideas do not act themselves out; their urgency is so small as to be in complete subjection to the will, operating under its ordinary motives. But there are times, when an idea possesses the mind so forcibly as to act itself out in opposition to the will, and therefore in opposition to those interests that the will should side with-the deliverance from pain and the furtherance of pleasure. This forcible possession is commonly the consequence of great excitement accompanying an idea, or its taking a more than usual hold of the mind, whereby it does not pass away with the intellectual currents, but FIXED IDEAS THWART THE OPERATION OF THE WILL. 343 remains and predominates over every other thought pressing for admittance. 12. The domination of an idea is best seen in the workings of Fear. When any object causes fright, the idea of that object is stamped on the mind with an intensity corresponding to the degree of the fright. The actions of the individual are in conformity to this idea, and not to his proper volitions. A mother is in a state of panic regarding a supposed danger to her child; she is no longer capable of acting for the best; the one exaggerated idea governs her whole conduct. The force that moves her is not volition; it resides in the circles of mere intellect, inflamed into undue excitement on one idea. The healthy and regular action of the will, aiming at the suppression of pain and the procuring of pleasure, would work for subduing the state of panic, so as to leave the mind in a cool and collected condition, able to estimate the danger at its exact amount, and with reference to all other interests. But the passion of fear is too much for the will. The idea rules the situation like a despot. The principle is also illustrated by the predominance of purely painful ideas, even although not causing fright. The Inere fact that an idea is disagreeable would suggest to the will to banish it, and we often succeed in banishing the thought of an object that pains us; but sometimes the intensity of the pain is such as to stamp it on the mind, and we cannot help acting it out, even to our own discomfort. Disgusts often exercise this unbidden ascendancy. The fascination of a precipice is a familiar and pertinent example of the same tendency. The idea of a falling body is so intensely suggested, that an effort of volition is necessary to keep the spectator from acting it out in his own person. It is often remarked that a painful recollection will haunt a person through life. This is an undue susceptibility to the influence of an idea, a morbid submission of the intellect to the will. Insanity is the culmination of this peculiarity. The insane are very generally the victims of a diseased impression. Occasionally this may give them pleasure, as when the idea takes the form of exorbitant vanity; more often, however, the idea is morbid and gloomy, and still controls the actions. 13. The only way that I am able to explain the great fact of our nature, denominated Sympathy, fellow-feeling, pity, compassion, disinterestedness, is by a reference to this tendency of an idea to act itself out. We are able to conceive the pains of other beings, by our experience of the like; and when we do so conceive them, we feel urged to the same steps of alleviation as if the pains were our own. We become possessed with the mere idea of pain, there being no reality corresponding; but yet this idea will induce us to act as if it represented a reality of our own experience. To see another person hungry and cold is to take on the idea of those painful states, and we are induced by the power of the idea to relieve the pain that occasioned it. But for some such domination of an idea, I see nothing in the constitution of the human mind that would make us sympathize with other men's pleasures and pains. The ordinary action of the will is to gain our own pleasures, and remove our own pains. This is all that can, strictly speaking, interest us. Each organization is more or less formed to work for conserving itself; and it would seem, at first sight, an irrelevance to go beyond this. The mere operation of the will, as we have always supposed it, is strictly within the limits of self-conservation. But the intellect, which can form ideas of the mental condition of other sensitive beings, tends to make those ideas actualities; or induces the conduct that they would suggest if the pains or pleasures were personal to ourselves. This is sympathy and disinterested action, which is an undoubted fact of our nature, although unequally manifested in different individuals. 14. Much of the ambition and the aspirations of human beings belongs rather to the sphere of fixed ideas, than to the sphere of volition prompted by pleasures. It is true that the things that we aspire after, are usually calculated to give us pleasure; yet very often we indulge in ideal aspirations that POINTS OF COMMUNITY OF SENSATION AND THOUGHT. 345 are impracticable, and that, if we were masters of ourselves, we would disregard and repress. Unfortunately, however, a certain notion, say of power, wealth, grandeur, has fixed itself in our mind and keeps a persistent hold there, perverting the regular operation of the will, which would lead us to renounce whatever is hopeless or not worth the cost. Such phrases as insane ambition,' 'fixed idea,' 'overwhelming fascination,' are used to designate this not unfrequent pheno menon. Our regrets for what we have lost are generally out of proportion to the pleasure that the objects gave us. We may feel a sincere and a strong regret for the loss of some one related to us, who was an unmitigated burden and misery. The consideration of our pleasures and pains solely would cause this to be felt as a relief and a gratification; but we cannot so banish a familiar idea even although painful; we cannot forget, merely because our happiness would be increased by forgetting. Thoughts persist by a law that is not subject to the will, and not only persist, but interfere with the course of our actions and the pursuit of our interests.* 15. The general doctrine now contended for is not a barren speculation; if true, it bears important practical inferences. In expressing and describing thought and the thinking process, an operation essential to our subject, the Correctly speaking, two forces are at work in determining the influence of fixed ideas. One is the tendency of the idea of an action to become the action, to which the exposition in the text is devoted. This tendency is exemplified in its unmixed operation in such instances as the infection of particular crimes, and in the operation of sympathy generally. The other principle is the tendency of an idea to persist in the mind, in consequence of its intensity, or rather the intensity of the feeling that accompanies it. The power of the will is baffled by great mental excitement under any circumstances. It may be for our interest to banish a particular idea, and to give a footing to other ideas, which our intellectual forces are quite competent to suggest; yet when a feeling of any sort, whether pleasure or pain, or excitement that is neither, has allied itself with an idea, the forces of intellectual association and the force of the will are equally impotent to displace that idea. This is the way that fear operates to prevent a man from following out the regard to his own well-being. |