George Fielding Blandford

“ The fact, that pleasure and pain depend on fatigue and the consumption of this nerve-force, is closely connected with two other phenomena: one, that the stimulation of any nerve-centre, if repeated, loses somewhat of its effect; the other, that the same stimulus, if prolonged or intensified, may cause every variety of feeling from pleasure to extreme pain. The first phenomenon is expressed in the language of every-day life, when we say there is nothing that we may not "get used to." We get used to sights, to sounds, to tastes, to smells, to the endurance of bodily pain. ”

“ And when we say that emotion does these things, we merely mean that something or other has stimulated the brain into producing these phenomena, and that along with the stimulus the feeling of grief or shame or anger coexists.
If all this be true, it may perchance throw some light upon many of the phenomena of disordered mind and brain: it may help us to understand why, with almost the same delusion, e.g., that the newspapers are writing about him, one man will be exultant, another angry, another depressed; it may explain why the same man is at one time maniacal, at another melancholic. ”

“ On analyzing the color red, we find it to be the color at one end of the spectrum, an inch of which gives the smallest number of waves of light, and to this amount of stimulation some eyes are insensible, just as the eyes of all men are insensible to the rays beyond red, which we discover by the galvanometer, though they do not excite our optic centres as light. As no two persons feel alike, so no two see or hear alike. The centres of sight and hearing of one man are stimulated by vibrations which fail to excite those of another. ”

“ Then there is the uneducated and unenlightened pauper of many an agricultural district of our own land, and there is the idiot, and the insane, whose self-feeling is predominant, whose whole life is centred in self, as much as is the child's. If after these we consider adult and educated man, we shall see that his sensations, feelings, and emotions, each mental state, in fact, which is called up in his brain, may be, and for the most part are, attended with muscular movement voluntary or involuntary, indicating the pleasure or pain which accompanies the mental stimulation. ”

“ This brings me to the consideration of another point, namely, that violent stimulation of a centre exhausts the nerve-force, not of that centre only, but of the whole nervous system. A terrible shock may so use up the nerve-force that the individual falls senseless, or, short of this, he may yet be so paralyzed with fear or grief that he loses all muscular power, or he may be so violently moved that the great exertions which he makes only last for a short time. ”

“ If it be too metaphysical to talk of the conversion of bodily heat into force, and of force into muscular motion, it is, nevertheless, a fact of observation that a nerve-centre becomes exhausted by over-excitation and over-action, and, being exhausted, becomes incapable of energizing till its power or force is renewed by rest or food. In the following observations I shall try to illustrate the theory that a nerve-cell is called into action by stimulation applied to it from without, and that, according to its special quality, it will then energize and act upon other cells or structures. ”

“ There is no work in him: his life is all active amusement, emotive movement. He exhibits rage, terror, jealousy, wonder, vanity, love, the desire for action; and these emotions are fully developed and unmistakably exhibited. Here, then, we have the emotional part of our nature apparently full-grown, while the intellectual is yet in its early infancy. We know that it is in vain to reason with such a child: we control and manage him. These feelings are all expansions of the self-feeling which is plainly seen to be the feeling of the entire bodily organization. ”

“ If the fatigue be great, nothing can keep a child or even a man awake. When refreshed by sleep, when the force is again accumulated in the brain, we wake spontaneously, or are awakened by trifling stimuli, as sounds or light. This alternation of sleep and waking is the normal state of health, and absence of sleep is something abnormal: it is a disorder, and must lead to further disorder if prolonged. Sleep is not necessary for the renewal of force in every centre. In very severe muscular exercise mere cessation for a time recruits our force, and enables us to begin again ”

“ Repressed action, whether in thought alone, or in the clinched hands and quivering lips of suppressed passion, must be taken as an emission of force. The complex coordination of ideas arrived at after years of study and experience, which causes the connoisseur the keen delight experienced when he gazes at a rare Rembrandt etching or a matchless coin, must include within itself the feelings belonging to it. ”

“ So much does observation teach us of the reparation of the force of the brain during sleep. Experiment, however, enables us to state the physiological condition of the brain in sleep, and so to analyze further the production and expenditure of this nerve-force. In sleep, as we have seen, it is produced and accumulated; in active waking hours it is expended. In sleep, the arterial circulation of the brain falls to a certain point, and metamorphosis consequently is reduced to a minimum. When the brain is acting, even in dreams, the blood-flow increases both in arteries and veins. ”

“ Its brain, when stimulated, at once converts its force into motion. And, if we strictly analyze the feelings and emotions of man, we shall find that here also action or motion of some kind is almost invariably the concomitant of emotion—at any rate, when this is at all intense, or, as we rightly say, powerful. With regard to many of our feelings and emotions, this is at once apparent. If some sudden disaster occurs to a man, his countenance, probably his limbs, will denote his terror, grief, or anger. He is said to be devoid of feeling, if this be not the case. ”

“ Each cell, as it lives its life in our bodily organization, as it grows to maturity, and fades in its decay, separates and selects from the blood, by a molecular metamorphosis, that which it requires for its function as an idea-cell, a hearing, or a sight cell, but it separates it in varying quantity and quality, and, having separated it, parts with it again, according to the demands made upon it. ”

“ A violent stimulus produces at once violent, or at any rate manifest, action, facial or other. There is a conversion of nerve-force into muscular movement, directly following a stimulus, whether this be one exciting bodily pain, as a blow, or mental, as a shocking sight or piece of news But, when we examine the mind of man in its highest development we find in the highly-intellectual individual certain emotions, which are clearly the feelings corresponding to the very complex ideas acquired and organized by years of culture and training. ”

“ We should see that the whole circulation, or portions of it, would be affected by mental excitation, by the stimulation of the various cells or groups of cells, which we call nerve-centres. We should see that a piece of news, a disaster, an impending trouble or difficulty, causes a man to lay awake at night, and we should know that he lies awake because his brain circulation, either through the whole or in parts of his cerebral hemispheres, is higher than admits of sleep. ”

“ While, on the one hand, some shrink away from the very name of force, and will none of it, as a metaphysical entity to be relegated to the schoolmen along with that other metaphysical entity, the "mind" itself, on the other, it is to be feared that men have imagined that the study of mental phenomena has, at length, attained to the rank of the exact sciences, because they have placed nerve-force in the same category and correlated group as light, heat, gravity, and electricity. ”

“ There is an extrication of force going on in the shape of thought, there is a flow of blood going to the excited part. We cannot see all this, however, but we can and do see how emotion causes the face to flush and the pulse to quicken, how those who lie awake suffer from heat of head and suffusion of eyes, how emotion increases the lachrymal secretion, the lacteal, and others. ”

“ If we look at a boy of three years, healthy and strong, whose sleep and appetite are good, and whose nerve-centres are full of force, we see that his whole waking-time is employed in the keen enjoyment of spending his nerve-force in incessant motion and play. ”

“ For the activity of thought must be due to a stimulus applied to the intellectual centres, no less than the activity of body: and not only the activity of thought, but action in thought, the desire for action of body which would become action, did not some other reflection intervene, must also be set down as an outcome of nerve-force emitted by some centre or centres, which have been set in motion by a stimulus. ”

“ Also, we shall observe the same individual under the various conditions of hunger and repletion, of sleep or want of sleep, of cold or heat, of health or disease. And we shall see how all the phenomena, which our inductive observation can collect, agree or disagree with the laws laid down by those who have by experiment investigated the physiology of the nervous system. From one method—dissection of the actual brain—we shall not learn much. When the action is over and the force departed, the actual structure teaches us little about the working. ”

“ We endure the excitation better and feel less fatigued, whatever it be. If by any chance, however, through illness or other cause, our stock of force becomes lessened, we find that we cannot so well endure our habitual stimuli, and they become painful instead of pleasant. Our feelings, then, are regulated partly by the amount of stimulation, partly by the condition in which our centres are when stimulated; and that which applies to pain applies also to pleasure. ”

“ The child at first derives pleasure or pain from that which affects its bodily sensations, from the light or the color which pleases its sense of sight, from the song which gratifies its ear, from the warmth which is grateful to its skin, from the food which satisfies its stomach ”

“ Although an excitation repeated loses its effect, yet an excitation prolonged without cessation passes from pleasure to pain without this process ever being reversed.
There is no voluntary action, whether mental or bodily, which does not in time cause fatigue; but it will be found that actions accompanied with direct emotion fatigue the soonest. Almost all bodily or mental processes are accompanied by some amount of feeling or emotion. They are pleasant to us or distasteful; we may be wearied of doing them, or wearied by doing them, according as the mind or the body is fatigued. ”

“ Its pleasure is denoted by laughing, kicking, and corresponding movement and expression of face. It derives pleasure also from excitation of its centres of motion, from being tossed, dandled, and rocked, while rough and violent movements cause no less pain and discomfort. We see, then, in such a child, manifestations of a very considerable amount of feeling—feeling which is at this stage entirely bodily, or at the most sensory, arising from the exercise of the senses. ”

“ But physiologically there seems to be no line of demarcation between simple feelings and the highest emotions. Before we examine the adult as we see him in the educated and refined inhabitant of the cities of Europe, we may pause and consider the various intermediate stages which carry on the succession from the child upward. There is the savage of all grades of savagery, from the Earthman to the stoical brave of North America who scorns to exhibit emotion of any kind. ”

“ Lack of force may account for the wretched feeling of the hypochondriac and the hysterical, for the mental pain which many feel when they are below par: and a proneness to part with force, to convert it into action, may be the condition of the centres of those who are excitable and impulsive, a condition analogous to that brought about in certain centres by such drugs as strychnia, by such diseases as epilepsy and convulsions, or evidenced by such an affection as stammering.—Fortnightly Review. ”

“ If mankind had stopped at the level of a child, if the higher and more complex emotions did not exist, it is not likely that various seats of emotion would have been mapped out in the brain. Emotion in children and animals is manifestly so much more a bodily excitation, the bodily movement follows so immediately as the result, that we do not confine it to a mental phenomenon as we do the higher emotions of man. ”

“ When studying the physiology of nerve-action as we see it in animals, children, and men, and the pathology as we see it in various nervous disorders, as acute insanity, 'delirium tremens, and the like, we soon become aware of the fact that the well-being of the entire nervous system depends mainly on its renovation during a state of repose; and that for the higher portion of the brain, at any rate, this state of repose and rest is synonymous with healthy sleep. ”

“ The intense desire for sleep felt by persons exposed to great cold is closely akin to that produced by overwhelming fatigue: the whole nerve-force is consumed in either case and cannot be replaced. In those suffering from cold, the loss may be met by warmth or by food; in those worn out by fatigue, sleep alone is the restorer. How completely the brain is upset by cold we may learn from the striking narrative of the Arctic voyager Dr. ”

“ The man who is rowing or running a race cannot command his thoughts; ideas come and go through his mind, but he cannot keep up a continuous current of mental work. His force is being expended on bodily movement.
What is the answer to those who say they believe that emotions reside in this or that part of the brain? We may object, first, that every attempt to locate emotions has signally failed, from the days of Gall, Spurzheim, and Combe, to those of Schroder van der Kolk. ”

“ We can make no movement which is not accounted for by the contemporaneous extinction of some other movement. And, how complicated soever the motions of animals may be, whatever may be the change which the molecules of our food undergo within our bodies, the whole energy of animal life consists in the falling of the atoms of carbon and hydrogen and nitrogen from the high level which they occupy in the food to the low level which they occupy when they quit the body. ”

“ We can observe the phenomena of Feeling in infants from the commencement of life, in children, in adults, in the aged. From mere sensations we can trace the dawn of what are called Emotions, or, to use an older terminology, Passions. We can observe them also in the lower animals, and in the varieties, so to speak, of man—in the savage, the insane, the idiot. ”