Touch-me-not

“ The new comer is afflicted with the mania of "touching"—not for any pleasurable sensation conveyed to the sensorium through the medium of the tips of the fingers, but for luck, or as a charm against the influence of the evil eye! For example, his mother being extremely ill, he finds himself irresistibly impelled to climb a large elm-tree and touch the topmost branch, as the means of averting the crisis. ”

“ When I am desired to give my hand to examine anything by the touch, they take it as if my sense of feeling were deficient, squeezing it rudely, and pressing it forcibly on the object of examination, as if I were about to ascertain the condition of a bird or beast ”

“ Touch by touch she thus dropped into her husband’s silence the truth about his good nature and his good manners; and it was this demonstration of his virtue, precisely, that added to the strangeness, even for herself, of her failing as yet to yield to him. It would be a question but of the most trivial act of surrender, the vibration of a nerve, the mere movement of a muscle ”

“ In this way it learns by repeated experience of the existence of bodies outside of his own. Thus it differentiates its own ego from the outside world by the sense of touch, at a time when the other senses could not as yet functionate. Touch is, therefore, the primary sense. ”

“ Touch, the last of the senses, and most ignoble, yet of as great necessity as the other, and of as much pleasure. This sense is exquisite in men, and by his nerves dispersed all over the body, perceives any tactile quality. ”

“ To touch is the beginning of every act of possession, of every attempt to make use of a person or thing.
We have interpreted the power of contagion which inheres in the taboo as the property of leading into temptation, and of inciting to imitation. This does not seem to be in accord with the fact that the Contagiousness of the taboo is above all manifested in the transference to objects which thus themselves become carriers of the taboo. ”

“ The perfection of touch becomes in a manner a second sight, which enables the mind to feel and see fine details which escape the generality of men and constitutes a quality of the first order, moral tact, that touch of the soul as it has been called, which is the mark of people with a delicate skin, and whose sensory nerves, like tense cords, are always ready to vibrate at the contact of the slightest impressions. ”

“ Obtuseness of feeling, or of tact, arises from various causes; the horny hand of the labourer is less discriminative than that of the man who is not called to toil in the field, or work at the anvil. As regards feeling, independent of the pure sense of touch, there is much difference even among individuals, according to the general nervous susceptibility of the frame. ”

“ If, however, the touch-sensibilities ever are restored, and their ideas and memories with them, it may easily happen that they, with their clustered associations, may temporarily keep out of consciousness things like the visual and other experiences accumulated during the anæsthetic period which have no connections with them. ”

“ Touch as the physiological basis of social contact.—According to the spatial conception the closest contacts possible are those of touch. The physical proximity involved in tactile sensations is, however, but the symbol of the intensity of the reactions to contact. Desire and aversion for contacts, as Crawley shows in his selection, arise in the most intimate relations of human life. Love and hate, [Pg 283] longing and disgust, sympathy and hostility increase in intensity with intimacy of association. ”

“ Some consider, as we just said, all wants of the body as shame, disgrace, and defect to which they are compelled to attend: this is chiefly the case with the sense of touch, which is a disgrace to us according to Aristotle, and which is the cause of our desire for eating, drinking, and sensuality. Intelligent persons must, as much as possible, reduce these wants, guard against them, feel grieved when satisfying them, abstain from speaking of them, discussing them, and attending to them in company with others. ”

“ Were persons to write down their experiences of the pleasing and unpleasing sensations derived through the medium of the different senses, and were those notes collected together, we should have a mass of most interesting and instructive information, well worthy the study of a physiologist. After all, however, the sense of touch or tact gives less pleasure to man than that of sight, hearing, taste, or smell; it appreciates neither colours nor harmony, nor the flavour of luscious viands, nor the odour of flowers and perfumes ”

“ It is probable that colours are perceived by creatures which have hard eyes in this same manner, and that shades of colour invariably make upon them an impression of something to be afraid of or otherwise. The human race is circumstanced in a like manner with respect to odours; and there seems to be an analogy between taste and kinds of savours, and smell and kinds of odours, but as taste is a kind of touch, and touch of all man's senses the most perfect, his taste is more delicate than his smell. ”

“ Still, perhaps, the perfect bloom of the feelings can only be preserved under quite judicious individual culture, and, therefore, necessarily devolves upon parents. The instrument to be employed in this culture is always the same—the blessed sixth sense of Tact. It is possible to call up the feeling one desires by a look, a gesture; to dissipate it entirely by the rudeness of a spoken word. Our silence, our sympathy, our perception give place and play to fit feelings, and equally discourage, and cause to slink away ashamed the feeling which should not have place. ”

“ Had he stopped again? I was in such a state of inner perturbation that I hardly knew whether he had ceased to speak or I to hear. Something, I did not know what, had shaken my very life’s center—something in the shape of dread, yet so mixed with delight that my hand fell from the knob I had been blindly groping for and sank heavily at my side. His eyes had not left my face.
“May I ask whom I have the honor of addressing?” he asked, in a tone I might better never have heard from his lips. ”

“ Wherefore, touching illusions and impressions, as also strong emotions of love, hatred, jealousy, or revenge, these nerve and brain sensations are easily conveyed from one human subject to another by Suggestion. ”

“ In this instinctive, reflex sort of shame, the body is just as much the entire vehicle of the self-feeling as, in the coarser cases which we first took up, it was the vehicle of the self-seeking. As, in simple 'hoggishness,' a succulent morsel gives rise, by the reflex mechanism, to behavior which the bystanders find 'greedy,' and consider to flow from a certain sort of 'self-regard;' so here your disdain gives rise, by a mechanism quite as reflex and immediate, to another sort of behavior, which the bystanders call 'shame-faced' and which they consider due to another kind of self-regard. ”

“ She can’t think it is kind to fix her eyes upon me as if I were something not human, if I laugh; to give me her hand so coldly and unresponsively that it seems like a dead hand in mine, and at other times to take no more notice of me than if I were not there. ”

“ None were there to flatter the young girl, and to awaken that uneasy vanity which fills the mind with the consciousness of observation, and gives awkwardness to the timid, and affectation to the self-possessed. ”

“ Had I not, in the wild career of fervent feeling, had sufficient strength of mind to stop short, and to reason calmly, how often, in the bitterness of my spirit, should I have accused you of sporting with my feelings, by involving me in a hopeless maze of conjecture—by leaving me a prey to the constant, oppressive, apprehension of hearing something, which I should not have had the fortitude to support with dignity ”

“ MAN WITH THE FLOWER: Well, you ought to thank God that you've nothing worse than annoyances!— (A pause.) Some of us, you know, are worse off than that! (A pause.) I'm telling you that I need to attach myself in my imagination to the lives other people lead. But—in my peculiar way—without pleasure—without any real interest, even—in such a way, in fact—yes, just so—in such a way, precisely, as to sense the annoyances they encounter. ”

“ You are mere dead flesh, and behind the horrid lid lie stark and cold, with rigid fingers and half-closed eyes, and the chief desire of every one, even of those you have loved most, is to be rid of you, to be out of reach of sight and smell of you. ”

“ And seldom is the eye of the stranger, never that of the professed bookmaker, suffered to rest upon our homes till they have undergone changes that will as completely baffle his penetration. Nor is this always designedly. It is from a delicate instinct which shrinks from subjecting its most sacred and touching emotions to the rude gaze and ruder comment of the world. ”

“ Such a hidden nature, which instinctively employs speech for silence and concealment, and is inexhaustible in evasion of communication, DESIRES and insists that a mask of himself shall occupy his place in the hearts and heads of his friends; and supposing he does not desire it, his eyes will some day be opened to the fact that there is nevertheless a mask of him there--and that it is well to be so. ”

“ On the other hand, how often are we filled with distrust at the sight of a carefully tended, pink and white hand of an elegant gentleman—whether because we dislike its condition or its shape, or because the form of the nails recalls an unpleasant memory, or because there is something wrong about the arrangement of the fingers, or because of some unknown reason. ”

“ For that insensibility cannot be but at the expense of some unnatural ferocity of mind, or stupor of body." But let us consider whether to talk in this manner be not allowing that we are weak, and yielding to our softness. Notwithstanding, let us be hardy enough, not only to lop off every arm of our miseries, but even to pluck up every fibre of their roots. ”

“ And all the time he was conscious of a little stab of pain, keen enough to assert itself through the wrapping of self-righteous indignation in which he sought to envelop himself. He told himself that he had been blind, that the girl was worthless. ”

“ If you could but get the fumes of this evil feeling out of yourself, you would see, as we see, what a common thing it is, and you would recognise, as we recognise, that your very expression of it is just such as is given to it by every hysterical man or woman that has ever experienced it. It is a physical condition caused by contact, and kept up by your own perverse pleasure in it—nothing more. Every one grows out of it in time, and any one with proper self-control could conquer it. ”

“ It cannot be expected to understand our thoughts, speech, or actions; it cannot participate in our pleasures. Why should it be forced into premature contact with them, merely to feed our vanity or selfishness? ”

“ I cannot tell how it comes to pass, that society oppresses me; that the forms of politeness are disagreeable to me—that what people talk about does not interest me,—that all that they show to me is either quite indifferent, or else produces quite an opposite impression to what they expect. When I am shown a drawing or painting of any beautiful spot, immediately a feeling of disquiet arises within me which is utterly inexpressible. ”

“ But I have not a bit of such folly in my composition. Living hands set up the type and printed the words which gave me so deathly a shock; and hands, with a real purpose in them, cut it from the paper and pinned it to my cushion for me to see when I woke on that fatal morning. But whose hands? That is what I want you to discover.”
I had caught the fever of her suspicions long before this and now felt justified in showing my interest.
“First, let me ask,” said I, “who has access to your rooms besides your maid?”
“No one; absolutely no one.”
“And what of her?”
“She is innocence itself. ”

“ Is it that I catch people's conditions, for I seem to hear each one speak to me as they are with me or leave me, I seem somehow to catch their thoughts. Have I become mediumistic? Just I alone or is it a world-wide telepathy where each mind speaks to another no matter how far away. ”

“ The least thing is then enough; the sight of some face, a gesture, a word, which previously would have left us altogether indifferent, strikes us, and becomes the starting point of a long amorous malady. ”

“ That Boy immediately copied it, and added greatly to its effect by extending the fingers of the other hand in a line with those of the first, and vigorously agitating those of the two hands,—a gesture which acts like a puncture on the distended self-esteem of one to whom it is addressed, and cheapens the memory of the absent to a very low figure. ”

“ If you insist on his standing up and giving sign of life, he frowns, loosens his collar, which seems to choke him, looks at the floor, then at the ceiling, then at you. Being unable to utter a sound, he frowns more, to make you believe that he is very dissatisfied with himself. ”

“ They understood how, as in common people, that rude and fierce instinct, which is jealousy, had plotted against them; a jealousy physical and base, taking the appearance of a higher and more ardent love, of a passion larger and more consuming; and how like inexperienced and weak creatures they had been victims of a trivial deception of the senses, abandoning themselves to it, as to a renewing flame of love more youthful and more devouring. ”

“ It was a reversed action of the nervous centres,—the opposite of that which flushes the young lover's cheek and hurries his bounding pulses as he comes into the presence of the object of his passion. No one who has ever felt the sensation can have failed to recognize it as an imperative summons, which commands instant and terrified submission. ”