assuredly does not appear cheerful or good-tempered. If indeed these
feelings break out into overt acts, rage takes their place, and will be
plainly exhibited. Painters can hardly portray suspicion, jealousy,
envy, &c., except by the aid of accessories which tell the tale; and
poets use such vague and fanciful expressions as green-eyed jealousy.
Spenser describes suspicion as Foul, ill-favoured, and grim, under his
eyebrows looking still askance, &c.; Shakespeare speaks of envy as
lean-faced in her loathsome case; and in another place he says, no
black envy shall make my grave; and again as above pale envy s
threatening reach.
Emotions and sensations have often been classed as exciting or
depressing. When all the organs of the body and mind, those of
voluntary and involuntary movement, of perception, sensation, thought,
&c., perform their functions more energetically and rapidly than usual,
a man or animal may be said to be excited, and, under an opposite
state, to be depressed. Anger and joy are from the first exciting
emotions, and they naturally lead, more especially the former, to
energetic movements, which react on the heart and this again on the
brain. A physician once remarked to me as a proof of the exciting
nature of anger, that a man when excessively jaded will sometimes
invent imaginary offences and put himself into a passion, unconsciously
for the sake of reinvigorating himself; and since hearing this remark,
I have occasionally recognized its full truth.
Several other states of mind appear to be at first exciting, but soon
become depressing to an extreme degree. When a mother suddenly loses
her child, sometimes she is frantic with grief, and must be considered
to be in an excited state; she walks wildly about, tears her hair or
clothes, and wrings her hands. This latter action is perhaps due to the
principle of antithesis, betraying an inward sense of helplessness and
that nothing can be done. The other wild and violent movements may be
in part explained by the relief experienced through muscular exertion,
and in part by the undirected overflow of nerve-force from the excited
sensorium. But under the sudden loss of a beloved person, one of the
first and commonest thoughts which occurs, is that something more might
have been done to save the lost one. An excellent observer,[312] in
describing the behaviour of a girl at the sudden death of her father,
says she went about the house wringing her hands like a creature
demented, saying It was her fault; I should never have left him;
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