7. In this vertigo from internal causes we see objects double, as two
candles instead of one, which is thus explained. Two lines drawn through
the axes of our two eyes meet at the object we attend to: this angle of the
optic axes increases or diminishes with the less or greater distances of
objects. All objects before or behind the place where this angle is formed,
appear double; as any one may observe by holding up a pen between his eyes
and the candle; when he looks attentively at a spot on the pen, and
carelessly at the candle, it will appear double; and the reverse when he
looks attentively at the candle and carelessly at the pen; so that in this
case the muscles of the eye, like those of the limbs, stagger and are
disobedient to the expiring efforts of volition. Numerous objects are
indeed sometimes seen by the inebriate, occasioned by the refractions made
by the tears, which stand upon his eye-lids.
8. This vertigo also continues, when the inebriate lies in his bed, in the
dark, or with his eyes closed; and this more powerfully than when he is
erect, and in the light. For the irritative ideas of the apparent motions
of objects are now excited by irritation from internal stimulus, or by
association with other irritative motions; and the inebriate, like one in a
dream, believes the objects of these irritative motions to be present, and
feels himself vertiginous. I have observed in this situation, so long as my
eyes and mind were intent upon a book, the sickness and vertigo ceased, and
were renewed again the moment I discontinued this attention; as was
explained in the preceding account of sea-sickness. Some drunken people
have been known to become sober instantly from some accident, that has
strongly excited their attention, as the pain of a broken bone, or the news
of their house being on fire.
9. Sometimes the vertigo from internal causes, as from intoxication, or at
the beginning of some fevers, becomes so universal, that the irritative
motions which belong to other organs of sense are succeeded by sensation or
attention, as well as those of the eye. The vertiginous noise in the ears
has been explained in Section XX. on Vertigo. The taste of the saliva,
which in general is not attended to, becomes perceptible, and the patients
complain of a bad taste in their mouth.
The common smells of the surrounding air sometimes excite the attention of
these patients, and bad smells are complained of, which to other people are
imperceptible. The irritative motions that belong to the sense of pressure,
or of touch, are attended to, and the patient conceives the bed to librate,
and is fearful of falling out of it. The irritative motions belonging to
the senses of distention, and of heat, like those above mentioned, become
attended to at this time: hence we feel the pulsation of our arteries all
over us, and complain of heat, or of cold, in parts of the body where there
is no accumulation or diminution of actual heat. All which are to be
explained, as in the last paragraph, by the irritative ideas belonging to
the various senses being now excited by internal stimuli, or by their
associations with other irritative motions. And that the inebriate, like
one in a dream, believes the external objects, which usually caused these
irritative ideas, to be now present.
10. The diseases in consequence of frequent inebriety, or of daily taking
much vinous spirit without inebriety, consist in the paralysis, which is
liable to succeed violent stimulation. Organs, whose actions are associated
with others, are frequently more affected than the organ, which is
stimulated into too violent action. See Sect. XXIV. 2. 8. Hence in drunken
people it generally happens, that the secretory vessels of the liver become
first paralytic, and a torpor with consequent gall-stones or schirrus of
this viscus is induced with concomitant jaundice; otherwise it becomes
inflamed in consequence of previous torpor, and this inflammation is
frequently transferred to a more sensible part, which is associated with
it, and produces the gout, or the rosy eruption of the face, or some other
leprous eruption on the head, or arms, or legs. Sometimes the stomach is
first affected, and paralysis of the lacteal system is induced: whence a
total abhorrence from flesh-food, and general emaciation. In others the
lymphatic system is affected with paralysis, and dropsy is the consequence.
In some inebriates the torpor of the liver produces pain without apparent
schirrus, or gall stones, or inflammation, or consequent gout, and in these
epilepsy or insanity are often the consequence. All which will be more
fully treated of in the course of the work.
I am well aware, that it is a common opinion, that the gout is as
frequently owing to gluttony in eating, as to intemperance in drinking
fermented or spirituous liquors. To this I answer, that I have seen no
person afflicted with the gout, who has not drank freely of fermented
liquor, as wine and water, or small beer; though as the disposition to all
the diseases, which have originated from intoxication, is in some degree
hereditary, a less quantity of spirituous potation will induce the gout in
those, who inherit the disposition from their parents. To which I must add,
that in young people the rheumatism is frequently mistaken for the gout.
Spice is seldom taken in such quantity as to do any material injury to the
system, flesh-meats as well as vegetables are the natural diet of mankind;
with these a glutton may be crammed up to the throat, and fed fat like a
stalled ox; but he will not be diseased, unless he adds spirituous or
fermented liquor to his food. This is well known in the distilleries, where
the swine, which are fattened by the spirituous sediments of barrels,
acquire diseased livers. But mark what happens to a man, who drinks a quart
of wine or of ale, if he has not been habituated to it. He loses the use
both of his limbs and of his understanding! He becomes a temporary idiot,
and has a temporary stroke of the palsy! And though he slowly recovers
after some hours, is it not reasonable to conclude, that a perpetual
repetition of so powerful a poison must at length permanently affect
him?--If a person accidentally becomes intoxicated by eating a few
mushrooms of a peculiar kind, a general alarm is excited, and he is said to
be poisoned, and emetics are exhibited; but so familiarised are we to the
intoxication from vinous spirit, that it occasions laughter rather than
alarm.
There is however considerable danger in too hastily discontinuing the use
of so strong a stimulus, lest the torpor of the system, or paralysis,
should sooner be induced by the omission than by the continuance of this
habit, when unfortunately acquired. A golden rule for determining the
quantity, which may with safety be discontinued, is delivered in Sect. XII.
7. 8.
11. Definition of drunkenness. Many of the irritative motions are much
increased in energy by internal stimulation.
2. A great additional quantity of pleasurable sensation is occasioned by
this increased exertion of the irritative motions. And many sensitive
motions are produced in consequence of this increased sensation.
3. The associated trains and tribes of motions, catenated with the
increased irritative and sensitive motions, are disturbed, and proceed in
confusion.
4. The faculty of volition is gradually impaired, whence proceeds the
instability of locomotion, inaccuracy of perception, and inconsistency of
ideas; and is at length totally suspended, and a temporary apoplexy
succeeds.
* * * * *
SECT. XXII.
OF PROPENSITY TO MOTION, REPETITION AND IMITATION.
I. _Accumulation of sensorial power in hemiplagia, in sleep, in cold
fit of fever, in the locomotive muscles, in the organs of sense.
Produces propensity to action._ II. _Repetition by three sensorial
powers. In rhimes and alliterations, in music, dancing, architecture,
landscape-painting, beauty._ III. 1. _Perception consists in imitation.
Four kinds of imitation._ 2. _Voluntary. Dogs taught to dance._ 3.
_Sensitive. Hence sympathy, and all our virtues. Contagious matter of
venereal ulcers, of hydrophobia, of jail-fever, of small-pox, produced
by imitation, and the sex of the embryon._ 4. _Irritative imitation._
5. _Imitations resolvable into associations._
I. 1. In the hemiplagia, when the limbs on one side have lost their power
of voluntary motion, the patient is for many days perpetually employed in
moving those of the other. 2. When the voluntary power is suspended during
sleep, there commences a ceaseless flow of sensitive motions, or ideas of
imagination, which compose our dreams. 3. When in the cold fit of an
intermittent fever some parts of the system have for a time continued
torpid, and have thus expended less than their usual expenditure of
sensorial power; a hot fit succeeds, with violent action of those vessels,
which had previously been quiescent. All these are explained from an
accumulation of sensorial power during the inactivity of some part of the
system.
Besides the very great quantity of sensorial power perpetually produced and
expended in moving the arterial, venous, and glandular systems, with the
various organs or digestion, as described in Section XXXII. 3. 2. there is
also a constant expenditure of it by the action of our locomotive muscles
and organs of sense. Thus the thickness of the optic nerves, where they
enter the eye, and the great expansion of the nerves of touch beneath the
whole of the cuticle, evince the great consumption of sensorial power by
these senses. And our perpetual muscular actions in the common offices of
life, and in constantly preserving the perpendicularity of our bodies
during the day, evince a considerable expenditure of the spirit of
animation by our locomotive muscles. It follows, that if the exertion of
these organs of sense and muscles be for a while intermitted, that some
quantity of sensorial power must be accumulated, and a propensity to
activity of some kind ensue from the increased excitability of the system.
Whence proceeds the irksomeness of a continued attitude, and of an indolent
life.
However small this hourly accumulation of the spirit of animation may be,
it produces a propensity to some kind of action; but it nevertheless
requires either desire or aversion, either pleasure or pain, or some
external stimulus, or a previous link of association, to excite the system
into activity; thus it frequently happens, when the mind and body are so
unemployed as not to possess any of the three first kinds of stimuli, that
the last takes place, and consumes the small but perpetual accumulation of
sensorial power. Whence some indolent people repeat the same verse for
hours together, or hum the same tune. Thus the poet:
Onward he trudged, not knowing what he sought,
And whistled, as he went, for want of thought.
II. The repetitions of motions may be at first produced either by volition,
or by sensation, or by irritation, but they soon become easier to perform
than any other kinds of action, because they soon become associated
together, according to Law the seventh, Section IV. on Animal Causation.
And because their frequency of repetition, if as much sensorial power be
produced during every reiteration as is expended, adds to the facility of
their production.
If a stimulus be repeated at uniform intervals of time, as described in
Sect. XII. 3. 3. the action, whether of our muscles or organs of sense, is
produced with still greater facility or energy; because the sensorial power
of association, mentioned above, is combined with the sensorial power of
irritation; that is, in common language, the acquired habit assists the
power of the stimulus.
This not only obtains in the annual, lunar, and diurnal catenations of
animal motions, as explained in Sect. XXXVI. which are thus performed with
great facility and energy; but in every less circle of actions or ideas, as
in the burthen of a song, or the reiterations of a dance. To the facility
and distinctness, with which we hear sounds at repeated intervals, we owe
the pleasure, which we receive from musical time, and from poetic time; as
described in Botanic Garden, P. 2. Interlude 3. And to this the pleasure we
receive from the rhimes and alliterations of modern verification; the
source of which without this key would be difficult to discover. And to
this likewise should be ascribed the beauty of the duplicature in the
perfect tense of the Greek verbs, and of some Latin ones, as tango tetegi,
mordeo momordi.
There is no variety of notes referable to the gamut in the beating of the
drum, yet if it be performed in musical time, it is agreeable to our ears;
and therefore this pleasurable sensation must be owing to the repetition of
the divisions of the sounds at certain intervals of time, or musical bars.
Whether these times or bars are distinguished by a pause, or by an
emphasis, or accent, certain it is, that this distinction is perpetually
repeated; otherwise the ear could not determine instantly, whether the
successions of sound were in common or in triple time. In common time there
is a division between every two crotchets, or other notes of equivalent
time; though the bar in written music is put after every fourth crotchet,
or notes equivalent in time; in triple time the division or bar is after
every three crotchets, or notes equivalent; so that in common time the
repetition recurs more frequently than in triple time. The grave or heroic
verses of the Greek and Latin poets are written in common time; the French
heroic verses, and Mr. Anstie's humorous verses in his Bath Guide, are
written in the same time as the Greek and Latin verses, but are one bar
shorter. The English grave or heroic verses are measured by triple time, as
Mr. Pope's translation of Homer.
But besides these little circles of musical time, there are the greater
returning periods, and the still more distant choruses, which, like the
rhimes at the ends of verses, owe their beauty to repetition; that is, to
the facility and distinctness with which we perceive sounds, which we
expect to perceive, or have perceived before; or in the language of this
work, to the greater ease and energy with which our organ is excited by the
combined sensorial powers of association and irritation, than by the latter
singly.
A certain uniformity or repetition of parts enters the very composition of
harmony. Thus two octaves nearest to each other in the scale commence their
vibrations together after every second vibration of the higher one. And
where the first, third, and fifth compose a chord the vibrations concur or
coincide frequently, though less to than in the two octaves. It is probable
that these chords bear some analogy to a mixture of three alternate colours
in the sun's spectrum separated by a prism.
The pleasure we receive from a melodious succession of notes referable to
the gamut is derived from another source, viz. to the pandiculation or
counteraction of antagonist fibres. See Botanic Garden, P. 2. Interlude 3.
If to these be added our early associations of agreeable ideas with certain
proportions of sound, I suppose, from these three sources springs all the
delight of music, so celebrated by ancient authors, and so enthusiastically
cultivated at present. See Sect. XVI. No. 10. on Instinct.
This kind of pleasure arising from repetition, that is from the facility
and distinctness, with which we perceive and understand repeated
sensations, enters into all the agreeable arts; and when it is carried to
excess is termed formality. The art of dancing like that of music depends
for a great part of the pleasure, it affords, on repetition; architecture,
especially the Grecian, consists of one part being a repetition of another;
and hence the beauty of the pyramidal outline in landscape-painting; where
one side of the picture may be said in some measure to balance the other.
So universally does repetition contribute to our pleasure in the fine arts,
that beauty itself has been defined by some writers to consist in a due
combination of uniformity and variety. See Sect. XVI. 6.
III. 1. Man is termed by Aristotle an imitative animal; this propensity to
imitation not only appears in the actions of children, but in all the
customs and fashions of the world: many thousands tread in the beaten paths
of others, for one who traverses regions of his own discovery. The origin
of this propensity of imitation has not, that I recollect, been deduced
from any known principle; when any action presents itself to the view of a
child, as of whetting a knife, or threading a needle, the parts of this
action in respect of time, motion, figure, is imitated by a part of the
retina of his eye; to perform this action therefore with his hands is
easier to him than to invent any new action, because it consists in
repeating with another set of fibres, viz. with the moving muscles, what he
had just performed by some parts of the retina; just as in dancing we
transfer the times of motion from the actions of the auditory nerves to the
muscles of the limbs. Imitation therefore consists of repetition, which we
have shewn above to be the easiest kind of animal action, and which we
perpetually fall into, when we possess an accumulation of sensorial power,
which is not otherwise called into exertion.
It has been shewn, that our ideas are configurations of the organs of
sense, produced originally in consequence of the stimulus of external
bodies. And that these ideas, or configurations of the organs of sense,
referable in some property a correspondent property of external matter; as
the parts of the senses of light and of touch, which are excited into
action, resemble in figure the figure of the stimulating body; and probably
also the colour, and the quantity of density, which they perceive. As
explained in Sect. XIV. 2. 2. Hence it appears, that our perceptions
themselves are copies, that is, imitations of some properties of external
matter; and the propensity to imitation is thus interwoven with our
existence, as it is produced by the stimuli of external bodies, and is
afterwards repeated by our volitions and sensations, and thus constitutes
all the operations of our minds.
2. Imitations resolve themselves into four kinds, voluntary, sensitive,
irritative, and associate. The voluntary imitations are, when we imitate
deliberately the actions of others, either by mimicry, as in acting a play,
or in delineating a flower; or in the common actions of our lives, as in
our dress, cookery, language, manners, and even in our habits of thinking.
Not only the greatest part of mankind learn all the common arts of life by
imitating others, but brute animals seem capable of acquiring knowledge
with greater facility by imitating each other, than by any methods by which
we can teach them; as dogs and cats, when they are sick, learn of each
other to eat grass; and I suppose, that by making an artificial dog perform
certain tricks, as in dancing on his hinder legs, a living dog might be
easily induced to imitate them; and that the readiest way of instructing
dumb animals is by practising them with others of the same species, which
have already learned the arts we wish to teach them. The important use of
imitation in acquiring natural language is mentioned in Section XVI. 7. and
8. on Instinct.
3. The sensitive imitations are the immediate consequences of pleasure or
pain, and these are often produced even contrary to the efforts of the
will. Thus many young men on seeing cruel surgical operations become sick,
and some even feel pain in the parts of their own bodies, which they see
tortured or wounded in others; that is, they in some measure imitate by the
exertions of their own fibres the violent actions, which they witnessed in
those of others. In this case a double imitation takes place, first the
observer imitates with the extremities of the optic nerve the mangled
limbs, which are present before his eyes; then by a second imitation he
excites to violent action of the fibres of his own limbs as to produce pain
in those parts of his own body, which he saw wounded in another. In these
pains produced by imitation the effect has some similarity to the cause,
which distinguishes them from those produced by association; as the pains
of the teeth, called tooth-edge, which are produced by association with
disagreeable sounds, as explained in Sect. XVI. 10.
The effect of this powerful agent, imitation, in the moral world, is
mentioned in Sect. XVI. 7. as it is the foundation of all our intellectual
sympathies with the pains and pleasures of others, and is in consequence
the source of all our virtues. For in what consists our sympathy with the
miseries, or with the joys, of our fellow creatures, but in an involuntary
excitation of ideas in some measure similar or imitative of those, which we
believe to exist in the minds of the persons, whom we commiserate or
congratulate?
There are certain concurrent or successive actions of some of the glands,
or other parts of the body, which are possessed of sensation, which become
intelligible from this propensity to imitation. Of these are the production
of matter by the membranes of the fauces, or by the skin, in consequence of
the venereal disease previously affecting the parts of generation. Since as
no fever is excited, and as neither the blood of such patients, nor even
the matter from ulcers of the throat, or from cutaneous ulcers, will by
inoculation produce the venereal disease in others, as observed by Mr.
Hunter, there is reason to conclude, that no contagious matter is conveyed
thither by the blood-vessels, but that a milder matter is formed by the
actions of the fine vessels in those membranes imitating each other. See