does on the whole, to that extent paralyzes the action of the will. Hence, although a passing smart may waken up the activity, an intense and continuing pain will fail in the effect.

The movements that constitute the proper emotional manifestations, are apt to be mixed up and complicated with movements directed by the will with a view to relief. It is generally easy to discriminate the two classes, and it is important for understanding our mental structure that they should be discriminated. The volitional movements are such as are maintained solely because they bring a felt alleviation. If any specific posture is of this character, it is energetically adhered to; and if the mere vehemence of the outburst is found to deaden our sensibility to the pain, we are induced thereby to keep up the gesticulations prompted in the first instance by the emotional wave. Even in the lower animals, when we witness the convulsions that follow a shock to the physical system, we may satisfy ourselves as to the existence of true volitional movements, in company with the demonstrations that are the proper embodiment of the pain.

If we wish to measure the volitional urgency of a feeling, we can adopt the same mode of comparison as that suggested for the degree of pleasure or pain. When two feelings prompt in opposite ways, the one that determines the conduct is said to be volitionally the stronger.

There remains now the bearing of the feelings in question on the Intellect. Here, as in the Will, there is a general principle, liable to exceptions and modifications according to the circumstances of each particular case. The principle is, that feelings are discriminated, identified, and remembered according to their degree, whether in intensity or in quantity. This law holds within a moderate range of excitement. A very feeble impression cannot be nicely discriminated, and is little remembered. But the limitation arises when the degree is excessive and overpowering. There is a pitch of physical agony that overpowers the purely intellectual function of discrimination; and although retentiveness is

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stimulated by intensity, the remembrance becomes more and more inadequate to the fullness of the reality. Not only are we unable to re-instate the acuteness of the suffering, but we are unable to figure to ourselves even the character of the pain, until it has become familiar by many repetitions. When the same, or nearly the same, pain recurs, we can mark the agreement, which is a true intellectual function, requiring for its exercise the retentive property also; but we have little power of remembering or imagining the peculiar features, or the characteristic consciousness of an acute misery.

A good retentiveness for acute pains has not the intellectual importance possessed by the memory for sights and sounds, but it has a twofold practical importance. In the first place, on it depends the exercise of the will in the way of prevention. When a feeling ceases in the actual, it can have no volitional power, except as it is vividly presented in idea; and on this ground, the more lively the recollection, the more energetically are we moved in our precautionary labours as regards the future. The degree of retentiveness for pain is thus the intellectual foundation of Prudence. It is, in the second place, the foundation of Sympathy, or the power of entering into the feelings of others when suffering under a like infliction.

4. The muscular pains that have been the subject of the above description, are those arising from cuts, lacerations, and violent injuries, being the incidents that every tissue is liable to. We have not included the characteristic pain of musclecramp, or spasm. Cramp is well known to be a violent contraction of a muscle, in whole or in part, due to some irritation of the motor nerves that supply the muscle. It is a contraction probably far beyond what can be induced by a voluntary effort, and does not relate itself in any way to a power consciously proceeding from the brain. The state of cramp acts violently upon the sensitive fibres of the muscle; and, according to Dr. Brown-Séquard, the pain is in proportion to the resistance offered to the muscle's contraction. 'I suppose,' he says, 'a case of painful contraction of the anterior muscles

of the thigh; the pain is increased every time the contracted muscles are elongated; i. e., when the resistance to the contraction is augmented; on the other hand, it diminishes when the resistance to the contraction is rendered less than it was, and, at last, it disappears entirely, or almost entirely, when the resistance is completely, or almost completely, destroyed.'— (Lectures, p. 7.) The pains in the uterus are of the nature of spasm, and are relieved by the discharge of the contents. An explanation is now afforded of what was at first considered a paradoxical fact, the production of pain by stimulating the anterior, or the motor, roots of the spinal nerves. The effect of such stimulation is to contract the muscles, not in that measured and moderate degree occuring in their contraction by the will, but with the violence of cramp, thereby imparting a shock to the sensitive nerves of the muscle. When the posterior, or sensitive, roots of the nerves are cut, the pain appears no longer. These explanations are interesting, as they remove what appeared objections to the discovery associated with the name of Bell.

It is not requisite to repeat the particulars of the systematic description for this peculiar case. It ranks with the class of acute pains in all the general characters. But it is, perhaps, in its nature the most acute and violent of any. We can discriminate it from cuts, scalds, inflammations, and sores; the familiar name 'racking' pain describes and classifies it. Wherever we have the experience characterized by this epithet, it is probable that the seat is in the muscles, and that the action is cramp or spasm. The involuntary muscles of the uterus, and of the alimentary canal, occasion the most aggravated forms of the pain.

5. Another class of feelings connected with the muscles may be specified under the same general head of Organic Feelings, those arising from over-fatigue. This cause is known to produce acute pains of various degrees of intensity, from the easily endurable up to severe suffering. It is not necessary to advert to these more specifically, they being sufficiently comprehended by referring them to the genus of acute pains

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of the muscles; they are part of the misery attending manual toil; they are also used in punishment.

The characteristic state of supporting a heavy burden is a form of general depression, to which many modes of suffering are habitually compared.

Very different is the state of feeling produced by mere ordinary fatigue, which we may introduce in the present connexion. This is a state not at all painful, but the opposite. It is one of the pleasurable experiences allied with the muscular system.

In this case, there is a pleasurable feeling, more massive than acute. If a considerable number of the larger muscles have been in exercise, the sensibility is proportionably great. Various elements may enter into the effect. The circulation of the blood, directed strongly for a time to the muscular tissue, now returns in a more liberal supply to the other organs, the brain, the stomach, &c., and the general sensibility of the system is increased. There is, in the next place, an agreeable reaction from what may have been the commencing pains of fatigue. Allowing for those two collateral effects, we are still to suppose that the muscle itself gives rise to a certain pleasurable feeling when in this state. The degree of it may be, on the whole, considerable; it is one of the pleasures of a life of hard exercise or bodily toil, and taken along with the luxurious slumbers and the general sensation of health following in its train, it must be regarded as an appreciable fraction of human enjoyment.

The connexion already remarked on between slow movements and approaching sleep, extends also to muscular repose and sleep. The massive. sensation experienced as we fall asleep, has its seat, in no inconsiderable degree, in the muscular tissue, especially after hard exercise, when this sensibility is most powerfully manifested.

6. I will pass over with very few remarks the Bones and Ligaments. Their sensibility is exclusively connected with injury or disease, appearing in that case under the form of acute pain, a form of sensibility that it is sufficient to have

dwelt upon once for all. The minute discrimination of forms of pain is of great service to the physician, and, if susceptible of being accomplished with precision, would enter with propriety into a systematic delineation of the Human Mind. At present we require only to remark, that sensibility everywhere demands a distribution of nerve fibres, and that the bones and ligaments are supplied with these; and although not in great number, they are yet sufficient to agitate the nerve centres with overpowering intensity on particular occasions. The diseases and lacerations of the periosteum give birth to excessive pains. The ligaments are said to be insensible to the cut of a knife, while the feeling of their being wrenched is most acute and painful. In extreme fatigue, the ligaments and the tendons of the muscles would appear to conspire with the muscular tissue, in giving rise to the disagreeable feeling of the situation. The joints are noted on various occasions as the seat of pain; for example, in gout. The diminution of atmospheric pressure consequent on ascending a great elevation, causes an intense feeling of weariness in the hip joints. This is shown by experiments to be a muscular pain. The rarefaction of the air diminishes the support of the limb, and it falls down in the joint by its own weight, thereby becoming an additional burden to the muscles. Fracture of the bones and laceration of the ligaments are among the agonizing incidents of our precarious existence.

Organic Sensations of Nerve.

7. The nerves and nerve centres, apart from their action as the organs or medium of all human sensibility, have a class of feelings arising from the organic condition of their own tissue. Wounds and diseases of the nerves are productive of intense pains; witness tic-douloureux and the neuralgic affections of the brain and spinal cord. Nervous exhaustion and fatigue produces a well known sensibility, very distressing in its extreme forms; and repose, refreshment, and stimulants