are to the mind, as exciting those conceptions which have been
appointed to correspond with the qualities of the material world,
the organs of the breast are to the development of our affections;
and without which we might see, hear, and smell, but we should
walk the earth coldly indifferent to all those emotions, which may
be said in an especial manner to actuate us, and give interest and
grace to human thoughts and actions.
By emotions are meant certain changes or affections of the mind,
as grief, joy, or astonishment. That such states or conditions of the
mind proceed from or in any degree pertain to the body, may not
perhaps willingly be admitted. This- may be, because we are not
prepared to admit that our ideas of sense, as light, sound, or taste,
are generated of the organs of the senses, and not by something
received and conveyed through them to the sensorium. It may
therefore be necessary to reflect that the different organs of the
senses can be exercised and give rise to sensation and perception,
when there is no corresponding outward impression; that the ideas
excited in the mind are according to the organ struck or agitated;
that the same impression conveyed to different organs of sense will
give occasion to a variety of ideas,—light, when the eye is struck,
sound, when the ear is struck, to ideas corresponding with the organs
exercised, not with the impression. A needle passed through the
retina, the organ of vision, will produce the sensation of a spark of
fire, not of sharpness or of pain; and the same needle may exercise
other organs, as the papilla; of taste on the tongue, or those of
touch in the skin; and with each there will be a new or distinct
impression.
Whilst we continue to believe that something is conveyed
through the organs of the senses to the sensorium, we must have a
very imperfect conception of the influence of the organization of
the body in eliciting or developing the activity of the mind. But
when we observe that the organs of the senses have an operation
on the mind, independent of external circumstances, we can better
comprehend how other organs of the body have a relation established
with the mind, and a control over it independent of outward
impressions.
Let us consider the heart in its office of receiving the influence
of the mind, and of reflecting that influence.
It is a singular fact in the history of physiological opinions,
that the heart, an organ the most susceptible in the whole frame,
whether excited by the emotions of the mind, or the agitations or
derangement of the body, should have been considered as insensible.
And yet in one sense this is true; to touch it is insensible, as was
exhibited to the illustrious Harvey in the person of a young nobleman
who had the heart exposed by an abscess. This single circumstance,
had there been no more, should have earlier directed the
minds of physicians to a correct view of this matter, by proving to
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