These convulsions quickly extend through the nervous system, and so
disturb the vital powers that they lose their perfection, and all organic
actions lose their equilibrium. The heart beats violently and
irregularly; the blood is so confined to the lungs that the failing pulse
has barely enough to sustain it. The internal chemical processes are at
cross-purposes; beneficent juices lose their way and work harm in other
provinces, while what is malignant may attack the very core of our
organism. In a word, the condition of the greatest mental distress
becomes the condition of the greatest bodily sickness.

The soul is informed of the threatened ruin of the organs that should
have been her good and willing servants by a thousand obscure sensations,
and is filled with an entire sensation of pain, associating itself to the
primary mental suffering, and giving to this a sharper sting.



S 15.--Examples.


Deep, chronic pains of the soul, especially if accompanied by a strong
exertion of thought--among which I would give a prominent place to that
lingering anger which men call indignation--gnaw the very foundations of
physical life, and dry up the sap that nourish it. Sufferers of this
kind have a worn and pale appearance, and the inward grief betrays itself
by the hollow, sunken eyes. "Let me," says Caesar, "have men about me
that are fat":--

Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o' nights;
Yond' Cassius has a lean and hungry look;