Note 15 — Chapter VI · GENERAL DIFFERENCES OF THE TWO LIVES WITH RESPECT TO MENTAL AFFECTION.
F. Gold translation
Bichat, in this paragraph, seems to say that the perceptions, which produce in us the passions, go directly and without the intervention of the brain, from the senses to the organs which he supposes to be affected by them. We cannot believe that such was his idea. The paragraph which follows must aid us in understanding it, and we shall endeavour to elucidate it by means of an example.
A certain event happens; a man is informed of it by means of his senses; he examines the event in itself, and its relations with antecedent and future events; his judgment weighs the various consequences of it, and shows them to be very disadvantageous to him. Here, as Bichat calls it, is a cold series of intellectual phenomena, which would take place in the individual, whoever the man may be who is affected by the event to which he has given his attention. It is found that the man who is injured is himself; then, from a knowledge of this only, his heart is sympathetically affected; its motions become more rapid and stronger, they send to the brain a greater quantity of blood, and this increase of habitual excitement in the organ of thought, produces a kind of mental attention in relation to the event that has taken place.
Thus, without the part that the heart has taken in it, this man would have seen with the most perfect indifference an event most disastrous to himself; for without even supposing anger, the least sentiment of sadness being a passion, we cannot believe that he is affected with it, if his liver, stomach or spleen are not at the moment in a particular state. But does not every thing on the contrary lead us to believe that anger exists before the agitation of the heart, and that this is the effect of it and not the cause? This agitation of the heart without doubt, by sending to the brain a greater quantity of blood than usual, contributes in its turn to develop and support the kind of alienation which accompanies anger; but it is necessary that the passion should already exist, since a favourable event, by producing as rapid motions of the heart, will produce nothing similar.