Mark Antony : a comparative study in sub-hypnotic control, dominance or ascendency, and some of its causal factors / by J. Foster Palmer.

  • Palmer, J. Foster (James Foster)
Date:
[1913]
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: Mark Antony : a comparative study in sub-hypnotic control, dominance or ascendency, and some of its causal factors / by J. Foster Palmer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    / V/ rfy\ / ,J“/ \ /o / ,4 THE MERCHANT OF VENICE: A SHORT STUDY IN BORDERLAND MELANCHOLY. By J. FOSTER PALMER. “ Some men are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.” The same may be said of sadness. Some, if not actually born sad, go through the greater part of their lives with an almost complete lack of what are called, perhaps rightly called, “ animal spirits,”* who look habitually on the black side of things. It is their normal condition. As some men and women have a normal temperature of 97 degrees, so others have a similar defect in that particular form of nerve action, whatever it may be, which produces the joy of life and the vivid appreciation of its surroundings. With some, as we have said, this condition is normal. It is a part, and an unfortunate part, of their physiological make-up, and, be their external conditions what they may, never entirely leaves them. Some, on the other hand, have, by their own act, so exhausted their store of nervous energy that they permanently cease to have the active vital power necessary for the enjoyment of existence: while some, through no fault of their own, are brought to such a condition by a series of untoward circumstances. Such cases, however, are usually temporary, and improve when the external conditions alter. In other words, “ some are born sad, some acquire sadness, and some have sadness forced upon them. Which of these is the condition of the Merchant of Venice ? The opening scene of the play presents him at once in a state of great gloom and deep depi’ession of spirits, the cause of which he himself is quite unable to trace. It is not quite clear whether this depression is a chronic condition, or only a temporary one of more or less recent growth. The attempt to trace the cause, and the suggestion Professor Leonard Hill, the well-known physiologist, uses this expression, which, formerly so prevalent, had become obsolete, in a literal sense. He applies it, I believe, to the central portion, or axis-cylinder, of the nerve, which he believes to be in a fluid state in the living subject. The word seems to be practically synonymous with the more prevalent term “ nerve impulse.” Vol. XXI.—No. 6. B
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