For simplicity’s sake, I have described these as alternative routes, one or other of which any current of nerve-force must take; thereby, as it may be thought, implying that such current will be exclusively confined to some one of them.  But this is by no means the case.  Rarely, if ever, does it happen that a state of nervous tension, present to consciousness as a feeling, expends itself in one direction only.  Very generally it may be observed to expend itself in two; and it is probable that the discharge is never absolutely absent from any one of the three.  There is, however, variety in the proportions in which the discharge is divided among these different channels under different circumstances.  In a man whose fear impels him to run, the mental tension generated is only in part transformed into a muscular stimulus:  there is a surplus which causes a rapid current of ideas.  An agreeable state of feeling produced, say by praise, is not wholly used up in arousing the succeeding phase of the feeling, and the new ideas appropriate to it; but a certain portion overflows into the visceral nervous system, increasing the action of the heart, and probably facilitating digestion.  And here we come upon a class of considerations and facts which open the way to a solution of our special problem.

For starting with the unquestionable truth, that at any moment the existing quantity of liberated nerve-force, which in an inscrutable way produces in us the state we call feeling, must expend itself in some direction—­must generate an equivalent manifestation of force somewhere—­it clearly follows that, if of the several channels it may take, one is wholly or partially closed, more must be taken by the others; or that if two are closed, the discharge along the remaining one must be more intense; and that, conversely, should anything determine an unusual efflux in one direction, there will be a diminished efflux in other directions.

Daily experience illustrates these conclusions.  It is commonly remarked, that the suppression of external signs of feeling, makes feeling more intense.  The deepest grief is silent grief.  Why?  Because the nervous excitement not discharged in muscular action, discharges itself in other nervous excitements—­arouses more numerous and more remote associations of melancholy ideas, and so increases the mass of feelings.  People who conceal their anger are habitually found to be more revengeful than those who explode in loud speech and vehement action.  Why?  Because, as before, the emotion is reflected back, accumulates, and intensifies.  Similarly, men who, as proved by their powers of representation, have the keenest appreciation of the comic, are usually able to do and say the most ludicrous things with perfect gravity.