Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life by Erasmus Darwin
page 167 of 633 (26%)
page 167 of 633 (26%)
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ass. Which evinces, that these emotions are owing to previous associations.
So if the rumbling of a carriage in the street be for a moment mistaken for thunder, we receive a sublime sensation, which ceases as soon as we know it is the noise of a coach and six. There are other disagreeable sounds, that are said to set the teeth on edge; which, as they have always been thought a necessary effect of certain discordant notes, become a proper subject of our enquiry. Every one in his childhood has repeatedly bit a part of the glass or earthen vessel, in which his food has been given him, and has thence had a very disagreeable sensation in the teeth, which sensation was designed by nature to prevent us from exerting them on objects harder than themselves. The jarring sound produced between the cup and the teeth is always attendant on this disagreeable sensation: and ever after when such a sound is accidentally produced by the conflict of two hard bodies, we feel by association of ideas the concomitant disagreeable sensation in our teeth. Others have in their infancy frequently held the corner of a silk handkerchief in their mouth, or the end of the velvet cape of their coat, whilst their companions in play have plucked it from them, and have given another disagreeable sensation to their teeth, which has afterwards recurred on touching those materials. And the sight of a knife drawn along a china plate, though no sound is excited by it, and even the imagination of such a knife and plate so scraped together, I know by repeated experience will produce the same disagreeable sensation of the teeth. These circumstances indisputably prove, that this sensation of the tooth-edge is owing to associated ideas; as it is equally excitable by sight, touch, hearing, or imagination. |
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