ABSTRACT
The phenomena of sensibility, like all phenomena of vital activity, are susceptible of alternate lowering and exaltation, and of presenting maxima and minima of oscillation, in the interval between which their average periods are comprised. The processes of anæsthesia and pain appear to develop like those of normal sensibility, independently of any nervous plexus which underlies them, from the simple fact of the existence of a cell capable of living and feeling. Moral pain is only the expression of the moral sensibility carried to its maximum of intensity, as physical pain is but the most exquisite form of the physical sensibility thrown into agitation. The moral life of an individual, his stock of natural sensibility and emotivity, is therefore kept in a condition of freshness and integrity only by the incessant activity of his memory, and intelligence, and the conscious perception of the things of the external world.
