course clearly; this is not surprise, because the mind is not thrown into sudden confusion. But when we have followed a clear principle that seemed evident and are brought suddenly to a contradiction, we are surprised and confused. It is this sudden confusion of mind, with its feeling of shock, suspending both our self-controlled and our impulsive actions, that distinguishes surprise from other states of confusion and conflict.

The common mind has then distinguished this state of shock and confusion, and named it surprise. For such a sudden feeling stands out distinctly from preceding and subsequent events; and, being so distinct and impressive, is naturally named. What importance it has for science, and what effects it has on mental life, we shall now attempt to estimate.

4. Of the Tendencies of Surprise.

If asked, What are the uses of Fear or Anger? we should think of their numerous impulses and ends, and of their general functions in the economy of the mind. But what impulse and end has Surprise? This question is difficult to answer because surprise is so often, if not always, mixed with some other emotion, and that which belongs to the second may be attributed to the first. But we can now distinguish its tendencies from those both of fear and anger, and should not think of attributing to it either the impulses of shrinking, concealment, and flight of the one, or those of threat, punishment, and destruction of the other. But there is another emotion with which, on the theory of Adam Smith, it has peculiarly close relations. For according to that theory we must hold that the new arouses both surprise and wonder, because in the new there is some element of the unexpected. With curiosity, at least, it is so closely connected that they may seem to be one emotion.

In all the varieties of surprise to which we have referred there is some question expressed or implied. When we are startled by a noise we say," What is it?" When we meet a friend in a place where we have never seen him before, we ask "How did he come to be there?" If we are surprised by

his altered appearance, we look at him with a mute inquiry. When we are struck by the face of a stranger in our company, we ask, "Who is he?" Of a new appliance, "What is its use ? Even when a child springs upon us from its hidingplace, if we do not express a question, that is because the answer is at once forthcoming. According to Descartes, surprise was the only emotion which had neither "good nor evil for its object, but only the knowledge of the thing which surprises us." 1 Yet in all these cases the silent or spoken interrogation may not belong to surprise.

If we compare surprise with wonder, what seems to be a chief difference between them, as inferred from the customary words or phrases we use to express them, is just the absence of curiosity from the former and its presence in the latter. For the peculiar attitude of surprise is expressed in exclamations: 'Oh!''Ah!'' Good gracious!' As its thought is too confused at first to frame an intelligible statement, so it cannot at first ask a question. The greater the surprise, the more is it confounded, petrified, and dumb. Only as we recover from our surprise, curiosity, in so many cases, supervenes and mixes with it. But wonder, although its inquiry is so often mute and repressed, essentially contains curiosity. Even common idioms support this conclusion. We say we are surprised at an occurrence; but we wonder what it means.

There are certain compounds of surprise in which it mingles with other emotions that exclude curiosity, even when the degree of surprise is moderate; as the surprise of sudden admiration with its exclamation, "Oh! how beautiful!" or the surprise of gratitude at some unexpected kindness, with its "Oh ! thank you: how good of you!" Though here we sometimes add in receiving a present: "Do you really mean it?" "Is it really mine?" There is, too, the surprise of horror with its exclamation, "How awful!"

The interval of surprise corresponds, as we have seen, to physiological failure, to an inability to adapt oneself to a new situation, and to a mental failure to interpret what has

1 Op. cit., Art. 71, 'N'ayant pas le bien ni le mal pour objet, mais seulement la connaissance de la chose qu'on admire.'

occurred,-proportionate, in both, to the intensity of the surprise. Its essential attitude is one of exclamation, giving expression to the emotion itself, but neither framing questions nor propositions about the cause of it. These follow in proportion as surprise subsides, or when it is of such moderate intensity from the beginning that they can be combined with it.

We conclude, therefore, that the one impulse which, at first sight, we are inclined, with Descartes, to attribute to it, that involved in understanding the surprising event itself, belongs to either curiosity or wonder. Lacking this impulse, we cannot regard it as an emotional system: it has neither impulse nor end. It is a temporary state of disorganisation.

If surprise, in distinction from the other primary emotions, does not strive to fulfil an end, it has other and non-conative tendencies, some of which we have already noticed. It is a signal that something requires to be attended to and understood. It indirectly excites the mind to give this attention to the object. Hence it so often excites curiosity or wonder. There is a striking contrast between the negligent way in which we pass by familiar things and give marked attention to those that are new. This difference might be attributed to the pleasure which novelty arouses; but this pleasure must be itself referred to surprise. It is because new things cannot be assimilated in the mechanical, subconscious way in which the old are, because they arouse at least a momentary suspense and conflict,-that they frequently afford us pleasure. For this stimulates mental activity, which languishes among old and familiar things. A large part of our enjoyments from day to day are due to surprise. For so many things that we enjoy at first, we cease to enjoy when they no longer surprise us.

It is then a law that (97) The effect of surprise is to make us attend to the event that surprises us. But this is not the same thing as to say that surprise has an impulse to attend to it. Under an intense shock of surprise we are for the moment too confused to attend to anything. The stupid gaze and open mouth of surprise look quite different from the

intelligent glance of attention. The one shows that we are momentarily bereft of our faculties; the other that we are in full possession of them. But the passage from one to the other is often so rapid that we are apt to confound them; though the one declines as the other increases. It is, then, a law that (98) Surprise survives with diminishing intensity in the act of attention that follows it.

There is a familiar law that we may next notice. (99) Surprise tends to free the mind from what before occupied it. It is therefore a frequent cause of forgetfulness. We have to give our attention and thought to the surprising event; and this takes them away from what before occupied us. Thus we try to distract a child when it is crying or suffering discomfort by showing it new things. Hence it is that when anyone is suffering from mental trouble he is recommended to go to new places, and to find new occupations. If this influence of surprise only lasts so long as the new event or situation is not interpreted and understood, yet, by providing fresh occasions of surprise, we can renew this influence.

The law to which Adam Smith drew attention, that surprise intensifies every emotion with which it blends, has certain important consequences. (100) Surprise, in proportion to its intensity, tends to diminish the efficiency of the emotion excited with it. The mind, being bewildered, cannot adapt itself to the situation. If we stand stock still with gaping mouth and staring eyes, we are neither able to escape from sudden danger, nor to avenge a sudden insult. We may be so surprised by an unexpected kindness that we cannot express our thanks. Now, in all these cases, the particular impulses of the emotion are arrested, and its system is disorganised, by the action of surprise, in proportion as the intensity is great.

There are certain recorded cases of extreme surprise which are evidence that it not only inhibits the impulse of the emotion blended with it, but that it sometimes prevents our feeling the emotion which otherwise we should feel in the situation. As the impulses which belong to different emotions have never been carefully discriminated, we must

expect that the effects which are due to surprise will be sometimes attributed to the emotion combined with it.

In the case to which we have already referred1 of the native who saw a man on horseback for the first time, his astonishment prevented him acting on the impulse of his fear. He stood incapable of moving a limb, riveted to the spot, mouth open and eyes staring." This expression and behaviour we must judge to be the effect of his surprise, not of surprise and fear together. For there is neither an attempt to take to flight nor to conceal himself; nor is there the state of collapse which is sometimes the effect of extreme fear. That the impulses to take to flight and conceal himself are at first arrested, is clear from his subsequent behaviour. For as the first petrifying effect of his surprise diminished, these impulses asserted themselves. "He remained motionless

until our black got within a few yards of him, when suddenly throwing down his waddies, he jumped into a mulga bush as high as he could get." Yet fear was present with surprise from the beginning, if we may trust the person who observed the occurrence. For as he approached the man unseen and called to him, the man, he says, "turned round and saw me. What he imagined I was I do not know but a finer picture of fear and astonishment I never saw."

In another case we shall find that fear was not felt at first, but only astonishment, although the situation was one of extreme and sudden danger. Mr. Ch. Richardson, the well-known engineer of the Severn Tunnel, has recorded several instances of railway servants and others being so affected by the approach of a train that they have been unable to save themselves by getting out of the way, though there was ample time to do so. This may have been through the effect of terror. But one man, who was nearly killed in this way, only just saving himself in time, informed me that he experienced no feeling of terror; he was unable to explain why, but he couldn't help watching the train as it darted towards him. In this case it seems to have been a sort of hypertrophy of attention. His attention was so riveted that he was unable to make, or rather he felt no desire to 1 Supra, p. 426. Darwin, op. cit. ch. xii.

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