If one could, by the help of a time-machine, see for a moment in the flesh the little Egyptian girl who wore out her shoes, one might find her behaving so charmingly that one's pity for her death would be increased.

But it is more probable that, even if she was, in fact, a very nice little girl, one would not.
This greater immediate facility of the emotions set up by artistic presentment, as compared with those resulting from concrete observation has, however, to be studied in its relation to another fact--that impulses vary, in their driving force and in the depth of the nervous disturbance which they cause, in proportion, not to their importance in our present life, but to the point at which they appeared in our evolutionary past.

We are quite unable to resist the impulse of mere vascular and nervous reaction, the watering of the mouth, the jerk of the limb, the closing of the eye which we share with some of the simplest vertebrates.

We can only with difficulty resist the instincts of sex and food, of anger and fear, which we share with the higher animals.

It is, on the other hand, difficult for us to obey consistently the impulses which attend on the mental images formed by inference and association.