The very fact of unfamiliarity seems to give to the sensation a certain exciting character.

As something new and strange, it for the instant slightly agitates and discomposes the mind.

Being unable to classify it with its like, we naturally magnify its intensity, and so tend to ascribe it to a disproportionately large cause.
For instance, a light bandage worn about the body at a part usually free from pressure is liable to be conceived as a weighty mass.

The odd sense of a big cavity in the mouth, which we experience just after the loss of a tooth, is probably another illustration of this principle.

And a third example may also be supplied from the recollection of the dentist's patient, namely, the absurd imagination which he tends to form as to what is actually going on in his mouth when a tooth is being bored by a modern rotating drill.