To shew yet farther, the influence of the passions on the animal economy, let us consider the different constitutions of men. Those who have very springy, lively and elastic fibres, have the quickest of sensations, a weaker impulse providing a stronger sensation in them. They generally excel in the animal faculty of imagination.
Poets are soon provok'd.
And therefore, your men of imagination are generally given to sensual pleasure, because the objects of sense yield them a more delicate touch, and a livelier sensation, than they do others. Those rigid, stiff and unyielding fibres, have less warm sensations, because it requires a greater resistance. Cheyne's description of natural variation in feeling is interesting for several reasons. The picture of the super-sensitive artist reminds one of, among others, Richardson the hypochondriac, and Sterne the consumptive. Then there is the philosopher on slow boil, going mad at the same rate at which he approaches complex scientific and moral problems.