The first argument is logically inconclusive. I cannot, for in- stance, fancy a sensation that is devoid of intensity; yet the intensity is not identical with the sensation. So the organic sensations might be an integral part of the emotion, and yet not be the emotion. James' appeal to cases of generalised anaesthesia, in which loss of organic sensation is accompanied by apathy, does not help him; for a complete organic anaesthesia, without impairment of the higher mental processes, is neither known nor, indeed, so far as our present knowledge goes, conceivable.
The second argument depends upon the proof that there are, in fact, wholly unmotived emotions. And this proof depends, again, in very large measure, upon our definition of emotion and our stren- uousness in seeking the motive. James declares that the organic sensations of difficult breathing, fluttering heart, precordial anxiety, crouching posture, etc., make up, in combination, the emotion of morbid fear. But did not this complex, the first few times that it 31 482 Emotion 31 482 Emotion appeared, arouse what the medical dictionaries call the ' sense of impending death '? And might not this motived fear leave behind it a predisposition, which later on, when the active fear of death had passed, would throw the organic sensations into the emotive pattern? So with the "absolutely unmotived fear, anger, mel- ancholy, or conceit " that we see in the asylums: they may be interpreted as the unmotived descendants of motived emotions, as due to an emotive predisposition; they yield no evidence that an organic complex is, in itself, an emotion. Normal experience here throws light upon the abnormal. Some contrariety of experience makes us sulky: we know that we are sulky, and know that we are silly, but we go on sulking; not, surely, in the sense that the mere organic sensations of sulkiness persist, but in the further sense that we take everything sulkily, are predisposed to be injured and to brood over the injury.
It may be objected to the two arguments, on the positive side, that a group of organic sensations is, after all, a group of organic sensations; palpitation of the heart is not, in itself, the emotion of dread, and blushing is not, in itself, the emotion of shame. Since, however, this objection can be met by the reference to reflex ex- citation, it is necessary to scrutinise the organic sensations in more detail. And it then appears that, so far as unaided observation takes us, there is no necessary correspondence between emotion and organic reaction either in intensity or in quality, either in time of appear- ance or in duration. As regards intensity: there are a quiet joy and a boisterous joy, a cool anger and an explosive anger; the intensity of emotion may be the same, but the organic reaction varies with what we call temperament or mental constitution. The critic, the connoisseur, the scholar, is usually a man of 'quiet enjoyment,' ■ — but there is no evidence that his enjoyment is less than that of the Sunday tripper. As regards quality: the organic reaction of an unexpected joy and a violent anger are, to a considerable ex- tent, the same, while the emotions themselves are widely different. James, it is true, has argued that extremes of emotion not only express themselves in similar ways, but also — as his theory de- mands— feel alike. In default of any systematic analysis, a state- § 131- The Organic Reaction as Constitutive 483 ment of this sort leaves us helpless. The author can only say that, in so far as he has been privileged to experience extreme emotions, they have felt very distinguishably different. As regards time: the organic reaction may precede the emotion, as when we are fright- ened, and shrink back before the feeling of fear arises; it may outlast the emotion, as when we realise that there is nothing to be frightened about, but the breathlessness and trembling still persist; and it may come after the emotion, as when sorrow finds vent in tears. All these observations lack precision; but then so do the arguments against which they are directed.
We conclude that the sensations of the organic reaction cannot be identified with the emotion. They are, it is true, an integral part of the typical emotive consciousness, — but only because the emotion is, essentially, an affective re- sponse to a situation which appeals to the organism's instinctive tendencies. Looking at the emotion in this broader light, we can understand the occurrence of its two truncated forms. If an affective predisposition, on the basis of instinctive tendencies, has been set up in the past, then a present group of organic sensations may mean or stand for the complete emotion. And if an emotion has previously run its complete course, inclusive of the organic sensations, then the inhibition or deferment of the organic reaction, later on, does not of necessity destroy the emotion; the primary feeling, the affectively toned situation, may now, in its turn, mean or stand for the complete emotion. We are in presence of that process of mental reduction which we found to be especially characteristic of the action consciousness (§ 126).
The importance of organic sensations as factors in emotion is shown in many current words and phrases which designate emotive consciousnesses. We are oppressed by care; we cannot bear certain people; we are cast down by bad fortune, tickled by a 4^4 Emotion comic incident, rubbed the wrong way by trifling annoyances, under a great strain of anxiety; we are heart-broken by sorrow, our blood boils in anger, our heart sinks in fear. The heart, in- deed, crops up in all sorts of emotive contexts: we do a thing to our heart's content, we eat out our heart, we have our heart in our mouth, we lay a matter to heart, we set our heart on something, we take heart of grace, we wear our heart upon our sleeve. Ety- mology takes us farther still. We are mortified, that is, bruised or pounded, by some bit of behaviour; we are exasperated, that is, roughened, by a friend's conduct. Anger means a choking or strangling, — a group of organic sensations that we now attribute rather to baffled or impotent anger than to anger itself; fear we have already mentioned (p. 408); grief and sadness both mean heaviness. With reminders like these, it should not be easy for psychology to overlook the organic elements in emotion.
§ 132. The Organic Reaction as Expressive of Emotion. — Since the core of every emotion is a feeling, we shall ex- pect to find in emotion all the bodily manifestations of the simple affection; and we find, as a matter of fact, that every emotion brings with it changes in pulse, respiration, volume, involuntary movement and muscular strength. But the situation which arouses emotion is a far more serious matter to the organism than the single stimulus; and the bodily changes set up directly by the change in the nervous system are therefore more intensive and far-reaching. In particular, the organic reaction now extends to the secre- tory organs. In fear, for instance, the salivary glands cease to act, so that mouth and throat become dry; the body is bathed in a cold sweat; there is a tendency to uri- nation and diarrhoea. In the emotion of impotent rage there is often a derangement of the liver; in grief, an excessive stimulation of the lachrymal glands. Here, then, is a first kind of emotive reaction, which repeats, § 132. The Organic Reaction as Expressive 485 in intensified and extended form, the affective reaction Again, the organism has to face the situation by way of a bodily attitude, and the reasons for the special forms of this attitude must be sought from biology. The frightened animal, as we know, crouches down, the angry animal at- tacks the object of its anger, the startled animal leaps away from the unexpected impression. In the civilised life of man, some of these actions have become unneces- sary, and others are partially inhibited by acquired ten- dencies. Nevertheless, the association of a definite group of organic sensations to the perceived and felt situation still persists. Although we do not crouch down, as if ac- tually to hide ourselves from a stronger opponent, we do shrink into ourselves when we are expecting censure or bad news; although we do not attack when we are angry, we do clench the fist and brace ourselves as if in prepara- tion for attack; and although we do not leap away, we do jump or start when we are surprised. In the wince and brace and start we have survivals of the primitive adjust- ment by which the organism faced certain typical situa- tions; * and our own emotion is not complete until the organic sensations aroused by them have been added to the perception and ideas comprised in the central feeling.
Here is a second kind of organic reaction, which has an evolutionary sanction.
When, however, we speak in ordinary conversation of 'expression,' we mean the expression of the face. The facial muscles are arranged about three very important sense-organs, those of vision, smell and taste, and their 1 Once more, for caution's sake, the reader may be referred to the footnote 486 Emotion adjustment forms part of the total bodily adjustment to the many situations that appeal to those senses. But that is not all. It is a remarkable fact that the facial muscles con- tribute to the expression of emotions in which they are not directly concerned. Thus, the injured man looks bitter, looks as he would look were an unpleasant morsel placed upon his tongue; the disappointed man looks sour; the wooed maiden looks sweet. Here is a third kind of organic reaction, which is not as readily explicable as that which we have just discussed.
Again, however, there seems to be an evolutionary reason for the expression. Primitive language was essen- tially concrete and partial, or — as we should now say — metaphorical. And since the one thing necessary, in a primitive society, is food, we may suppose that primitive metaphors would derive, to a large extent, from the preparing and obtaining of food, from cooking and hunt- ing. So the first association to be aroused in a man's mind under pleasant circumstances might very well have been an idea of sweet or palatable food; and the first as- sociation, under unpleasant circumstances, an idea of some- thing sour or bitter. Even now we speak of the sweets of love and of revenge, of tainted money, of tasting success, of going on to the bitter end. But whenever a situation brings one of these metaphors to consciousness, the corre- lated movements of the facial muscles will also be aroused; and when, with the growth of language and the genesis of abstract terms, the metaphor has lapsed, the expressive movements may still persist. In a word, we must suppose that some part-process in the central feeling is connected with the facial reflex by a nerve-path which, originally leading through the associated metaphor, now runs straight from term to term.
§ 132. The Organic Reaction as Expressive 487 The classification, under general principles, of the various forms of emotive expression has been a favourite task with psychologists since Darwin published, in 1872, his work on The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals. Any discussion must be largely hypothetical; and most discussions assume that actions are motived and clinched by pleasantness and unpleasantness. We shall not go into details; the reader who desires to follow the sub- ject will find references on p. 504: but we may take advantage of Darwin's classification to call attention to a common misunder- standing.
Darwin's first principle, of ' serviceable associated habits,' covers the instances given under our second heading. His second principle, of ' antithesis,' is formulated as follows: " Certain states of the mind lead to certain habitual actions, which are of service, as under our first principle. Now when a directly opposite state of mind is induced, there is a strong and involuntary tendency to the performance of movements of a directly opposite nature, al- though they are of no use; and such movements are in some cases highly expressive." This purely negative principle has re- ceived short shrift from critics, although many of them have them- selves been guilty of the misunderstanding referred to above. There is a widespread tendency to regard the fundamental animal impulses as of two distinct kinds: the impulse towards, and the im- pulse away from, the positive and the negative impulse. Yet the adoption of this position leads to nothing but perplexity. It is clear that the distinction cannot be made for man; we run in the same way to escape from a pursuing bull and to catch a train; we dance for joy and for vexation; the movement of approach may signify welcome or rage. But neither can it be made for the lower animals. The animal meets a situation by its most deeply ingrained instinctive reaction; if the reaction is inadequate, it does something else; and if that, too, proves inadequate, it does some- thing else again: this is the procedure that has come to be known, of late years, as the ' method of trial and error.' Should it appear that the«creature has but two reactions at its disposal, a seeking and an avoiding reaction, we should have found an extreme case of the stereotyping of instinctive tendencies; but we should be 488 Emotion unwise to generalise from it. The instinctive temptation to classify by pairs is very great (p. 464); let us realise that it may also be very misleading.
The Law of Dynamogenesis. — We frequently find in psycho- logical text-books a statement to the effect that " every state of consciousness tends to realise itself in an appropriate muscular movement "; x that " every possible feeling produces a movement, and that the movement is a movement of the entire organism, and of each and all its parts " 2; that " every change in experience, whether it is initiated by a change in the sensory stimulus or by some internal cause, is accompanied by changes in muscular ten- sion." 3 The formulations of this law of dynamogenesis, as it is called, are usually sweeping, and do not always tally. In general, however, they carry two implications: that the reflex arc is the unit, the typical unit of function, of the human nervous system; and that psychology must take account, not only of the afferent process which is correlated with sensation, but also of the efferent process which prompts the organism's response to stimu- lation.
There can, now, be no doubt that on the whole, and apart from special theories, modern psychology has tended to one-sidedness in its references to the body; it has been too easily satisfied with appeal to the organs of sense and to the doctrine of cerebral local- isation. This state of things is changing, and changing rapidly. Along with the analysis of the kinaesthetic complexes has come the recognition that consciousness is limited, shaped, directed, modified by physiological factors hitherto overlooked by an ex- planatory psychology. We are coming, e.g., to speak and think more and more in terms of such concepts as facilitation, inhibition, preparation, sensory and motor attitude or predisposition, cortical set; and we are beginning to realise that our knowledge of the 1 J. M. Baldwin, Handbook of Psychology: Feeling and Will, 1 891, 281; Menial Development in the Child and the Race: Methods and Processes, 1906, 157. Cf. the ' law of diffusion * as stated by A. Bain, Emotions and Will, § 133- The Forvis of Emotion 489 motor mechanisms of the organism must be as exact and detailed as our knowledge of the sensory.
While, however, the author freely grants that, to this extent, the insistence on the efferent nervous process is timely and warranted, he is not convinced that we may speak, in any but a very circum- scribed way, of a law of dynamogenesis. Let us write for ' move- ment' the phrase 'muscular tension,' so that movement includes inhibition; let us extend the meaning of muscular tension to cover glandular activities; and let us leave out of account the fact of the limen. Still it remains doubtful whether every excitation that cor- responds to sensation or image tends to a motor conclusion. There may perfectly well be a diffusion within the central nervous system itself, so that the terminus of the excitatory process is a neural rather than a muscular ' tension.' The assumption that the reflex arc is the unit of nerve-function evidently makes the brain nothing more, in principle, than a mass of superposed reflex arcs; the central is assimilated to the peripheral nervous mechanism; the office of the brain is to receive, to couple up, and to send out. But this view, that the nervous system is a system of conduction, a sort of glorified telephone exchange, is in the author's opinion wholly inadequate to explain the phenomena of mind. The theory of conduction, with obstacles or easements between cell and cell, must, he believes, be replaced by a theory of intracellular change, of change within the cell-body; and if this is the case, the cortex maybe regarded rather as a disjunction of the reflex arc than as a switchboard for the manifold connection of afferent with efferent process.
Facts are facts; it would be worse than useless to deny the fact of the organic reaction. But speculations are also speculations; and we have no right to generalise the facts, in the interests of a reflex theory, beyond the range of observation. The law of dyna- mogenesis has a known degree and form of validity; there is no proof that it is a fundamental and universal law of explanatory psychology.
§133. The Forms of Emotion. — Very many attempts have been made to classify the emotions, to group them 490 Emotion in accordance with some principle that shall show their genesis and relationship. No attempt has been, and no attempt can be, more than partially successful. Emotions are processes of complex structure and of variable course; their analysis is yet in its first beginnings; the names by which we know them are, as a rule, class names, drawn from popular usage, and not terms of any scientific pre- cision. All that can be done at present, therefore, is to indicate one or two of the ways in which classification might be tried, without prospect of any final result.
An emotion appears when a situation or predicament arises. If, then, we could ascertain the typical situations which an organism placed in the world of nature must face, the simplest and most inevitable situations of the physical world, we might perhaps determine the funda- mental emotions. It is more probable, however, that we should end with some sort of biological schema of food emotions, chase emotions, sex emotions, and so forth, — a schema that would embody our own reflective interpre- tation of the situations, rather than a psychological classi- fication of the situations themselves.
All emotions are coloured by the organic sensations set up during the adjustment of the physical organism to the situation. If, then, we could find typical groups of organic sensations — lung, heart, secretory sensations — appearing in the various emotions, we could, again, determine the fundamental forms. So far, however, we have neither physiological nor psychological data for working out a classification upon this basis.1 Emotions fall into two great groups according as the 1 E. Murray, Organic Sensation, in American Journal of Psychology, xx., § 133- The Forms of Emotion 491 situations that arouse them are immediately insistent, or reach a climax of emotional appeal only in course of time. Joy and sorrow may be taken as typical of the former group; they are emotions that may be set up, for instance, by the receipt of a telegram. Hope and fear may be taken as typical of the second group; it may be many days before we venture to hope for the recovery of a friend from a serious illness or operation, or before we let ourselves fear that something has happened to the acquaint- ance from whom no news has come.
We said in § 128 that it was characteristic of an emotion to begin suddenly, and to die down slowly. What, then, of hope and fear? Do ihey not begin gradually, and die down quickly? It is as the reader chooses; it all depends upon our definition of emotion. To the author it seems best to reserve the term emo- tion for the domination of consciousness by an affective situation (primary attention); and, from his own observation, he believes that this domination occurs abruptly, — that there is a particular moment at which hope or fear takes possession of the mind, — and that both hope and fear, if left to themselves, pass by slow degrees into indifference. There are, of course, many things to be taken into account: the ambiguity of language, the possible resolution of hope and fear upon disappointment or relief, the re- currence of emotion after a first disappearance. And it should be said that Wundt, who speaks with authority on the matter, distin- guishes no less than four modes of the emotive course: the irrup- tive, which rises quickly and falls slowly; the gradual, which rises slowly and falls relatively quickly; the remittent, which is the normal mode of any persistent emotion; and the oscillatory, which shows an alternation of pleasurable and unpleasurable feeling.
Lastly, emotions fall into two great groups according as they are pleasant or unpleasant. The opposition of affect- ive quality (p. 232) affords a true psychological basis for classification, though it does not carry us very far. It is 492 Emotion responsible for the triads of emotive terms that we find in the dictionaries: joy, composure, sorrow; like, unconcern, dislike; sympathy, apathy, antipathy; attraction, insensi- bility, repulsion. Experience shows that some men are strongly moved by events that leave others unmoved, and language has accordingly coined terms both for the emo- tions proper and for the corresponding states of indifference.
It has often been said that language is richer in words for un- pleasant than for pleasant emotions; and Wundt has explained this difference on the ground that "the joyous emotions appear to be more uniform, less variously coloured, than the sorrowful." The author is disposed to doubt both statements. Memory is very untrustworthy at the best, as anyone may convince himself by trying to inventory, from memory, the contents of a familiar room. And memory is strongly influenced by predisposition; if we try to make out a list of words, with the idea that the tale of un- pleasant emotions is the longer, we shall find what we expected. Systematic study of a condensed dictionary, in any of the principal modern languages, reveals a wealth of terms for the pleasurable emotions; and the terms, as they come, have their specific emotive feels upon them.
Composite Emotions. — There are, no doubt, composite emo- tions, as there are composite perceptions; a situation may contain in it the stimuli to two or more emotions, and the concurrence of these stimuli will make itself felt in the resultant consciousness. Some psychologists regard the resultant as a mode of psychical fusion: contempt, e.g., is a binary compound of disgust and ela- tion, scorn a ternary compound of anger, disgust and elation; loathing is a compound of fear and disgust, fascination a compound of loathing and wonder. It seems evident, however, that this analysis is logical and inferential, rather than introspective; the emotions are regarded as fixed experiences, with hard and fast boundary lines; the several stimuli are supposed to arouse each its own definite emotion. The fusion, where it occurs, will surely go deeper down; it will be physiological, a fusion of excitatory processes. And we have no reason to suppose that the term ' fusion ' covers the ground; there may be inhibition and suppres- sion, oscillation and alternation, as well as mixture. The whole subject still awaits experimental enquiry.
§ 1 34. Emotive Memory. — It is a familiar fact of our everyday experience, and it has been confirmed by experi- ment, that the memory of past events is, for some persons, accompanied by the affective processes that coloured the events themselves, while for others it is entirely cold and colourless, no matter how intensive the pleasantness or unpleasantness of the original situation may have been. Hence it has been suggested that psychology must recog- nise, not only the various types of sense-memory (§ 114), but also an affective or emotive memory-type. The French psychologist Ribot, who is the protagonist of this doctrine, sums up his position as follows: 1 " (1) The emotional memory is nil in the majority of people.
(2) In others, there is a half intellectual, half emotional memory, i.e., the emotional elements are only revived partially, and with difficulty, by help of the intellectual states associated with them.
(3) Others, and these the least numerous, have a true — i.e., com- plete — emotional memory; the intellectual element being only a means of revival which is rapidly effaced."
Here, as so often in psychology, there is no dispute about the facts; the question is, how the facts are to be inter- preted. In the author's opinion, the two extreme types of observer are distinguished, not by the power or lack of power to image an affection, — for there is no such thing as an affective image, — but by the presence or absence, in memory-complexes, of organic, and more especially of visceral sensations. When a boy is flogged at school, he has, besides the immediate pain of the flogging, all sorts of 1 T. Ribot, The Psychology of the Emotions, tr. 1897, 171.
494 Emotion anticipatory and subsequent stirs of organic sensation, — flutterings, sinkings, chokings, breath-catchings, nauseas. If, when he recalls the flogging in later life, the cortical ex- citations that underlie his memory-ideas revive the splanch- nic and other excitations that constitute the stimuli to or- ganic sensations, then the scene comes back to him with its affective colouring upon it. If, on the other hand, he merely images or symbolises the scene, and the organic sensations are not set up afresh with the process of recall, then the memory is purely ' intellectual,' untinged by emotion. These gross differences undoubtedly exist; but to speak of an emotive memory, and thus to suggest the occurrence of an affective image, is seriously misleading.