cide. As innei- mental conditions, emotions are quite in-
describable. Description, moreover, would be superfluous,
for the reader knows already how they feel. Their rela-
tions to the objects which prompt them and to the reac-
tions which they provoke are all that one can put aown in
a book.
Evexjl^object that excites an instinct excites an emotion as
w£l_l. The only distinction one may draw is that the reaction
called emotional terminates in the subject's own body,
whiJKt the reaction callfd instinctive is ai)t to go fartber
and enter into practical relati(»ns witli tlie exciting object.
In both instinct and emotion the mere memory or inuigina-
tion of the object may suffice to liberate the excitement.
One may even get angrier in tliinking over one's insult
tnan one was in receiving it; and melt more over a mother
who is dead than one ever riid wlien she was living. In
374 PSYCHOLOGY.
the rest of the chapter I shall use the word object of emo-
tion indifferently to mean one which is physically present
or one which is merely thought of.
The varieties of emotion are innumerable. Anger, fear,
love, hate, joy, grief, shame, pride, and their varieties, may
be called the coarser emotions, being coupled as they are
with relatively stro ng bodily reveibfiiations. The subtler
emotions are the moral, intellectual, and aesthetic feelings,
and their b odily j;e actio n is usually much less strong. The
mere description of the objects, circumstances, and varie-
ties of the different species of emotion may go to any
length. Their internal shadings merge endlessly into each
other, and have been partly commemorated in language,
as, for example, by such synonyms as hatred, antipathy,
animosity, resentment, dislike, aversion, malice, spite, re-
venge, abhorrence, etc., etc. Dictionaries of synonyms
have discriminated them, as well as text-books of psychol-
ogy — in fact, many German psychological text-books are
nothing but dictionaries of synonyms when it comes to the
chapter on Emotion. But there are limits to the profitable
elaboration of the obvious, and the result of all this flux is
that the merely descriptive literature of the subject, from
Descartes downwards, is one of the most tedious parts of
psychology. And not only is it tedious, but you feel that
its subdivisions are to a great extent either fictitious or
unimportant, and that its pretences to accuracy are a
sham. But unfortunately there is little psychological
writing about the emotions which is not merely descriptive.
As emotions are described in novels, they interest us, for
we are made to share them. We have grown acquainted
with the concrete objects and emergencies which call them
forth, and any knowing touch of introspection which may
grace the page meets with a quick and feeling response.
Confessedly literary works of aphoristic philosophy also
flash lights into our emotional life, and give us a fitfirt
delight. But as far as the 'scientific psychology' of the
t^motions goes, I may have been surfeited by too much
EMOTION. 375
reading of classic works on the subject, but I should as
lief read verbal descriptions of the shapes of the rocks on
a New Hampshire farm as toil through them again. They
give one nowhere a central point of view, or a deductive
or generative principle. They distinguish and refine and
specify in injinitum without ever getting on to anotlier
logical level. Whereas the beauty of all truly scientific
work is to get to ever deeper levels. Is there no way out
from this level of individual description in the case of the
emotions ? I believe there is a way out, if one will only
take it.
The Cause of their Varieties. — The trouble with tlie
emotions in psychology is tliat they are regarded too much
as absolutely individual things. So long as they are set
down as so many eternal and sacred psychic entities, like
the old inimutable species in natural history, so long all
tlnit can be done with them is reverently to catalogue their
separate characters, points, and effects. But if we regard
them as products of more general causes (as 'species' are
now regarded as products of heredity and variation), the
mere distinguishing and cataloguing becomes of subsidiary
importance. Having the goose which lays the golden
eggs, the description of each egg already laid is a minor
matter. I will devote the next few jiages to setting fortli
one very general cause of our emotional feeling, limiting
myself in the first instance to what may be called the
coarser emotions.
The feeling, in the coarser emotions, results from the
bodily exprffision. Our natural way of tiiinking about
tiie^e coart<er emotions is that the mental jK-rcejition of
B(jme fact excites tlie mental affection called the emotion,
and that this latter state of mind gives rise to the bodily
expression. My theory, on the contrary, is that tlie hodiUj
changes foUov} directly the perception of tlie exciting fact,
and thai our feeling of the same changes as theg occnr is
thp emotion. Common-sense says, we lose our fortune, are
8orry and weep, we meet u bear, are frigiitened and run;
376 PSrCHOLOGK
we are insulted by a rival, are angry and strike. The
hypothesis here to be defended says that this order of
sequence is incorrect, that the one mental state is not
immediately induced by the other, that the bodily mani-
festations must first be interposed between, and that the
more rational statement is that we feel sorry because â– we
cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble,
and not that we cry, strike, or tremble because we are
sorry, angry, or fearful, as the case may be. Without the
bodily states following on the perception, the latter would
be purely cognitive in form, pale, colorless, destitute of
emotional warmth. We might then see the bear and
judge it best to run, receive the insult and deem it right
to strike, but we should not actually /ee? afraid or angry.
Stated in this crude way, the hypothesis is pretty sure
to meet with immediate disbelief. And yet neither many
nor far-fetched considerations are required to mitigate its
paradoxical character, and possibly to produce conviction
of its truth.
To begin with, particular perceptions certainly do pro-
duce wide-spread bodily effects by a sort of immediate
physical infiuence, antecedent to the arousal of an emotion
or emotional idea. In listening to poetry, drama, or heroic
narrative we are often surprised at the cutaneous shivei
which like a sudden wave flows over us, and at the heart-
swelling and the lachrymal effusion that unexpectedlj'
catch us at intervals. In hearing music the same is even
more strikingly true. If we abruptly see a dark moving
form in the woods, our heart stops beating, and we catch
our breath instantly and before any articulate idea of dan-
ger can arise. If our friend goes near to the edge of a preci-
pice, we get the well-known feeling of ' all-overishness,* and
we shrink back, although we positively knoiv him to be safe,
and have no distinct imagination of his fall. The writer
well remembers his astonishment, when a boy of seven or
eight, at fainting when he saw a horse bled. The blood
was in a bucket, with a stick in it, and, if memory does not
ICMOTION. 377
deceive him, he stirred it round and saw it drip from the
stick with no feeling save that of childish curiosity. !Sud-
denly the world grew black before his eyes, his ears began
to buzz, and lie knew no more. He had never heard of the
sight of blood producing faintncss or sickness, and he had
so little re])ugnance to it, and so little apprehension of any
other sort of danger from it, that even at that tender age,
as he well remembers, he could not help wondering how
the mere physical presence of a pailful of crimson fluid
could occ:ision in him such formidable bodily effects.
The best proof that the immediate cause of emotion is
a ph ysical effect on the nerves is furnished by those patlio-
hyicid cdscs hi which the emotion is objectless. One of the
chief merits, in fact, of the view which I propose seems
to be that we can so easily formulate by its means patho-
logical cases and normal cases under a common scheme.
In every jisylum we find examples of absolutely unmotived
fear, anger, melancholy, or conceit; and others of an
equally unmotived apathy which persists in spite of the
best of outward reasons why it should give way. In the
former cases we must suppose the nervous machinery to
be so 'labile ' in some one emotional direction that almost
every stimulus (however inappropriate) causes it to upset
in that way, and to engender the particular complex of
feelings of which the psychic body of the emotion consists.
Thus, to take one special instance, if inability to draw deep
breath, fluttering of the heart, and tiiat peculiar epigastric
change felt as 'precordial anxiety,' with an irresistible
tendency to take a somewhat crouching attitude and to
eit still, and with periiaps other visceral processes not now
known, all spontaneously occur together in a certain per-
son, his feeling of their combination /x the emotion of
dread, and he is the victim of what is known jis morbid
fear. A friend who lias had occiisional attacks of this most
distressing of all maladicri tells me that in his case the
whole drama seems to centre about thv region of the heart
and respiratory apparatus, that his main effort during the
378 PSYCHOLOGY.
attacks is to get control of his inspirations and to slow his
heart, and that the moment he attains to breathing deeply
and to holding himself erect, the dread, ipso facto, seems
to depart.
The emotion here is nothing but the feeling of a bodily-
state, and it has a purely bodily cause.
The next thing to be noticed is this, that everi/ one of
the bodily clicmges, ivhatsoever it he, is felt, acutely or
obscurely, the mometit it occurs. If the reader has never
paid attention to this matter, he will be both interested
and astonished to learn how many different local bodily
feelings he can detect in himself as characteristic of his
various emotional moods. It would be perhaps too much
to expect him to arrest the tide of any strong gust of pas-
sion for the sake of any such curious analysis as this; but
he can observe more tranquil states, and that may be as-
sumed here to be true of the greater which is shown to be
true of the less. Our whole cubic capacity is sensibly
alive; and each morsel of it contributes its pulsations of
feeling, dim or sharp, pleasant, painful, or dubious, to that
sense of personality that every one of us unfailingly carries
with him. It is surj^rising what little items give accent to
these complexes of sensibility. When worried by any
slight trouble, one may find that the focus of one's bodily
consciousness is the contraction, often quite inconsiderable,
of the eyes and brows. When momentarily embarrassed,
it is something in the pharynx that compels either a swal-
low, a clearing of the throat, or a slight cough; and so on
for as many more instances as might be named. The vari-
ous permutations of which these organic changes are sus-
ceptible make it abstractly possible that no shade of
emotion should be without a bodily reverberation as
unique, when taken in its totality, as is the mental mood
itself. The immense number of parts modified is what
makes it so difficult for us to reproduce in cold blood the
total and integral expression of any one emotion. We
may catch the trick with the voluntary muscles, but fail
EMOTION. 379
with the skin, ghinds, heart, and other viscera. Just as an
aititicially imitated sneeze hicks something of tlie reality,
6u the attempt to imitate grief or enthusiasm in the
aosence of its normal instigating cause is apt to be rather
* noUow.'
I now proceed to urge the vital point of my whole
tlieory, which is this: Jf we fane 1/ svme strung emotion,
a Hit titen try to abstract from our consciousness of it all
t/te feelings of its bodily symptoms, ice find we have noth-
ing left behind, no *mind-stutf ' out of which the emotion
can be constituted, and that a cold and neutral state of in-
tellectual perception is all that remains. It is true that,
altliough most people, when asked, say that their introspec-
tion verities this statement, some persist in saying theirs
does not. Many cannot be made to understand the ques-
t;ion. When you beg them to imagine away every feeling
of laughter and of tendency to laugh from tlieir conscious-
ness of the ludicrousness of an object, and then to tell you
'vhat the feeling of its ludicrousness would be like, whether
it be anything more tlian the perception that the object
belongs to the class 'funny,' they persist in replying that
the thing proposed is a physical impossibility, and that
they always 7nust laugh if they see a funny object. Of
course the task proposed is not the practical one of seeing
a ludicrous object and annihilating one's tendency to laugh.
It is the j)urely speculative one of subtracting certain ele-
ments of feeling from an emotional state sup})()sed to exist
in its fulness, and saying what the residual elements are.
I cannot help thinking that all wlio riglitly ap})rchend
this problem will agree with the ])r()i)osition above laid
down. What kind of an emotion of fear would be left if
the feeling neitlier of quickened heart-beats nor of shallow
breathing, neither of trembling lips nor of weakened limbs,
neither of goose-flesli nor of visceral stirrings, were pres-
ent, it is quite imjjossilile for me to think. Can one fancy
the state of rage and jiicture no ebullition in the cliest, no
(lushing of the face, no dilatation of the nostrils, no clencli-
380 P8TCH0L0OY.
ing of the teeth, no impulse to vigorous action, but in theii^
stead limp muscles, calm breathing, and a j)lacid facei?
The present writer, for one, certainly cannot. The rage ii5
as completely evaporated as the sensation of its so-called
manifestations, and the only thing that can possibly be
supposed to take its place is some cold-blooded and dis-
passionate judicial sentence, confined entirely to the intel-
lectual realm, to the effect that a certain person or persons
merit chastisement for their sins. In like manner of grief :
what would it be without its tears, its sobs, its suffocation
of the heart, its pang in the breast-bone ? A feelingless
cognition that certain circumstances are deplorable, and
nothing more. Every passion in turn tells the same story.
A disembodied human emotion is a sheer nonentity. I
do not say that it is a contradiction in the nature of thing?,
or that pure spirits are necessarily condemned to cold in-
tellectual lives; but I say that for us emot ion dissocia.ted
from all bodily feeling is inconiieiyable. The more closely
I scrutinize my states, the more persuaded I become that
whatever 'coarse^ affections and passions I have are in very
'truth constituted by^and made up of, those bodily changes
which we ordinarily call their expression or consequence ;
and the more it seems to me that, if I were to become coi -
poreally anaesthetic, I should be excluded from the life of
the affections, harsh and tender alike, and drag out an ex-
istence of merely cognitive or intellectual form. Such an
existence, although it seems to have been the ideal of an-
cient sages, is too aj)athetic to be keenly sought after by
those born after the revival of the worship of sensibility, a
few generations ago.
Let not this view be called materialistic. It is neither
more nor less materialistic than any other view which says
that our emotions are conditioned by nervous processes.
No reader of this book is likely to rebel against such a
sayiDg so long as it is expressed in general terms; and if
any one still finds materialism in the thesis now defended,
that must be because of the special processes invoked
EMOTION. 381
'1 hey are sensational processes, processes due to inward
currents set up V)v physit'al liajipeninc^s. Such processes
have, it is true, always been repirded by the phitonizers in
psychokiury as having something peculiarly base about
them. But our emotions must always be imcardly what
they are, whatever be the physiological ground of their
j'jiparition. If they are deep, pure, worthy, spiritual facts
en any conceivable tlieory of their physiological source,
they renuiin no less deep, pure, spiritual, and worthy of
)egard on this present sensational theory. Tliey carry
iheir own inner measure of worth with tlum; and it is
just as logical to use the present theory of the emotions for
])roving that sensational processes need not be vile and
material, as to use their vileness and materiality as a proof
I liat sufli a theory cannot be true.
This view explains the great variability of emotion. If
such a theory is true, then each emotion is the resultant
of a sum of elements, and each element is caused by a
physiological process of a sort already well known. The
elements are all organic changes, and each of them is the
reflex effect of tiie exciting object. Definite questions
now immediately arise — questions very different from tliose
which were the only possible ones without this view.
Those were questions of classification: "Which are the
jiroper genera of emotion, and which the species under
eich ?" — or of description: "By what expression is each
eijotion characteri/A'd ?" The questions now are causal:
hist what changes does this ol)ject and what changes does
that object excite?" and "How come they to excite these
) 'articular changes and not others ?" We step I'lnni a su-
perficial to a deep order of inquiry. Classilication and
description are the lowest stage of science. 'J'liey sink into
the background the moment (jucstious of causation are
formulated, and remain imj)ortant only so far as tliey facil-
itate our answering these. Now the moment an emotion
is eauKally accounted for. as the arousal by an object of u
lot of refiex acts which arc forthwith fdt, we immedia/r/i/
382 PSYCHOLOGY.
see why there is no limit to the number of possible different
emotions luhich may exist, and ivhy the emotions of differ-
ent individuals may vary indeffnitely, both as to tht'ir
constitution and as to the objects which call them forih.
For there is nothing sacramental or eternally fixed in re-
flex action. Any sort of reflex effect is possible, and re-
flexes actually vary indefinitely, as we know.
In 8-^ jrt, any classification of the emotions is seen to be
us true and as 'natural' as any other, if it only serves
some purpose; and such a question as "AVhat is the 'real'
or ' typical ' expression of anger, or fear ?" is seen to have
no objective meaning at all. Instead of it we now have
the question as to how any given 'expression' of anger or
fear may have come to exist; and that is a real question of
physiological mechanics on the one hand, and of history
on the other, which (like all real questions) is in essence
answerable, although the answer may be hard to find. On
a later page I shall mention the attempts to answer it
which have been made.
A Corollary verified. — If our theory be true, a necessary
corollary of it ought to be this: that any voluntary and
cold-blooded arousal of the so-called manifestations of a
special emotion should give us the emotion itself. Now
within the limits in which it can be verified, exjierience
corroborates rather than disproves this inference. Every-
one knows how panic is increased by flight, and how the
giving way to the symptoms of grief or anger increases
those passions themselves. Each fit of sobbing makes the
sorrow more acute, and calls forth another fit stronger
still, until at last repose only ensues with lassitude and
with the apparent exhaustion of the machinery. In rage,
it is notorious how we 'work ourselves up' to a climax by
repeated outbreaks of expression. Refuse to express a
passion, and it dies. Count ten before venting your anger,
and its occasion seems ridiculous. "Whistling to keep up
courage is no mere figure of speech. On the other hand,
sit all day in a moping posture, sigh, and reply to every-
EMOTION, 383
thing with ;i dismal voice, and your melancholy lingers.
There is no more valuabk- precept in moral education than
this, as all who have experience know: if we wish to con-
quer undesirable emotional tendencies in ourselves, we
must assiduously, and in the first instance cold-bloodedly,
go through the outward movements of those contrary dis-
positions which we prefer to cultivate. The reward of
persistency will infallibly come, in the fading out of the
sullenness or depression, and the advent of real cheerful-
ness and kindliness in their stead. Smooth the brow,
brighten the eye, contract the dorsal rather than the ven-
tral aspect of the frame, and speak in a major key, pass
the genial compliment, and your heart must be frigid
indeed if it do not gradually thaw!
Against this it is to be said that many actors who per-
fectly mimic the outward appearances of emotion in face,
gait, and voice declare that they feel no emotion at all.
Others, however, according to Mr. Wm. Archer, who has
nuide a very instructive statistical inquiry among them, say
that the emotion of the part masters them whenever they
play it well. The explanation for the discrepancy amongst
actors is probably simple. The visceral and organic part
of the expression can be suppressed in some men, but not
in others, and on this it must be that the chief part of the
felt emotion depends. Those actors who feel the emotion
are probably unable, those who are inwardly cold are
])r()bal)ly able, to afTcct the dissociation in a complete way.
\^ An Objection replied to. — It may be objected to the
general theory which I maintain that sto})ping the ex-
pression of an emotion often makes it worse. I'lie funni-
ness becomes quite excrucijiiing when we are forliidden by
the nituation t(j laugh, and anger ]»ent in l)y fear turns
into tenfold hate. Ex])ressing either emotion freely, how-
ever, gives relief.
This objection is more specious than real. Dnring the
expression the emotion is always felt. After it, tlie cen-
tres having normally discharged themselves, we feel it no
384 PSTCROLOOy.
more. But where the facial part of the discharge is sup.
pressed the thoracic and visceral may be all the more
violent and persistent, as in suppressed laughter; or the
original emotion may be changed, by the combination of
the provoking object with the restraining pressure, into
another emotion altogether, in which different and possibly
profounder organic disturbance occurs. If I would kill
my enemy but dare not, my emotion is surely altogether
other than that which would possess me if I let my anger
explode. — On the whole, therefore this objection has no
weight.
u The Subtler Emotions. — In the assthetic emotions the
bodily reverberation and the feeling may both be faint.
A connoisseur is apt to judge a work of art dryly and in-
tellectually, and with no bodily thrill. On the other hand,
works of art may arouse intense emotion; and whenever
they do so, the experience is completely covered by the
terms of our theory. Our theory requires that incoming
currents be the basis of emotion. But, whether secondary
organic reverberations be or be not aroused by it, the per-
ception of a work of art (music, decoration, etc.) is always
in the first instance at any rate an affair of incoming cur-
rents. The work itself is an object of sensation; and, the
perception of an object of sensation being a ' coarse ' or vivid
experience, what pleasure goes with it will partake of the
* coarse ' or vivid form.
That there may be subtle pleasure too, I do not deny.
In other words, there may be purely cerebral emotion, in-
dependent of all currents from outside. Such feelings as
moral satisfaction, thankfulness, curiosity, relief at getting
a problem solved, may be of this sort. But the thinness
and paleness of these feelings, when unmixed with bodily
effects, is in very striking contrast to the coarser emotions.
In all sentimental and impressionable people the bodily
effects mix in: the voice breaks and the eyes moisten when
the moral truth is felt, etc. Wherever there is anything
like rapture, however intellectual its ground, we find these
KMUTIOM. 385
secondary processes ensue. Unless we actually laugh at
the neatness of the demonstration or uitticisni; unless "vve
thrill at the case of justice, or tingle at the act of mag-
nanimity, our state of miiul can hardly be called emotional
at all. It is in fact a mere intellectual i)erccption of how
certain things are to be called — neat, right, witty, gener-