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PSYCHOLOGY CLASSICS 
 
 A SERIES OF REPRINTS AND TRANSLATIONS 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 KNIGHT DUNLAP 
 
 Johns Hopkins University 
 
 THE EMOTIONS 
 
 BT 
 
 CARL GEORG LANGE (1834-1900) 
 University of Copenhagen 
 
 AND 
 
 WILLIAM JAMES (1842-1910) 
 
 Harvard University 
 
 VOLUME I 
 
 BALTIMORE 
 
 WILLIAMS & WILKINS COMPANY 
 1922 
 
E ' 
 
 Copyright 1922 
 WILLIAMS & WILKINS COMPANY 
 
 Made in United States of America 
 
 All rights reserved, including that of translation 
 
 into foreign languages, including 
 
 the Scandinavian 
 
 The Emotions, Chapter XXV, from 
 James: Principles of Psychology. Copy- 
 right 1890 by Henry Holt and Company 
 
 COMPOBED AND PniNTED AT THB 
 
 WAVERLY PRESS 
 
 Bt thb Williams & Wilkins Comp ant 
 
 Baltimore, Md., U. 8. A. 
 
 JIJH "8 i322 
 ©CI.A674511 
 

 ^ 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 v^"X 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Editor's Preface 5 
 
 What is an Emotion? William James 11 
 
 The Emotions, Carl Georg Lange 33 
 
 The Emotions, William James 93 
 
EDITOR'S PREFACE 
 
 The publication, in 1872, of Darwin's The Expression of the 
 Emotions in Man and Animals had a profound effect upon the 
 development of Psychology. Darwin's book gave to three men 
 the impetus to develop the theory of the emotions as organic 
 processes, and this theory has not only become so strongly en- 
 trenched in scientific thought that it is practically assumed to- 
 day as the basis for the study of the emotional life, but has also 
 led to the development of the hypothesis of reaction or response 
 as the basis of all mental life: a hypothesis which is rapidly sup- 
 planting the phrenologists' theory of brain-activity. 
 
 The three men who independently developed the organic theory 
 of the emotions were Carl Georg Lange in Denmark, William 
 James in America, and Alexander Sutherland in Australia. The 
 writings of James and Lange had profound influence on contempo- 
 rary and later psychologists, and on this account it is not unfair 
 to apply t|ie name " James-Lange Theory" to the organic theory 
 of the emotions, as is customarily done. This implies no lack of 
 appreciation of the work of Sutherland, or of the contributions of 
 Ribot, Mosso, and later investigators. 
 
 We present in this volume a new translation of Lange's Ueher 
 Gemüthsbewegungen, made by Miss Istar A. HauptTfom Kufella's 
 Tierinän version : together with a reprinting of James' What is an 
 Emotion? and his chapter on ''The Emotions" from the Principles 
 of Psychology. These important foundations of modern psychol- 
 ogy are thus made readily accessible to students of psychology, 
 philosophy, and physiology; and a real need is served. 
 
 In the chapter in the Principles, James repeated some of the 
 material which had already been presented in the Mind article. 
 It has however been deemed advisable to reprint the earlier article 
 as well as the chapter. Historical considerations alone would war- 
 rant this, since the chapter is based both on the article and upon 
 Lange's monograph, and it is important to have these two inde- 
 pendent foundations presented side by side. But there is a still 
 
 5 
 
6 editor's preface 
 
 more important reason, in that the Mind article gives a much 
 more clear-cut presentation of the organic theory of the emotions 
 than does the chapter from the Principles: and in the latter James 
 concedes much more to the esthetic and spiritual emotions in 
 the way of independence of somatic and visceral processes than 
 he does in the former. Whatever may have caused James to 
 soften his views on this point, his first formulation of the theory 
 is in this respect the more important. 
 
 Carl (or Karl) Georg Lange was born at Vordingborg, Zealand, 
 Denmark, in 1834. He studied medicine at the University of 
 Copenhagen, and received his degree in 1859. In 1877 he was 
 made Professor of Pathological Anatomy in the same University 
 and held that position until his death in 1900. He was a man of 
 eminence in the field of medicine, but his monograph on the 
 emotions is by far his greatest achievement. 
 
 William James was born in New York City in 1842, and gradu- 
 ated from Harvard in medicine in 1872. His interests even then 
 were in psychology and philosophy rather than in medicine, and 
 I although his first university appointment, in 1872, was as Lec- 
 \ turer in Physiology in the Harvard Department of Natural 
 I History, he expressed a strong preference for a position in 
 V, philosophy then vacant. His poor health, however, prevented 
 his attempting to secure the latter position. 
 ,..- James' first academic duty was to assist in a course in Physi- 
 / ology and Hygiene given to undergraduates: but in 1876 he offered 
 ' a course in Physiological Psychology, and organized a psychological 
 laboratory. The following year, the course was transferred to 
 the Department of Philosophy. By later appointments, James 
 * was successively made Assistant Professor of Philosophy (1880), 
 Professor of Philosophy (1885), Professor of Psychology (1889), 
 and again Professor of Philosophy (1897). He died in 1910. 
 
 Lange's monograph appeared (in Danish) in 1885. A German 
 translation by Dr. Kurella appeared in 1887, and from this 
 Georges Dumas made in 1895 a French translation which ran 
 through several editions. So far as we know, no English transla- 
 tion has been published. James' article appeared in Mind in 1884, 
 and his Principles of Psychology in 1893. Sutherland's Origin and 
 Growth of the Moral Instinct was printed in 1898, but he had f ormu- 
 
editor's preface 7 
 
 lated his version of the organic theory of the emotions, presented 
 in that book, some time earher, apparently before reading either 
 James or Lange. We have not deemed it expedient to reprint 
 Sutherland's chapters at this time. 
 
 The translation of Lange's monograph was not made from 
 the Danish original, but from Kurella's version, published by 
 Theodor Thomas (Leipzic), and compared with the French text. 
 
 For permission to print James' Mind article we are indebted 
 to the editor of that journal, and for permission to reprint the 
 chapter of the Principles, to Henry Holt and Company. 
 
 Knight Dunlap. 
 
 The Johns Hopkins University 
 March i, i922 
 
WHAT IS AN EMOTION? 
 
 BY 
 WILLIAM JAMES 
 
WHAT IS AN EMOTION? 
 WILLIAM JAMES 
 
 [Mind, 1884, vol. IX, pp. 188-205] 
 
 The physiologists who, during the past few years, have been so 
 industriously exploring the functions of the brain, have limited 
 their attempts at explanation to its cognitive and volitional per- 
 formances. Dividing the brain into sensorial and motor centers, 
 they have found their division to be exactly paralleled by the 
 analysis made by empirical psychology, of the perceptive and 
 volitional parts of the mind into their simplest elements. But 
 the (Esthetic sphere of the mind, its longings, its pleasures and 
 pains, and its emotions, have been so ignored in all these researches 
 that one is tempted to suppose that if either Dr. Ferrier or Dr. 
 Munk were asked for a theory in brain-terms of the latter mental 
 facts, they might both reply, either that they had as yet bestowed 
 no thought upon the subject, or that they had found it so difficult 
 to make distinct hypotheses, that the matter lay for them among 
 the problems of the future, only to be taken up after the simpler 
 ones of the present should have been definitely solved. 
 
 And yet it is even now certain that of two things concerning the 
 emotions, one must be true. Either separate and special centers 
 affected to them alone, are their brain-seat, or else they correspond 
 to processes occurring in the motor and sensory centers, already 
 assigned, or in others like them, not yet mapped out. If the for- 
 mer be the case we must deny the current view, and hold the 
 cortex to be something more than the surface of "projection" for 
 every sensitive spot and every muscle in the body. If the latter 
 be the case, we must ask whether the emotional "process" in the 
 sensory or motor center be an altogether peculiar one, or whether 
 it resembles the ordinary perceptive processes of which those 
 centers are already recognized to be the seat. The purpose of the 
 following pages is to show that the last alternative comes nearest 
 to the truth, and that the emotional brain-processes not only 
 
 II 
 
12 WILLIAM JAMES 
 
 resemble the ordinary sensorial brain-processes, but in very truth 
 are nothing but such processes variously combined. The main 
 result of this will be to simplify our notions of the possible com- 
 phcations of brain-physiology, and to make us see that we have 
 already a brain-scheme in our hands whose applications are much 
 wider than its authors dreamed. But although this seems to be 
 the chief result of the arguments I am to urge, I should say that 
 they were not originally framed for the sake of any such result. 
 They grew out of fragmentary introspective observations, and it 
 was only when these had already combined into a theory that the 
 thought of the simplification the theory might bring to cerebral 
 physiology occurred to me, and made it seem more important 
 than before. 
 
 I should say first of all that the only emotions I propose ex- 
 pressly to consider here are those that have a distinct bodily 
 expression. That there are feelings of pleasure and displeasure, of 
 interest and excitement, bound up with mental operations, but 
 having no obvious bodily expression for their consequence, would, 
 I suppose, be held true by most readers. Certain arrangements 
 of sounds, of lines, of colours, are agreeable, and others the re- 
 verse, without the degree of the feeling being sufiicient to quicken 
 the pulse or breathing, or to prompt to movements of either the 
 body or the face. Certain sequences of ideas charm us as much 
 as others tire us. It is a real intellectual delight to get a problem 
 solved, and a real intellectual torment to have to leave it un- 
 finished. The first set of examples, the sounds, lines, and colours 
 are either bodily sensations, or the images of such. The second 
 set seem to depend on processes in the ideational centers exclu- 
 sively. Taken together, they appear to prove that there are 
 pleasures and pains inherent in certain forms of nerve-action as 
 such, wherever that action occur. The case of these feelings we 
 will at present leave entirely aside, and confine our attention to 
 the more complicated cases in which a wave of bodily disturbance 
 of some kind accompanies the perception of the interesting sights 
 or sounds, or the passage of the exciting train of ideas. Surprise, 
 curiosity, rapture, fear, anger, lust, greed, and the like, become 
 then the names of the mental states with which the person is 
 possessed. The bodily disturbances are said to be the "mani- 
 
WHAT IS AN EMOTION 13 
 
 festation" of these several emotions, their "expression" or "natu- 
 ral language;" and these emotions themselves, being so strongly 
 characterised both from within and without, may be called the 
 standard emotions. 
 
 Our natural way of thinking about these standard emotions is 
 that the mental perception of some fact excites the mental affec- 
 tion called the emotion, and that this latter state of mind gives 
 rise to the bodily expression. My thesis on the contrary is that 
 the bodily changes follow directly the Perception of the exciting 
 fact, and that our feeling of the same changes as they occur is the 
 emotion. Common sense says, we lose our fortune, are sorry and 
 weep; we meet a bear, are frightened and run; 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 
 manifestations must first be interposed between, and that the 
 more rational statement is that we feel sorry because 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, 
 colourless, 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 could not actually feel 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, readers of the Journal do not need to be reminded 
 that the nervous system of every living thing is but a bundle of 
 predispositions to react in particular ways upon the contact of 
 particular features of the environment. As surely as the hermit- 
 crab's abdomen presupposes the existence of empty whelk-shells 
 somewhere to be found, so surely do the hound's olfactories imply 
 the existence, on the one hand, of deer's or foxes' feet, and on the 
 other, the tendency to follow up their tracks. The neural machin- 
 ery is but a hyphen between determinate arrangements of matter 
 outside the body and determinate impulses to inhibition or dis- 
 
14 WILLIAM JAMES 
 
 charge within its organs. When the hen sees a white oval object 
 on the ground she cannot leave it; she must keep upon it and re- 
 turn to it, until at last its transformation into a little mass of 
 moving chirping down eHcits from her machinery an entirely new 
 set of performances. The love of man for woman, or of the human 
 mother for her babe, our wrath at snakes and our fear of precipices, 
 may all be described similarly, as instances of the way in which 
 pecuharly conformed pieces of the world's furniture will fatally 
 call forth most particular mental and bodily reactions, in advance 
 of, and often in direct opposition to, the verdict of our dehberate 
 reason concerning them. The labours of Darwin and his succes- 
 sors are only just beginning to reveal the universal parasitism of 
 each special creature upon other special things, and the way in 
 which each creature brings the signature of its special relations 
 stamped on its nervous system with it upon the scene. 
 
 Every living creature is in fact a sort of lock, whose wards and 
 springs presuppose special forms of keys, which keys however are 
 not born attached to the locks, but are sure to be found in the 
 world near by as life goes on. And the locks are indifferent to any 
 but their own keys. The egg fails to fascinate the hound, the bird 
 does not fear the precipice, the snake waxes not wroth at his kind, 
 the deer cares'nothing for the woman or the human babe. Those 
 who wish for a full development of this point of view, should read 
 Schneider's Der thierische Wille — no other book shows how ac- 
 curately anticipatory are the actions of animals, of the specific 
 features of the environment in which they are to live. 
 
 Now among these nervous anticipations are of course to be 
 reckoned the emotions, so far as these may be called forth directly 
 by the perception of certain facts. In advance of all experience 
 of elephants no child can but be frightened if he suddenly finds 
 one trumpeting and charging upon him. No woman can see a 
 handsome httle naked baby without dehght, no man in the wilder- 
 ness see a human form in the distance without excitement and 
 curiosity. I said I should consider these emotions only so far as 
 they have bodily movements of some sort for their accompani- 
 ments. But my first point is to show that their bodily accompani- 
 ments are much more far-reaching and complicated than we 
 ordinarily suppose. 
 
WHAT IS AN EMOTION 15 
 
 In the earKer books on Expression, written mostly from the 
 artistic point of view, the signs of emotion visible from without 
 were the only ones taken account of. Sir Charles Bell's cele- 
 brated Anatomy of Expression noticed the respiratory changes; 
 and Bain's and Darwin's treatises went more thoroughly stiU into 
 the study of the visceral factors involved, — changes in the func- 
 tioning of glands and muscles, and in that of the circulatory ap- 
 paratus. But not even a Darwin has exhaustively enimierated 
 all the bodily affections characteristic of any one of the standard 
 emotions. More and more, as physiology advances, we begin to 
 discern how almost infinitely numerous and subtle they must be. 
 The researches of Mosso with the Plethysmograph have shown that ./' 
 not only the heart, but the entire circulatory system, forms a 
 sort of sounding-board, which every change of our consciousness, 
 however sHght, may make reverberate. Hardly a sensation comes 
 to us without sending waves of alternate constriction and dilata- 
 tion down the arteries of our arms. The blood-vessels of the 
 abdomen act reciprocally with those of the more outward parts. 
 The bladder and bowels, the glands of the mouth, throat, and 
 skin, and the liver, are known to be affected gravely in certain 
 severe emotions, and are unquestionably affected transiently 
 when the emotions are of a lighter sort. That the heart-beats 
 and the rhyiihm of breathing play a leading part in all emotions 
 whatsoever, is a matter too notorious for proof. And what is 
 reaUy equally prominent, but less likely to be admitted until 
 special attention is drawn to the fact, is the continuous coopera- 
 tion of the voluntary muscles in our emotional states. Even 
 when no change of outward attitude is produced, their inward 
 tension alters to suit each varying mood, and is felt as a difference 
 of tone or of strain. In depression the flexors tend to prevail; in 
 elation or beUigerent excitement the extensors take the lead. And 
 the various permutations and combinations of which these organic 
 activities are susceptible make it abstractly possible that no shade 
 of emotion, however shght, should be without a bodily reverbera- 
 tion as imique, when taken in its totality, as is the mental mood 
 itself. 
 
 The immense number of parts modified in each emotion is what 
 makes it so difficult for us to reproduce in cold blood the total and 
 integral expression of any one of them. We may catch the trick 
 
16 WILLIAM JAMES 
 
 with the voluntary muscles, but fail with the skin, glands, heart, 
 and other viscera. Just as an artificially imitated sneeze lacks 
 something of the reality, so the attempt to imitate an emotion in 
 the absence of its normal instigating cause is apt to be rather 
 "hollow." 
 
 The next thing to be noticed is this, that every one of the bodily 
 changes, whatsoever it be, is felt, acutely or obscurely, the moment 
 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 himseK as character- 
 istic of his various emotional moods. It would be perhaps too 
 much to expect him to arrest the tide of any strong gust of passion 
 for the sake of any such curious analysis as this; but he can ob- 
 serve more tranquil states, and that may be assumed here to be 
 true of the greater which is shown to be true of the less. Our 
 whole cubic capacity is sensibly ahve; and each morsel of it con- 
 tributes its pulsations of feeling, dim or sharp, pleasant, painful, 
 or dubious, to that sense of personahty that everyone of us un- 
 faüingly carries with him. It is surprising what little items give 
 accent to these complexes of sensibihty. When worried by any 
 slight trouble, one may find that the focus of one's bodily con- 
 sciousness is the contraction, often quite inconsiderable, of the 
 eyes and brows. When momentarily embarrassed, it is some- 
 thing in the pharynx that compels either a swallow, a clearing of 
 the throat, or a slight cough; and so on for as many more instances 
 as might be named. Our concern here being with the general 
 view rather than with the details, I will not linger to discuss these 
 but, assuming the point admitted that every change that occurs 
 must be felt, I will pass on.^ 
 
 1 Of course the physiological question arises, how are the changes felt? — 
 after they are produced, by the sensory nerves of the organs bringing 
 back to the brain a report of the modifications that have occurred? or 
 before they are produced, by our being conscious of the outgoing nerve- 
 currents starting on their way downward towards the parts they are to 
 excite? I believe all the evidence we have to be in favour of the former al- 
 ternative. The question is too minute for discussion here, but I have said 
 something about it in a paper entitled The Feeling of Effort, in the An- 
 niversary Memoirs of the Boston Natural History Society, 1880 (translated 
 in La Critique Philosophique for that year, and summarized in Mind XX., 
 582). See also G. E. Müller's Grundlegung der Psychophysik, §110. 
 
WHAT IS AN EMOTION 17 
 
 I now proceed to urge the vital point of my whole theory, which 
 is this. If we fancy some strong emotion, and then try to ab- 
 stract from our consciousness of it aU the feelings of its character- 
 istic bodily symptoms, we find we have nothing left behind, no 
 "mind-stuff" out of which the emotion can be constituted, and 
 that a cold and neutral state of intellectual perception is aU that 
 remains. It is true that although most people, when asked, say 
 that their introspection verifies this statement, some persist in 
 saying theirs does not. Many cannot be made to understand the 
 question. When you beg them to imagine away every feehng of 
 laughter and of tendency to laugh from their consciousness of the 
 ludicrousness of an object, and then to tell you what the feeling of 
 of its ludicrousness would be like, whether it be anything more 
 than the perception that the object belongs to the class "funny," 
 they persist in replying that the thing proposed is a physical 
 impossibihty, and that they always must 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 purely speculative one of subtracting certain elements of 
 feehng from an emotional state supposed to exist in its fulness, 
 and saying what the residual elements are. I cannot help thinking 
 that all who rightly apprehend this problem will agree with the 
 proposition above laid down. What kind of an emotion of fear 
 would be left, if the f eehngs neither of quickened heart-beats nor of 
 shallow breathing, neither of trembling lips nor of weakened hmbs, 
 neither of goose-flesh nor of visceral stirrings, were present, it is 
 quite impossible to think. Can one fancy the state of rage and 
 picture no ebuUition of it in the chest, no flushing of the face, no 
 dilatation of the nostrils, no clenching of the teeth, no impulse to 
 vigorous action, but in their stead limp muscles, calm breathing, 
 and a placid face? The present writer, for one, certainly cannot. 
 The rage is as completely evaporated as the sensation of its so- 
 caUed manifestations, and the only thing that can possibly be 
 supposed to take its place is some cold-blooded and dispassionate 
 judicial sentence, confined entirely to the intellectual realm, to the 
 effect that a certain person or persons merit chastisement for their 
 sins. In Hke manner of grief: what would it be without its tears, 
 its sobs, its suffocation of the heart, its pang in the breast-bone? 
 
18 WILLIAM JAMES 
 
 A feelingless cognition that certain circumstances are deplorable, 
 and nothing more. Every passion in turn tells the same story. 
 A purely disembodied human emotion is a nonentity. I do not 
 say that it is a contradiction in the nature of things, or that pure 
 spirits are necessarily condemned to cold intellectual hves; but 
 I say that for us, emotion dissociated from aU bodily feeling is 
 inconceivable. The more closely I scrutinise my states, the more 
 persuaded I become, that whatever moods, affections, and passions 
 I have, are in very truth constituted by, and made up of, those 
 bodily changes we ordinarily call their expression or consequence; 
 and the more it seems to me that if I were to become corporeally 
 anaesthetic, I should be excluded from the Ufe of the affections, 
 harsh and tender ahke, and drag out an existence of merely cogni- 
 tive or intellectual form. Such an existence, although it seems to 
 have been the ideal of ancient sages, is too apathetic to be keenly 
 sought after by those born after the revival of the worship of 
 sensibility, a few generations ago. 
 
 But if the emotion is nothing but the feehng of the reflex bodily 
 effects of what we caU its "object," effects due to the connate 
 adaptation of the nervous system to that object, we seem im- 
 mediately faced by this objection: most of the objects of civihsed 
 man's emotions are things to which it would be preposterous to 
 suppose their nervous systems connately adapted. Most occa- 
 sions of shame and many insults are purely conventional, and vary 
 with the social environment. The same is true of many matters 
 of dread and of desire, and of many occasions of melancholy and 
 regret. In these cases, at least, it would seem that the ideas of 
 shame, desire, regret, etc., must first have been attached by educa- 
 tion and association to these conventional objects before the bodily 
 changes could possibly be awakened. And if in these cases the 
 bodily changes foUow the ideas, instead of giving rise to them, 
 why not then in all cases? 
 
 To discuss thoroughly this objection would carry us deep into 
 the study of purely intellectual ^Esthetics. A few words must 
 here suffice. We will say nothing of the argument's failure to 
 distinguish between the idea of an emotion and the emotion it- 
 self. We will only recall the well-known evolutionary principle 
 that when a certain power has once been fixed in an animal by 
 
WHAT IS AN EMOTION 19 
 
 virtue of its utility in presence of certain features of the environ- 
 ment, it may turn out to be useful in presence of other features of 
 the environment that had originally nothing to do with either 
 producing or preserving it. A nervous tendency to discharge being 
 once there, all sorts of unforeseen things may pull the trigger and 
 let loose the effects. That among these things should be con- 
 ventionalities of man's contriving is a matter of no psychological 
 consequence whatever. The most important part of my environ- 
 ment is my fellow-man. The consciousness of his attitude 
 towards me is the perception that normally unlocks most of my 
 shames and indignations and fears. The extraordinary sensitive- 
 ness of this consciousness is shown by the bodily modifications 
 wrought in us by the awareness that our fellow-man is noticing us 
 at all. No one can walk across the platform at a public meeting 
 with just the same muscular innervation he uses to walk across his 
 room at home. No one can give a message to such a meeting with- 
 out organic exdtement. "Stage-fright" is only the extreme 
 degree of that wholly irrational personal self-consciousness which 
 everyone gets in some measure, as soon as he feels the eyes of a 
 number of strangers fixed upon him, even though he be inwardly 
 convinced that their feeling towards him is of no practical account.^ 
 This being so, it is not surprisiag that the additional persuasion 
 that my fellow-man's attitude means either well or ill for me 
 should awaken stronger emotions still. In primitive societies 
 "well" may mean handing me a piece of beef, and "ill" may 
 mean aiming a blow at my skull. In our "cultured age," "ill" 
 may mean cutting me in the street, and "well," giving me an 
 honorary degree. What the action itself may be is quite insignifi- 
 cant, so long as I can perceive in it intent or animus. That is the 
 emotion-arousing perception; and may give rise to as strong 
 bodily convulsions in me, a civilised man experiencing the treat- 
 ment of an artificial society, as in any savage prisoner of war, 
 
 ^ Let it be noted in passing that this personal self -consciousness seems 
 an altogether bodily affair, largely a consciousness of our attitude, and 
 that, like other emotions, it reacts on its physical condition, and leads to 
 modifications of the attitude, — to a certain rigidity in most men, but in 
 children to a regular twisting and squirming fit, and in women to various 
 gracefully shy poses. 
 
20 WILLIAM JAMES 
 
 learning whether his captors are about to eat him or to make him 
 a member of their tribe. 
 
 But now, this objection disposed of, there arises a more general 
 doubt. Is there any evidence, it may be asked, for the assump- 
 tion that particular perceptions do produce widespread bodily 
 effects by a sort of immediate physical influence, antecedent to 
 the arousal of an emotion or emotional idea? 
 
 The only possible reply is, that there is most assuredly such 
 evidence. In hstening to poetry, drama, or heroic narrative, we 
 are often surprised at the cutaneous shiver which like a sudden 
 wave flows over us, and at the heart-sweUing and the lachrymal 
 effusion that unexpectedly catch us at intervals. In listening to 
 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 danger 
 can arise. If our friend goes near to the edge of a precipice, we 
 get the well-known feehng of "aU-overishness," and we shrink 
 back, although we positively know him to be safe, and have no 
 distinct imagination of his faU. 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 deceive him, he stirred it round and saw 
 it drip from the stick with no feeHng save that of childish curiosity. 
 Suddenly the world grew black before his eyes, his ears began to 
 buzz, and he knew no more. He had never heard of the sight of blood 
 producing f aintness or sickness, and he had so httle repugnance 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 occasion in him such formidable bodily effects. 
 
 Imagine two steel knife-blades with their keen edges crossing 
 each other at right angles, and moving to and fro. Our whole 
 nervous organisation is "on-edge" at the thought; and yet what 
 emotion can be there except the unpleasant nervous feeling itself, 
 or the dread that more of it may come? The entire fund and 
 capital of the emotion here is the senseless bodily effect the blades 
 immediately arouse. This case is typical of a class: where an 
 ideal emotion seems to precede the bodily symptoms, it is often 
 
WHAT IS AN EMOTION 21 
 
 nothing but a representation of the symptoms themselves. One 
 who has already fainted at the sight of blood may witness the 
 preparations for a surgical operation with uncontrollable heart- 
 sinking and anxiety. He anticipates certain feehngs, and the 
 anticipation precipitates their arrival. I am told of a case of mor- 
 bid terror, of which the subject confessed that what possessed 
 her seemed, more than anything, to be the fear of fear itself. In 
 the various forms of what Professor Bain calls "tender emotion," 
 although the appropriate object must usually be directly con- 
 templated before the emotion can be aroused, yet sometimes 
 thinking of the symptoms of the emotion itself may have the same 
 effect. In sentimental natures, the thought of "yearning" wiU 
 produce real "yearning." And, not to speak of coarser examples, 
 a mother's imagination of the caresses she bestows on her child 
 may arouse a spasm of parental longing. 
 
 In such cases as these, we see plainly how the emotion both be- 
 gins and ends with what we call its effects or manifestations. It 
 has no mental status except as either the presented feeling, or the 
 idea, of the manifestations; which latter thus constitute its entire 
 material, its sum and substance, and its stock-in-trade. And 
 these cases ought to make us see how in aU cases the feehng of the 
 manifestations may play a much deeper part in the constitution 
 of the emotion than we are wont to suppose. 
 
 If our theory be true, a necessary corollary of it ought to be 
 that any voluntary arousal of the so-caUed manifestations of a 
 special emotion ought to give us the emotion itseK. Of course 
 in the majority of emotions, this test is inapplicable; for many of 
 the manifestations are in organs over which we have no voHtional 
 control. Still, within the limits in which it can be verified, experi- 
 ence fully corroborates this test. Everyone 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 stiU, 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 
 
22 WILLIAM JAMES 
 
 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 everything with a dismal voice, and your melancholy ^ 
 lingers. There is no more valuable precept in moral education 
 than this, as all who have experience know: if we wish to conquer 
 undesirable emotional tendencies in ourselves, we must assiduously, 
 and in the first instance cold-bloodedly, go through the outward 
 motions of those contrary dispositions we prefer to cultivate. The 
 reward of persistency wiU infaUibly come, in the fading out of the 
 sullenness or depression, and the advent of real cheerfulness and 
 kindliness in their stead. Smooth the brow, brighten the eye, 
 contract the dorsal rather than the ventral aspect of the frame, 
 and speak in a major key, pass the genial compliment, and youl" 
 heart must be frigid indeed if it does not gradually thaw! 
 
 The only exceptions to this are apparent, not real. The great 
 emotional expressiveness and mobihty of certain persons often 
 lead us to say " They would feel more if they talked less." And in 
 another class of persons, tfe,e explosive energy with which passion 
 manifests itseK on critical occasions, seems correlated with the 
 way in which they bottle it up during the intervals. But these are 
 only eccentric types of character, and within each type the law of 
 the last paragraph prevails. The sentimentahst is so constructed 
 that "gushing" is his or her normal mode of expression. Putting 
 a stopper on the "gush" will only to a limited extent cause more 
 "real" activities to take its place; in the main it will simply pro- 
 duce listlessness. On the other hand the ponderous and bihous 
 "slumbering volcano," let him repress the expression of his pas- 
 sions as he wiU, will find them expire if they get no vent at all; 
 whilst if the rare occasions multiply which he deems worthy of 
 their outbreak, he will find them grow in intensity as life proceeds. 
 
 I feel persuaded there is no real exception to the law. The 
 formidable effects of suppressed tears might be mentioned, and 
 the cahning results of speaking out your mind when angry and . 
 having done with it. But these are also but specious wanderings 
 from the rule. Every perception must lead to some nervous 
 result. If this be the normal emotional expression, it soon ex- 
 pends itself, and in the natural course of things a cahn succeeds. 
 But if the normal issue be blocked from any cause, the currents 
 
WHAT IS AN EMOTION 23 
 
 / 
 
 / may under certain circumstances invade other tracts, and there 
 I work different and worse effects. Thus vengeful brooding may 
 replace a burst of indignation; a dry heat may consume the frame 
 of one who fain would weep, or he may, as Dante says, turn to 
 stone within; and then tears or a storming-fit may bring a grateful 
 relief. When we teach children to repress their emotions, it is 
 not that they may feel more; quite the reverse. It is that they 
 may think more; for to a certain extent whatever nerve-currents 
 are diverted from the regions below, must swell the activity of the 
 thought-tracts of the brain.^ 
 
 The last great argument in favour of the priority of the bodily 
 symptoms to the felt emotion, is the ease with which we formulate 
 by its means pathological cases and normal cases under a common 
 scheme. In every asylum we find examples of absolutely unmo- 
 tived 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 inap- 
 propriate, will cause it to upset in that way, and as a consequence 
 to engender the particular complex of feehngs of which the psychic 
 body of the emotion consists. Thus, to take one special instance, 
 if inabüity to draw deep breath, fluttering of the heart, and that 
 peculiar epigastric change felt as "precordial anxiety,'* with an 
 irresistible tendency to take a somewhat crouching attitude and 
 to sit stiU, and with perhaps other visceral processes not now 
 known, all spontaneously occur together in a certain person; his 
 feehng of their combination is the emotion of dread, and he is 
 the victim of what is known as morbid fear. A friend who has had 
 occasional attacks of this most distressing of all maladies, tells me 
 
 ' This is the opposite of whkt happens in injuries to the brain, whether 
 from outward violence, inward rupture or tumor, or mere starvation from 
 disease. The cortical permeability seems reduced, so that excitement, 
 instead of propagating itself laterally through the ideational channels as 
 before tends to take the downward track into the organs of the body. The 
 consequence is that we have tears, laughter, and temper-fits, on the most 
 insignificant provocation, accompanying a proportional feebleness in 
 logical thought and the power of volitional attention and decision. 
 
24 WILLIAM JAMES 
 
 that in his case the whole drama seems to centre about the region 
 of the heart and respiratory apparatus, that his main effort during 
 the 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 himseK erect, the dread, ipso facto, seems to depart.* 
 
 The account given to Brächet by one of his own patients of her 
 opposite condition, that of emotional insensibility, has been often 
 quoted, and deserves to be quoted again: 
 
 I still continue (she says) to suffer constantly; I have not a moment of 
 comfort, and no human sensations. Surrounded by all that can render 
 life happy and agreeable, still to me the faculty of enjoyment and of feel- 
 ing is wanting — 'both have become physical impossibilities. In everything, 
 even in the most tender caresses of my children, I find only bitterness. 
 I cover them with kisses, but there is something between their lips and 
 mine; and this horrid something is between me and all the enjoyments of 
 life. My existence is incomplete. The functions and acts of ordinary 
 life, it is true, still remain to me; but in every one of them there is something 
 wanting — 'to wit, the feeling which is proper to them, and the pleasure 
 
 which follows them Each of my senses, each jpoTt of my proper 
 
 self, is as if it were separated from me and can no longer afford me any feeling; 
 this impossibility seems to depend upon a void which I feel in the front of my 
 head, and to be due to the diminution of the sensibility over the whole surface 
 of my body, for it seems to me that I never actually reach the objects which I 
 
 touch I feel well enough the changes of temperature on my 
 
 skin but I no longer experience the internal feeling of the air when I breathe. 
 
 * It must be confessed that there are cases of morbid fear in which ob- 
 jectively the heart is not much perturbed. These however fail to prove 
 anything against our theory, for it is of course possible that the cortical 
 centres normally percipient of dread as a complex of cardiac and other 
 organic sensations due to real bodily change, should become primarily 
 excited in brain-disease, and give rise to an hallucination of the changes 
 being there, — ^an hallucination of dread, consequently, coexistent with a 
 comparatively calm pulse, &c. I say it is possible, for I am ignorant of 
 observations which might test the fact. Trance, ecstasy, &c., offer analo- 
 gous examples — not to speak of ordinary dreaming. Under all these con- 
 ditions one may have the liveliest subjective feelings, either of eye or ear, 
 or of the more visceral and emotional sort, as a result of pure nerve-central 
 activity, with complete peripheral repose. Whether the subjective 
 strength of the feeling be due in these cases to the actual energy of the 
 central disturbance, or merely to the narrowing of the field of conscious- 
 ness, need not concern us. In the asylum cases of melancholy, there is 
 usually a narrowing of the field. 
 
WHAT IS AN EMOTION 25 
 
 .... All this would be a small matter enough, but for its frightful re- 
 sult, which is that of the impossibility of any other kind of feeling and of 
 any sort of enjoyment, although I experience a need and desire of them that 
 render my life an incomprehensible torture. Every function, every ac- 
 tion of my life remains, but deprived of the feeling that belongs to it, of 
 the enjoyment that should follow it. My feet are cold, I warm them, 
 but gain no pleasure from the warmth. I recognize the taste of all I eat, 
 
 without getting any pleasure from it My children are growing 
 
 handsome and healthy, everyone tells me so, I see it myself, but the delight, 
 the inward comfort I ought to feel, I fail to get. Music has lost all charm 
 for me, I used to love it dearly. My daughter plays very well, but for me 
 it is mere noise. That lively interest which a year ago made me hear a 
 delicious concert in the smallest air their fingers played, — 'that thrill, that 
 general vibration which made me shed such tender tears, — all that exists no 
 more.^ 
 
 Other victims describe themselves as closed in waUs of ice or 
 covered with an india-rubber integument, through which no 
 impression penetrates to the sealed-up sensibility. 
 
 If our hypothesis be true, it makes us reaHze more deeply than 
 ever how much our mental life is knit up with our corporeal frame, 
 in the strictest sense of the term. Rapture, love, ambition, indig- 
 nation, and pride, considered as feehngs, are fruits of the same soil 
 with the grossest bodily sensations of pleasure and of pain. But 
 it was said at the outset that this would be aflirmed only of what 
 we then agreed to call the ''standard" emotions; and that those 
 inward sensibihties that appeared devoid at first sight of bodily 
 results should be left out of our account. We had better, before 
 closing, say a word or two about these latter feehngs. 
 
 They are, the reader wiU remember, the moral, intellectual, and 
 aesthetic feelings. Concords of sounds, of colours, of lines, 
 logical consistencies, teleological fitnesses, affect us with a pleasure 
 that seems ingrained in the very form of the representation itself, 
 and to borrow nothing from any reverberation surging up from the 
 parts below the brain. The Herbartian psychologists have tried 
 to distinguish feelings due to the form in which ideas may be ar- 
 ranged. A geometrical demonstration may be as "pretty" and 
 an act of justice as "neat" as a drawing or a tune, although the 
 prettiness and neatness seem here to be a pure matter of sensation, 
 
 * Quoted by Semal : De la Sensibilite generale dans les Affections milan- 
 coliques, Paris, 1876, pp. 130-135. 
 
26 WILLIAM JAMES 
 
 and there to have nothing to do with sensation. We have, then, 
 or some of us seem to have, genuinely cerebral forms of pleasure 
 and displeasure, apparently not agreeing in their mode of pro- 
 duction with the so-caUed "standard" emotions we have been 
 analysing. And it is certain that readers whom our reasons have 
 hitherto failed to convince will now start up at this admission, 
 and consider that by it we give up our whole case. Since musical 
 perceptions, since logical ideas, can immediately arouse a form 
 of emotional feehng, they will say: Is it not more natural to sup- 
 pose that in the case if the so-called "standard" emotions, 
 prompted by the presence of objects or the experience of events, 
 the emotional feeling is equally immediate, and the bodily expres- 
 sion something that comes later and is added on? 
 
 But a sober scrutiny of the cases of pure cerebral emotion gives 
 little force to this assimilation. Unless in them there actually 
 be coupled with the intellectual feehng a bodily reverberation of 
 some kind, unless we actually laugh at the neatness of the mechani- 
 cal device, thrill at the justice of the act, or tingle at the perfection 
 of the musical form, our mental condition is more allied to a judg- 
 ment of right than to anything else. And such a judgment is 
 rather to be classed among awarenesses of truth: it is a cognitive 
 act. But as a matter of fact the intellectual feeling hardly ever 
 does exist thus unaccompanied. The bodily sounding-board is 
 at work, as careful introspection will show, far more than we 
 usually suppose. Still, where long familiarity with a certain class 
 of effects has blunted emotional sensibility thereto as much as it 
 has sharpened the taste and judgment, we do get the intellectual 
 emotion, if such it can be called, pure and undefiled. And the 
 dryness of it, the paleness, the absence of all glow, as it may exist 
 in a thoroughly expert critic's mind, not only shows us what an 
 altogether different thing it is from the "standard" emotions we 
 considered first, but makes us suspect that almost the entire dif- 
 ference lies in the fact that the bodily sounding-board, vibrating 
 in the one case, is in the other mute. "Not so very bad" is, in a 
 person of consummate taste, apt to be the highest limit of approv- 
 ing expression. "Rien ne me choque^' is said to have been Chopin's 
 superlative of praise of new music. A sentimental layman would 
 feel, and ought to feel, horrified, on being admitted into such a 
 
WHAT IS AN EMOTION 27 
 
 critic's mind, to see how cold, how thin, how void of human 
 significance, are the motives for favour or disfavour that there 
 prevail. The capacity to make a nice spot on the wall will out- 
 weigh a picture's whole content; a foolish trick of words will pre- 
 serve a poem; an utterly meaningless fitness of sequence in one 
 musical composition set at naught any amount of ''expressiveness" 
 in another. 
 
 I remember seeing an English couple sit for more than an hour 
 on a piercing February day in the Academy at Venice before the 
 celebrated "Assumption" by Titian; and when I, after being 
 chased from room to room by the cold, concluded to get into the 
 sunshine as fast as possible and let the pictures go, but before leav- 
 ing drew reverently near to them to learn with what superior forms 
 of susceptibihty they might be endowed, all I overheard was the 
 woman's voice murmuring: "What a deprecatory expression her 
 face wears! What seK-abnegafion/ How unworthy she feels of 
 the honour she is receiving!" Their honest hearts had been kept 
 warm all the time by a glow of spurious sentiment that would have 
 fairly made old Titian sick. Mr. Ruskin somewhere makes the 
 (for him) terrible admission that rehgious people as a rule care little 
 for pictures, and that when they do care for them they generally 
 prefer the worst ones to the best. Yes! in every art, in every 
 science, there is the keen perception of certain relations being 
 right or not, and there is the emotional flush and thrill consequent 
 thereupon. And these are two things, not one. In the former of 
 them it is that experts and masters are at home. The latter ac- 
 companiments are bodily commotions that they may hardly feel, 
 but that may be experienced in their fulness by cretins and Philis- 
 tines in whom the critical judgment is at its lowest ebb. The 
 "marvels" of Science, about which so much edifying popular 
 literature is written, are apt to be "caviare" to the men in the 
 laboratories. Cognition and emotion are parted even in this last 
 retreat, — who shall say that their antagonism may not just be one 
 phase of the world-old struggle known as that between the spirit 
 and the flesh? — a struggle in which it seems pretty certain that 
 neither party wiU definitively drive the other off the field. 
 
 To return now to our starting-point, the physiology of the brain. 
 If we suppose its cortex to contain centres for the perception of 
 
28 WILLIAM JAMES 
 
 changes in each special sense-organ, in each portion of the skin, 
 in each muscle, each joint, and each viscus, and to contain abso- 
 lutely nothing else, we still have a scheme perfectly capable of 
 representing the process of the emotions. An object falls on a 
 sense-organ and is apperceived by the appropriate cortical centre; 
 or else the latter, excited in some other way, gives rise to an idea 
 of the same object. Quick as a flash, the reflex currents pass 
 down through their preordained channels, alter the condition of 
 muscle, skin and viscus; and these alterations, apperceived hke the 
 original object, in as many specific portions of the cortex, combine 
 with it in consciousness and transform it from an object-simply- 
 apprehended into an object-emotionally-felt. No new principles 
 have to be invoked, nothing is postulated beyond the ordinary 
 reflex circuit, and the topical centres admitted in one shape or 
 another by all to exist. 
 
 It must be confessed that a crucial test of the truth of the 
 hypothesis is quite as hard to obtain as its decisive refutation. A 
 case of complete internal and external corporeal anaesthesia, 
 without motor alteration or alteration of intelligence except 
 emotional apathy, would afford, if not a crucial test, at least a 
 strong presumption, in favour of the truth of the view we have 
 set forth; whilst the persistence of strong emotional feehng in 
 such a case would completely overthrow our case. Hysterical 
 anaesthesias seem never to be complete enough to cover the 
 ground. Complete anaesthesias from organic disease, on the 
 other hand, are excessively rare. In the famous case of Remigius 
 Leims, no mention is made by the reporters of his emotional 
 condition, a circumstance which by itseK affords no presumption 
 that it was normal, since as a rule nothing ever is noticed without 
 a pre-existing question in the mind. Dr. Georg Winter has 
 recently described a case somewhat similar,^ and in reply to a 
 question, kindly writes to me as follows: 
 
 The case has been for a year and a half entirely removed from my ob- 
 servation. But so far as I am able to state, the man was characterised by 
 a certain mental inertia and indolence. He was tranquil, and had on the 
 
 * "Ein Fall von allgemeiner Anaesthesie," Inaugural-Dissertation. 
 Heidelberg, Winter, 1882. 
 
WHAT IS AN EMOTION 29 
 
 whole the temperament of a phlegmatic . He was not irritable, not quarrel- 
 some, went quietly about his farm-work, and left the care of his business 
 and house-keeping to other people. In short, he gave one the impression 
 of a placid countryman, who has no interests beyond his work. 
 
 Dr. Winter adds that in studying the case he paid no particular 
 attention to the man's psychic condition, as this seemed "neben- 
 sächlich" to his main purpose. I should add that the form of my 
 question to Dr. Winter could give him no clue as to the kind of 
 answer I expected. 
 
 Of course, this case proves nothing, but it is to be hoped that 
 asylum-physicians and nervous specialists may begin methodically 
 to study the relation between anaesthesia and emotional apathy. 
 If the hypothesis here suggested is ever to be definitively confirmed 
 or disproved it seems as if it must be by them, for they alone have 
 the data in their hands. 
 
 P.S. — By an unpardonable forgetfulness at the time of despatching my 
 MS. to the Editor, I ignored the existence of the extraordinary case of total 
 anaesthesia published by Professor Strümpell in Ziemssen's Deutsches 
 Archiv für klinische Medicin xxii., 321, of which I had nevertheless read 
 reports at the time of its publication. (Cf. first report of the case in 
 Mind X., 263, translated from Pfliiger's Archiv. — Ed.) I believe that it 
 constitutes the only remaining case of the sort in medical literature, so 
 that with it our survey is complete. On referring to the original, which is 
 important in many connections, I found that the patient, a shoemaker's 
 apprentice of 15, entirely anaesthetic, inside and out, with the exception 
 of one eye and one ear, had shown shame on the occasion of soiling his 
 bed, and grief, when a formerly favourite dish was set before him, at the 
 thought that he could no longer taste its flavour. As Dr. Strümpell seemed 
 however to have paid no special attention to his psychic states, so far as 
 these are matter for our theory, I wrote to him in a few words what the 
 essence of the theory was, and asked him to say whether he fait sure the 
 grief and shame mentioned were real feelings in the boy's mind, or only 
 the reflex manifestations provoked by certain perceptions, manifestations 
 that an outside observer might note, but to which the boy himself might be 
 insensible. 
 
 Dr. Strümpell has sent me a very obliging reply, of which I translate the 
 most important passage. 
 
 "1 must indeed confess that I naturally failed to institute with my Anaes- 
 thetiker observations as special as the sense of your theory would require. 
 Nevertheless I think I can decidedly make the statement, that he was by 
 no means completely lacking in emotional affections. In addition to the 
 feelings of grief and shame mentioned in my paper, I recall distinctly 
 
30 WILLIAM JAMES 
 
 that he showed, e.g., anger, and frequently quarrelled with the hospital 
 attendants. He also manifested /ear lest I should punish him. In short, 
 I do not think that my case speaks exactly in favour of your theory. On 
 the other hand, I will not aflSrm that it positively refutes your theory. 
 For my case was certainly one of a very centrally conditioned anaesthesia 
 (perception-anaesthesia, like that of hysterics) and therefore the conduc- 
 tion of outward impressions may in him have been undisturbed." 
 
 I confess that I do not see the relevancy of the last consideration, and 
 this makes me suspect that my own letter was too briefly or obscurely 
 expressed to put my correspondent fully in possession of my own thought. 
 For his reply still makes no explicit reference to anything but the outward 
 manifestations of emotion in the boy. Is it not at least conceivable that, 
 just as a stranger, brought into the boy's presence for the first time, and 
 seeing him eat and drink and satisfy other natural necessities, would sup- 
 pose him to have the feelings of hunger, thirst, &c., until informed by the 
 boy himself that he did all these things with no feeling at all but that of 
 sight and sound — 'is it not, I say, at least possible, that Dr. Strümpell, 
 addressing no direct introspective questions to his patient, and the patient 
 not being of a class from which one could expect voluntary revelations of 
 that sort, should have similarly omitted to discriminate between a feeling 
 and its habitual motor accompaniment, and erroneously taken the latter 
 as proof that the former was there? Such a mistake is of course possible, 
 and I must therefore repeat Dr. Striimpell's own words, that his case does 
 not yet refute my theory. Should a similar case recur, it ought to be in- 
 terrogated as to the inward emotional state that co-existed with the out- 
 ward expressions of shame, anger, &c. And if it then turned out that the 
 patient recognized explicitly the same mood of feeling known under those 
 names in his former normal state, my theory would of course fall. It is, 
 however, to me incredible that the patient should have an identical feel- 
 ing, for the dropping out of the organic sounding-board would necessarily 
 diminish its volume in some way. The teacher of Dr. Striimpell's patient 
 found a mental deficiency in him during his anaesthesia, that may possibly 
 have been due to the consequences resulting to his general intellectual 
 vivacity from the subtraction of so important a mass of feelings, even 
 though they were not the whole of his emotional life. Whoever wishes to 
 extract from the next case of total anaesthesia the maximum of knowledge 
 about the emotions, will have to interrogate the patient with some such 
 notion as that of my article in his mind. We can define the pure psychic 
 emotions far better by starting from such an hypothesis and modifying it 
 in the way of restriction and subtraction, than by having no definite hy- 
 pothesis at all. Thus will the publication of my article have been justified, 
 even though the theory it advocates, rigorously taken, be erroneous. The 
 best thing I can say for it is, that in writing it, I have almost persuaded 
 myself it may be true. 
 
THE EMOTIONS 
 
 BT 
 
 CARL GEORG LANGE, M.D. 
 
THE EMOTIONS 
 A Psychophysiological Study 
 
 CARL GEORG LANGE, M.D. 
 
 Professor of Medicine in Copenhagen 
 
 Translated by Istar A. Haupt 
 From the Authorized German Translation of H. Kurella, M.D. 
 
 Kant, in a passage in his Anthropologie, qualifies the affections 
 as diseases of the mind. 
 
 He considers the mind normal only as long as it is under the 
 incontrovertible and absolute control of reason. Anything that 
 causes it to be disturbed seems to him to be abnormal and harm- 
 ful to the individual. 
 
 To a more realistic school of psychology, which knows no ab- 
 stract "Ideal" man, but rather "takes men as they are," such a 
 doctrine of the soul must appear strange. It must be but a 
 meager conception of man's existence, to consider pain and pleas- 
 ure, pity and anger, defiance and humihty, as conditions foreign 
 to normal life, or even as something from which one must turn 
 away if one wishes to recognize the actual nature of man-kind. 
 A theory which makes the power of admiring the great, of deriving 
 pleasure from the beautiful, and of being moved by misfortune, 
 a disease, results in a limitation of the extent of our mental life. 
 Such a theory will consider the imperturbable arithmetic teacher, 
 to whom every impression is merely an impulse to draw rational 
 conclusions, as the only normal, healthy individual. It is a 
 strange conception of the interaction of mental powers to consider 
 as accidental that which plays a larger and more vital part than 
 normal reason in the mental life of most men, and which deter- 
 mines to a much higher degree than reason the fate of nations as 
 well as of individuals. 
 
 Who would wish to cure an unhealthy mind, if by so doing he 
 would rob man of all that goes to make him a sympathetic crea- 
 
 33 
 
34 CARL GEORG LANGE 
 
 ture; that enables him to share the pleasure and pain of those of 
 his kind; and to admire his Hke or to hate them? No, — ^however 
 true it may be that we must eliminate our passions wherever it is 
 a question of calm consideration, clear recognition, or unbiased 
 judgment, it is undoubtedly just as true that we cannot consider 
 an individual who can only think, recognize, judge — but not suffer, 
 fear or rejoice — a true, healthy, complete human being, even if 
 occasionally these abilities may be detrimental to his power of 
 understanding and judgment. 
 
 Emotions are not only the most important factors in the hfe 
 of the individual human being, but they are also the most power- 
 ful forces of nature known to us. Every page in the history of 
 nations testifies to their invincible power. 
 
 The storm of passions has cost more hves and has destroyed 
 more lands than hurricanes; their floods have wiped out more 
 towns than floods of water. Wherefore, it must seem strange, 
 indeed, to us that careful measures have not been taken to study 
 their nature and behavior. Whereas the greatest efforts have 
 been made to obtain knowledge of the causes and activities of 
 other forces of nature for the sake of controlling them as much as 
 possible, the investigation of the greatest force of aU, the one which 
 concerns us so vitally and personally, has been neglected to such 
 an extent that we can be said scarcely to possess even the most 
 superficial understanding of its more immediate conditions and 
 its true nature. 
 
 In this article no attempt has been made to give a complete 
 representation of the physiology of the emotions, or even a 
 general review of the main points. The study is limited entirely 
 to one aspect of the problem. It owes its origin primarily to the 
 necessity of clearing up, for practical medical purposes of my own, 
 the relation of the emotions to bodily conditions (often patho- 
 logical); and if possible to ascertain this relation by means of a 
 more precise, physiological method than has heretofore been 
 attempted. 
 
 As often happens, I was led further in my work than I intended 
 to go originally. A somewhat more searching investigation of the 
 subject very soon led me to the conclusion that the task which I 
 had set myself — namely, to determine (in agreement with popular 
 
THE EMOTIONS 35 
 
 psychology) " what effects the emotions have upon body func- 
 tions" — offered not only great difficulties, but in point of fact was 
 also absolutely impossible, simply because the question had been 
 put in reverse order. 
 
 It soon became apparent that to throw some hght upon the 
 matter, the investigation must encompass a wider field because 
 the point of departure — namely, the conception of "Emotions" — 
 is entirely without scientific definiteness, especially if more rigorous 
 demands are made than those which would satisfy the purely 
 speculative psychologist. 
 
 What is an emotion? I hope the result of this little study will 
 be to obtain a clear, more positive conception of this term. But 
 even at the very outset, one meets with the necessity of setting 
 some sort of territorial limitation to the conception of ''emotion" 
 for the sake of preliminary comprehension, since neither popular 
 nor scientific speech gives us any definition, at least, none that is 
 accepted generally. To say that we wish to deal here chiefly with 
 the "affections" does not clearly define our field of activity. 
 
 However, I do not mean to say that it would be difficult to 
 enumerate all the phenomena which might be included under this 
 heading, — all the various kinds of affections. That is of no con- 
 sequence to me since I do not aim at completeness in that regard, 
 even if it be permissible to speak of completeness here. On the 
 contrary, as wiU be evident further on, I intend to confine myself 
 to a very narrow field. It is, however, of some importance to deal 
 with as clear a conception as possible; I mean, a conception which 
 includes, physiologically, only phenomena that are analagous. In 
 this regard, it is not possible to start from any one point that will 
 satisfy aU conditions. Heterogeneous conceptions overlap, in 
 popular speech as well as in scientific psychology, because of a 
 certain family resemblance, so to speak. Sorrow, joy, fear, anger 
 and the like, on the one hand, and on the other, love, hate, scorn, 
 admiration, etc., are obviously two groups of phenomena which, 
 from the point of view of psychology, must be kept apart. I shall 
 retain the term "Emotions" with reference to the first group only, 
 whereas I shall let the others be called passions, feelings, or any- 
 thing else appropriate. 
 
36 CARL GEORG LANGE 
 
 Yet the line of demarcation between the two has never been 
 clearly defined (1)/ although it is difficult to explain why scientific 
 psychology, at least, has not felt the necessity for a more rigoroua 
 definition. For it is absolutely necessary to keep these two apart 
 as much as possible; at least, when one is dealing with the physiol- 
 ogy of these phenomena (2). We cannot throw conditions such 
 as fright, rage, joy, together with jealousy, love, desire for freedom, 
 etc. And the difference between these two groups lies not only in 
 the fact that the latter is more complicated, and includes dis- 
 similar disturbances of the mind so that disturbances in imagina- 
 tion and reflexion especially play a part in their origin (3) ; but also 
 they are complicated and heterogeneous in the conditions of their 
 origin. Feehngs such as love, hate, admiration, etc., consist of 
 quite complex psychic phenomena, in which the emotions of joy, 
 anger, fear, etc., enter as separate elements, the latter being simple, 
 single phenomena. 
 
 A much greater difficulty confronts us as soon as we try to 
 determine the scope of the individual emotions, to limit the con- 
 ceptions sorrow, joy, etc., so that we may have a basis of dif- 
 ferentiation by means of which we can consider to what affection 
 Vv'e may attribute each emotion. This indeed seems to be the 
 problem which presents itself as soon as an attempt is made to 
 define the various emotions, or even to submit them to scientific 
 investigation. What is Joy? What is Fright? The answer to 
 such a question, at least more recently, seems to be considered 
 entirely unnecessary, even where an exact treatment of psychology 
 is intended (4) . 
 
 On the one hand, the matter is considered obvious, as something 
 which needs no further explanation: everyone can obtain suf- 
 ficient enlightenment by drawing on his own experience. "Every- 
 body knows what joy and sorrow are." On the other hand, the 
 emotions are believed to be so subjective as to be outside the 
 scope of any definition, just like the color sensation of red or blue. 
 But as long as such a purely subjective conception is maintained,, 
 a scientific investigation of their relation is, of course, impossible. 
 
 * Numbers in parentheses refer to the author's addenda. 
 
THE EMOTIONS 37 
 
 No object can be dealt with scientifically unless it posseses 
 objective qualities, concerning whose properties investigators 
 agree. By these it may become an object of general perception 
 and understanding, and may at least be discussed. Whatever 
 lies outside the range of discussion, as for instance color-percep- 
 tion or sensations of fright or anger, therefore also lies outside of 
 the range of science. The study of colors had nothing to do with 
 science as long as the individual knew nothing of it except the effect 
 that colors had on him personally. The scientific color theory de- 
 veloped only after an objective quality of the color rays had been 
 finally discovered by Newton. In the same way the emotions will 
 be excluded from scientific investigation until their objective 
 quahties are discovered and these are taken as points of departure. 
 
 It is now sufiiciently well known that such processes, open to 
 objective investigation, are present. That a man is sorry or 
 afraid or enraged is no longer only a matter of , his subjective per- 
 ception, but also is easily recognized by his associates on account 
 of various sorts of involuntary bodily manifestations, which go 
 hand in hand with the subjective feelings of fear, joy, etc. For 
 this reason it is difficult to conceal a strong affection. It is these 
 physiological manifestations of emotions which serve us as step- 
 ping-stones — assuredly the only ones — to their scientific investi- 
 gation. But until now, they have not been used as such. Of 
 course, this does not mean that physiology and psychology have 
 let these phenomena pass imnoticed. On the contrary, they were 
 turned to with particular preference, especially in the past. Since 
 the time of Aristotle masses of literature are on hand to explain 
 the "Influence of the affections upon the body," or at least, the 
 effect of particular phenomena which are included here (5). 
 
 Nevertheless, a scientific result, a clearer insight into the nature 
 of the affections, has not yet been achieved. In spite of all these 
 notes — for they are hardly more than notes — collected in the 
 course of centuries, no considerable advance has been made. 
 There are various reasons for this: in the first place, the various 
 studies date from an early period, when the necessary physiological 
 assumptions were ahnost entirely wanting. Even now, as we 
 shall see later, they are aU too meager, partly because until recently 
 physiognomy, in its narrower sense, has been too closely adhered 
 
38 CARL GEORG LANGU 
 
 to. The changes of facial expression under varying emotions are 
 precisely those manifestations which yield the least scientific re- 
 sults. This is partly due to the fact that they are limited to one 
 aspect alone of the physiological manifestations, and partly to 
 the fact that they still elude physiological analysis. Finally, and 
 essentially, the reason lies in the fact that examinations of the 
 affections have never been based upon these bodily manifesta- 
 tions, but have always considered these to be secondary phenom- 
 ena, which might perhaps be interesting and important, but 
 which, nevertheless, possessed only subordinate significance. 
 Bodily expressions were considered to be more or less accidental 
 concomitants of the main phenomena — the mental affection. 
 
 In fact, it might be declared without exaggeration that scien- 
 tifically we have absolutely no understanding of the emotions. 
 We have not even a shadow of insight into the nature of the 
 affections in general, or of the individual emotions. It is thought 
 that something is known of their mutual relation, and their 
 similarity and dissimilarity; but this view is based solely upon 
 indefinite impressions, and is not scientifically supported. It is 
 said for instance that joy and sorrow are opposites. This happens 
 to be true, as we shall see later, but it is hardly possible to say 
 that we understand fully wherein this opposition lies, or even that 
 we can form a clear idea of it. To cite another case: anger is 
 probably often considered to stand in closer relation to sorrow than 
 to joy, 2 whereas physiological investigation will prove that the 
 opposite is actually the case, etc., etc. 
 
 If now, although no scientific definition of the affections can be 
 given at the outset, I proceed, in this investigation from the tradi- 
 tional conceptions and the popular affections, and put the question 
 in the following way: ''What bodily manifestations accompany 
 each of the affections?" I do so with full consciousness of the fact 
 that the problem is hereby reversed, and that the starting point 
 is anything but precise and scientific. Nevertheless, this way will 
 presumably prove to be the most expedient one for reaching a 
 tentative conception. This method does not differ too much from- 
 
 2 Cf . Kant's definition of anger as a fright which suddenly awakens the 
 power of resistance to threatened evil {Anthropologie, Bk. 3, §73). Even 
 though anger and fright are diametrically opposed physiologically. 
 
THE EMOTIONS 39 
 
 the popular one, and it is possible by means of it to reach the 
 correct conclusion, even if in a more round-about way. The in- 
 vestigation will be limited to only a few of the most decided and 
 best defined affections: joy, sorrow, fear, anger, and to a certain 
 extent, embarrassment, suspense, and disappointment. The rea- 
 son for this limitation is that I am interested in the demonstrations 
 of the method of scientific analysis of emotions rather than in 
 carrjdng it out in full detail, and that in the case of most 
 of the other emotions, the bodily manifestations are so shght that 
 they cannot be used in any of the present crude and insufficient 
 methods for physiological analysis. 
 
 Material and methods are unfortunately more limited in the 
 physiological investigation of the affections than in any other 
 physiological investigation. The most important method, the 
 experimental, is here of but httle, if of any use, since animal 
 psychology is still too vague to draw conclusions from the study 
 of animals as to the behavior of human beings . It is also only rarely 
 that opportunities present themselves for even approximately 
 accurate experimental work with human beings. And so we are 
 reduced essentially to simple observation of ourselves and others, 
 to "cKnical" observation, to use the medical term, where aU ob- 
 servation of the symptoms which appear casuaUy are included, 
 as opposed to experimental investigation, where the symptoms 
 are controlled. Especially instructive are the cases where the 
 affections appear with such po¥/erful and persistent disturbances 
 that we enter into the field of pathology. The degree of intensity 
 which the symptoms reach here, and especially the fact that, owing 
 to their seriousness, they fall under the observation and treatment 
 of competent physicians, makes the study of the "emotional" 
 diseases particularly important for psychology, or, rather, it will 
 be made so as soon as they are dealt with more systematically. 
 
 We must compare these conscious observations with the simpler, 
 less voluntary experiences that generations have recorded in the 
 past, and which have become the property of popular conscious- 
 ness. These are preserved in many various verbal expressions 
 and figures of speech. For these, we turn gladly to the poet. In 
 articles on the bodily expression of the emotions, we usually find 
 innumerable quotations from earlier and more recent poets. This 
 
40 CARL GEORG LANGE 
 
 fact may be justified in so far as a picturesque or striking expres- 
 sion of the external characteristics of emotions is often found in 
 poetical works. But we must not look there for new material 
 for observation. Poets are no longer "doctor es huius scientiae 
 praecipui"^ as at the time of Bacon, for the problems of our 
 time lead us elsewhere than to the "innumerable" subtle questions 
 with which former representatives of this branch of psychology 
 dealt. 
 
 New-born infants offer very interesting material for obser- 
 vation along certain lines, particularly because of the relative 
 simplicity of the conditions and the predominance of affections 
 undisturbed and uninterfered with by reason; also because of the 
 feedom from acquired conventional expression of the affections. 
 
 This condition holds also for the study of the affections among 
 primitive peoples, where the emotions are often very strongly and 
 immediately expressed. On the other hand, we meet with the 
 same difficulties in dealing with infants and primitive peoples, as 
 we do when we study animal behavior, namely the uncertainty of 
 our psychological understanding, the inevitable consequence of 
 the subject's unsatisfactory reports. 
 
 SORROW 
 
 The most striking characteristic in the physiology and also in 
 the physiognomy of sorrow is its inhibitory effect upon the volun- 
 tary motor apparatus. The paralysis caused by sorrow is, how- 
 ever, not nearly as pronounced as that produced by fright. As 
 we shall see later, in the case of sorrow, the motor weakening 
 seldom goes further than to require effort and exertion for the 
 performance of movements which ordinarily are accomplished with 
 ease. There is, in other words, a feeling of lassitude, and, as in 
 the case of any fatigue, the movements are effected but slowly, 
 and languidly, with effort, want of power and pleasure, and are 
 therefore reduced to a minimum. This also accounts for the 
 external expression by which a sorrowful person is so easily rec- 
 ognized. He walks slowly, uncertainly, dragging his steps and 
 letting his arms hang limp at his sides. His voice is weak and 
 
 ^De dignitate et augmentis scienitarum, lib. 7, cap. 3. 
 
THE EMOTIONS 41 
 
 thin, as a result of the weakened activity of the expiratory and 
 laryngeal muscles. He prefers to sit silent and lost in thought. 
 The "latent innervation" (6) of the muscles also is conspicuously 
 weakened. His neck is bent, his head droops — "cast down," 
 "bent" by woe, — his face is lengthened and narrowed by the laxity 
 of the muscles of the cheek and jaw; his jaw may even hang down. 
 His eyes appear large, as is always the case when the orbicularis 
 oculi muscles are weakened. On the other hand, they may be 
 abnormally covered by the upper hd, as happens when the levator 
 palpehrae superioris muscles become weakened. Concomitant 
 with this weakened condition of the voluntary nerve and muscle 
 apparatus of the entire body, there appears also a feeling of lassi- 
 tude, of heaviness, as if you were weighed down by something. 
 You feel "oppressed," "dejected," you speak of "weighty" sorrow, 
 you must bear your woe, whereas you must bridle your anger or 
 joy. Many are so overpowered by sorrow that they can not even 
 hold themselves erect. The sufferer leans on or supports himself 
 by the surroundings, falls on his knees, or in desperation even 
 throws himself upon the floor, as Romeo did in the monk's cell. 
 
 This weakness of the whole apparatus of nerves and muscles of 
 animal life, and subordination to the will, is, however, only one 
 aspect of the physiology of sorrow. Another aspect, hardly less 
 important, and perhaps even more significant in its consequences, 
 belongs to another division of the motor mechanism; to the in- 
 voluntary, organic muscles, especially to those which are found in 
 the walls of the blood-vessels, and by whose constriction these 
 vessels may be narrowed. The vascular muscles and their 
 nerves, together with the vaso-motor apparatus, function in 
 exactly the opposite way from that in which the voluntary mus- 
 cular apparatus functions. Whereas the former became flaccid 
 and weakened, on the contrary, the vascular muscles contract 
 more than usually, so that the blood is forced out of the capillaries 
 and decreases the supply to the tissues, and organs of the body (7) . 
 The immediate consequences of insufficient blood-supply are pal- 
 lor, collapse and hypoemia. The pale color and sunken features 
 are just those pecuharities which, together with the weakened 
 face muscles, produce the lineaments characteristic of the woeful, 
 and give the impression of such rapid emaciation that it cannot 
 
42 CARL GEORG LANGE 
 
 possibly be attributed to either a change in metaboHsm or to 
 uncompensated consumption of the body tissues. Other regular 
 results of insufficient blood supply to the skin are sensations of 
 cold, cold shivers, difficulty in warming the body and sensitiveness 
 to cold. These conditions belong also to the rather constant 
 attributes of sorrow. The bloodless condition of the skin is no 
 doubt paralleled in the condition of the internal organs, and though 
 not so obvious, it may be recognized, nevertheless, by various 
 symptoms. This supposition is supported by the fact of the de- 
 creased secretions, at least of those which are controlled more 
 easily. The mouth becomes dry, the tongue clings to the palate, 
 and a bitter taste is produced, which seems to be a simple conse- 
 quence of the drying of the tongue.^ In the case of nursing 
 women, the secretion of milk is decreased or often ceases entirely. 
 As a contrast to the above mentioned physiological symptoms, 
 there is one of the most regular attributes of sorrow which is 
 weeping, with the plentiful tear secretion and the swollen, reddened 
 condition of the face, the increased flow of the mucous secretion of 
 the nose: all appearances which point to a considerable dilation 
 of the skin tissues of the face and of the mucous membrane. And 
 yet it may very well be assumed that such a dilation follows as a 
 reaction to a previous constriction, that is, of a relaxing of the 
 vascular muscles after their extreme tension. Similarly, we fre- 
 quently find fatigue or laxity as results of any overstraining of the 
 nerves and muscles. This, for example, may be strikingly mani- 
 fested whenever a part of the skin which has been exposed to 
 intense cold is suddenly brought to conditions of normal tempera- 
 ture (8). This explanation of weeping seems to become more 
 plausible when we consider the fact that weeping does not begin 
 until the sorrow has abated somewhat. This circumstance is 
 popularly understood to mean that ''Tears bring reUef," and we 
 say "Cry it out," especially since at the same time solace is found 
 in weeping. 
 
 If the capillaries of the lungs constrict suddenly so that these 
 
 * The expression "bitter woe" is commonly considered to be metaphori- 
 cal, but it may well be assumed that it originated from the often very 
 intense bitter taste that accompanies the perception of depressing 
 impressions. 
 
THE EMOTIONS 43 
 
 organs are deprived of their normal blood supply, then a feeling 
 of suffocation arises, just as always happens when the respiratory 
 mechanism suffers. We also feel a pressure on the chest (oppres- 
 sion) and these ''torturing, depressing" sensations add to the 
 sufferings of the sorrowful who try involuntarily to reheve them- 
 selves by deep, slow breathing — sighs — a method which anyone 
 who experiences diflSculty in breathing from any cause whatever, 
 instinctively pursues. 
 
 The deficient blood-supply to the brain is manifested by mental 
 lassitude, dullness, a feeling of mental fatigue and effort, by an 
 indisposition for mental work and frequently by sleeplessness.^ 
 In the same way, as we shall see later, it is probably the absence 
 of blood in the motor organs of the brain which is the fundamental 
 cause of the weakened force of the voluntary movements. 
 
 If the anxiety be lasting so that the above mentioned dis- 
 turbances of the blood-supply continue for a year and a day, 
 then external changes in the organs must occur, as always hap- 
 pens if the blood supply and consequently the nourishment be 
 insufläcient for any length of time. These changes are well 
 known in pathology, under the name of "atrophies," but as 
 yet too little attention has been paid to the possible effects of pro- 
 longed emotional disturbances, and modern pathology is all too 
 ready to laugh at old beliefs in the fundamental significance of 
 certain organic affections. Nevertheless, there can be little doubt, 
 however difiicult or impossible it may be to furnish positive proof, 
 that continuous sorrow may have an atrophying effect upon the 
 internal organs, especially since the effects upon the visible parts 
 of the body are so conspicuous. It is well known that a sor- 
 rowful person ages prematurely, but this early impression of 
 senihty depends solely upon atrophied changes in the skin and 
 other external parts of the body. The body becomes emaci- 
 ated by the disappearance of all the adipose and muscular 
 tissues. The hair turns gray because it is not sufficiently 
 
 5 1 keep for another occasion the proof that sleeplessness is caused by the 
 spasmodic contraction of the brain cells. The much controverted physio- 
 logical explanation of sleep may be supposed to be that sleep is caused by 
 a periodic laxity of the brain cells, by a loss of tone resulting from fatigue 
 of the nerves of the brain. 
 
44 CABL GEORG LANGE 
 
 nourished and because the pigment vanishes and is prematurely 
 lost (9) . Similarly the wrinkling of the skin and the furrowing of 
 the brow by sorrow, — both simple phenomena of atrophy, — 
 occur prematurely and contribute to the early ageing of the suf- 
 ferer. In short, all atrophic changes in the visible parts of the 
 body that take place with the normal ageing are hastened by 
 sorrow. Is there then anything improbable in the assumption 
 that changes analogous to the' senile changes take place in the 
 case of the internal organs?^ 
 
 The bodily phenomena which accompany sorrow may also be 
 explained on the basis of paralysis of the voluntary muscles, and 
 a kind of convulsive condition of the vascular muscles. 
 
 JOY 
 
 In popular consciousness, joy constitutes the opposite of sorrow, 
 and an examination of its physiological manifestations agrees with 
 this direct conception. The "Effect of Joy upon the Body" — 
 to use this popular mode of expressing the relation — is in fact the 
 opposite of that of sorrow. In the case of joy, a heightening of the 
 functioning of the voluntary motor apparatus takes place, together 
 with a dilation of the arterioles and capillaries. These are the two 
 fundamental physiological symptoms by which the joyous one 
 sustains his entire peculiar physiology. The heightened function 
 of the voluntary muscles and nerves causes the feeling of hghtness 
 of joy, such as everyone experiences whose muscles are strong and 
 unfatigued.'' He feels an increased motor impulse, moves swiftly 
 and alertly, and gesticulates violently. Children jump, dance, 
 clap their hands for joy. The facial muscles contract as a result 
 of heightened latent innervation, and become round compared 
 with the long, lax, hanging features of the melancholic person. 
 Smiling and laughing are the results of the heightened impulse of 
 facial and breathing muscles, as are also the high-pitched voice, 
 
 ^ A well-known English pathologist has given proof in a series of cases 
 that emotional complaints may lead to atrophy of the kidneys. (Dr. 
 Clifford Allbut, British Medical Journal, 10 February, 1877.) 
 
 ^ To explain this feeling of lightness a positive decrease in body weight 
 was formerly assumed. Cf. de Maries, De animi perhirbatione in corpora 
 potentia. 1775 (.Ludwig, Scriptores neurolog. minores, Tome IV). 
 
THE EMOTIONS 45 
 
 singing, rejoicing and the expression of involuntary impulses of 
 the laryngeal and respiratory muscles. The eyes of a joyous per- 
 son beam, sparkle, in short, assume a peculiar playful expression, 
 which is due to the combined contraction of the lid-muscles 
 (orbicularis oculi palpebrarum and levator palpebrae), to be seen 
 in connection with the pupilary change.^ The general dilation of 
 the capillaries in joy results very strikingly in an increased flow 
 of blood to the skin. A child's or a young girl's skin, which is 
 white and transparent, reddens and glows with pleasure. The 
 joyous person feels warm, his skin becomes fuller, he swells with 
 pleasure. Increased glandular secretion also is observed: it is a 
 conmaon expression of satisfaction to say "the mouth waters" 
 and "tears come easy." 
 
 Whereas the woe-begone person with his slow movements, his 
 bent figure, his sunken features, assumes the appearance of an old 
 man, contrariwise the joyous man appears youthful because of 
 his swift and powerful movements, his singing and loud speaking 
 — "Joy rejuvenates." But it is not only the external stamp of 
 health which accompanies joy. Whereas in the case of sorrow 
 the body-organs become aged because of the lack of nourishment 
 due to the constricted state of the blood-vessels, normal circula- 
 tion produces just the opposite effect in a contented person. A 
 rich blood supply to the organs and tissues of the body is naturally 
 conducive to a strong nourishing activity, and hence all parts of 
 the body thrive and are long preserved. The contented, active 
 person is well-nourished and keeps young. That fat men are 
 jovial — or rather, that jovial men are fat— is commonly accepted. 
 It is based upon sound fact, that despots like to be surrounded by 
 fat men,^ since their thriving condition bears witness of their 
 contentedness, and therefore they are not easily dangerous. The 
 part which the brain plays in the increased flow of the blood, as 
 probably aU parts of the body share it in a joyful mood, leads us 
 to make the supposition that mental functions take place rapidly; 
 
 * It seems to me that the pupil contracts in joy, which would pre-suppose 
 heightened innervation of the superior division of the oculomotorius . 
 Wilks, on the other hand, believes that the pupil dilates, but he records no 
 observations. (Bain, April, 1883, p. 4.) 
 
 'Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act I., Sc. 2. 
 
46 CARL GEORG LANGE 
 
 there is a flow of ideas and fancies. A joyous person talks rap- 
 idly and fluently; his work proceeds swiftly, not only because his 
 muscles are strong, but also because he reaches decisions quickly 
 and puts them into prompt execution. 
 
 FRIGHT 
 
 Fright is, as has been indicated above, closely related to sorrow. 
 We find the same paralyzing effect on the voluntary motor appara- 
 tus, the same convulsive conditions of the constrictor muscles, 
 only we find both appearing more suddenly and in a more exag- 
 gerated degree. To this, however, we must add another condition 
 which we did not observe in the case of sorrow, namely, a similar 
 convulsive contraction of other organic muscles. In sorrow this 
 is limited to the vascular muscles. The essential physiological 
 difference between sorrow and fright lies in the fact that in the 
 latter, the convulsive spasmodic condition of the voluntary muscles 
 is shared by all muscles as far as can be judged, whereas in the 
 former it is limited to individual groups of muscles. How con- 
 spicuous it is that the paralyzation due to fright is stronger than 
 that due to sorrow is evident from the common verbal expression 
 for the two phenomena. A man is "burdened with," "weighed 
 down by," "bent with" sorrow, but he is "paralyzed" with fear, 
 is motionless, petrified, transfixed by fright. The paralysis of the 
 muscles of speech makes it difficult or impossible to utter a word; 
 the voice becomes hoarse and broken; he is "struck dimib" with 
 terror. The tongue becomes immovable, the face relaxes, the eyes 
 are very large, motionless, staring, fixed, because of the paralysis 
 of the muscles of the lid. A person overcome by a sudden fear 
 may fall down paralyzed, or the innervation of the muscles may 
 at least be so uncertain as to make him quake, tremble, stammer 
 with fear. 
 
 It is characteristic in the case of fright as contrasted with sorrow 
 that the paralysis of the voluntary muscles is often preceded by, a 
 momentary convulsive twitch in which a sudden start is mani- 
 fested, and there is a cry in the first instant of fear. That de- 
 pends upon the suddenness of the effect, which leads to the paraly- 
 sis, and it has several pathological analogues. If a motor nerve 
 is suddenly crushed, the corresponding muscles are momentarily 
 
THE EMOTIONS 47 
 
 contracted before paralysis sets in; but if the nerve be slowly and 
 gradually pressed, then the paralysis takes place equally and 
 gradually with no preliminary contractions. The convulsive con- 
 traction of the constrictor muscles because of fright and the re- 
 sulting lack of blood in the skin occasions here and there, only 
 more suddenly and to a higher degree, pallor,^** coldness, a "cold 
 shiver," (the blood "freezes"), and numbness. It is probably 
 this sudden and complete lack of blood in the skin which causes the 
 very rapid turning gray of the hair, as is sometimes observed to be 
 the result of extreme terror. Reliable examples of the sudden 
 ''falling out" of the hair have been found due to fright (10).^^ 
 In spite of the lack of blood in the skin, it may be covered with 
 sweat, but with a " cold sweat." There is no explanation for this; 
 however, I may mention that according to the more recent investi- 
 gations of sweat secretion, there is no discrepancy between the 
 increased secretion and the decreased blood supply to the skin. 
 It is not exactly known in what relation other secretions stand to 
 fright, but on the whole they decrease or even cease entirely. So, 
 for example, in the case of the sahvary secretions: the mouth 
 becomes dry, the tongue clings to the roof of the mouth. It is a 
 well-known fact that the secretion of milk in the case of nursing 
 women decreases, and that existing menstruation may cease as 
 the result of fright. Vascular convulsions and consequent defi- 
 ciency in the blood supply always lead to shivers, trembling, 
 chattering teeth, whatever their cause may be. They are 
 well-known in fever or as the sudden effects of cold on the skin, 
 and these too belong to the characteristic manifestations of fear. 
 "Shiver," "shudder," "tremble" are, in fact synonymous expres- 
 sions for a "sensation of fear" and for the "power to inspire fear." 
 Comparisons between the sensations of fear, cold or fever are met 
 with frequently in verbal expressions or in popular consciousness.^^ 
 At first, fear acts upon the heart in such a way as to cause an 
 
 1° "Go prick thy face and over-red thy fear, thou lily-liver'd boy." 
 Macbeth, Act V., Sc. 3. 
 
 '1 Older pathologists have assumed that the blood actually coagulated 
 under the influence of fear. Sanguis in toto coagulatur. (Willis, De 
 anima brutorum. Cap. 9.) 
 
 I'^Cf. The Danish "Buxefeber;" fever-terror, the cold hand of fear, etc. 
 
48 CARL GEORG LANGE 
 
 increased activity; but overwhelming fright seems to paralyze the 
 heart and thus even cause death (11). 
 
 Whereas .fright, if we were to confine ourselves to the above 
 mentioned attributes, might be looked upon as a more intense or 
 acute form of sorrow, there is, as has been pointed out, a large 
 class of phenomena, by means of which we may recognize that 
 fear has its own peculiar physiognomy, which is very different 
 from that of sorrow. They are those symptoms which are caused 
 by the apparent participation in the general convulsive condition 
 of all the voluntary organic muscles, that are under no control of 
 the will, causing movements and contractions of our inner organs, 
 whereas in sorrow, the participation is limited to the vascular 
 muscles. In the discussion on the convulsion of the vascular 
 muscles, I have already mentioned the effect of fright upon the 
 heart action. Perhaps these disturbances which aid considerably 
 in distinguishing fright from sorrow should be assigned to that 
 department. Rembrandt, as is well known, did not hesitate to 
 depict realistically the effect of the convulsive contraction of the 
 bladder of the unfortunate Ganymede, who found himself suddenly 
 hovering between heaven and earth, his life depending upon the 
 grasp of the eagle and the durability of his shirt. 
 
 That young recruits, on the eve of battle, are often confronted 
 with the necessity of stepping out of rank, and are not always the 
 pleasantest neighbors as long as they remain in rank, is due to the 
 uncontrollable effect of fear upon the muscles of the intestines (12) . 
 It is apparent to any one who has suffered from fear, that every 
 strong and convulsive peristaltic motion may very well be accom- 
 panied by colic pains: "cramps." The phenomena considered 
 here belong to the more drastic concomitants of fear, which indeed 
 usually occur only in the case of youthful individuals and members 
 of the lower classes, — in short of those who offer favorable condi- 
 tions for violent emotional phenomena (see below). There is 
 another group of phenomena which depend upon the same physio- 
 logical influence on the system of involuntary muscles, and it is 
 by means of these that fright assumes its peculiar pathetic physiog- 
 nomy when we speak of the hair ''standing on end," with terror. 
 This expression, even though somewhat exaggerated, appUes to 
 the effect of the spasmodic contraction of the fine muscle-fibers 
 
THE EMOTIONS 49 
 
 attached to the hair bulbs in the skin; "goose-flesh" is due to the 
 same cause. The "protruding" eyes which "bulge" from their 
 sockets and the enlarged pupils point to an irritation of the sympa- 
 thetic nervous system, just as the vascular spasm does. 
 
 In the case of many individuals sudden fright arouses a peculiar 
 subjective sensation, a sticking or pricking, which often spreads 
 from the abdomen upwards, and is particularly noticeable on the 
 tongue, and frequently extends over the entire body, even to the 
 tips of the fingers and toes. To this sensation a feeling of oppres- 
 sion is often added, a torturing, constricting sensation, especially 
 in the throat — "choking." The first mentioned of these sensa- 
 tions is undoubtabty an eccentric one (projected) (13), and arises 
 through stimulation of the cerebral organs of sensation, condi- 
 tioned by the sudden contraction of the blood vessels. They 
 have the character of subjective sensations arising in the brain, 
 and nothing is more common than such sensations in cases of 
 functional or organic diseases of the brain. The origin of the 
 sensations of suffocation which so often accompany fright is less 
 obvious. According to their form there is nothing to stand in the 
 way of considering them eccentric perceptions which come from 
 the spinal cord; a stimulation of the gray matter of the cord, 
 brought about by the spasmodic contraction of its fine arteries, 
 can undoubtably have such sensations as a consequence, but they 
 are not as characteristic as the corresponding brain symptoms and 
 therefore not as conclusive. Of all emotional disturbances, fright 
 is probably the one which most frequently causes symptoms and 
 conditions of disease that are often lasting and even incurable. 
 It is not my purpose here to enter into the entire pathological 
 meaning of the affections. I wish only to remark briefly that, 
 even with the most critical estimation of the facts, it is quite 
 indubitable that fright may cause paralysis, epilepsy, mental 
 disturbance, and numerous other nervous diseases, and similarly, 
 as I have already stated, sudden fright may lead even to death. 
 
 ANGER — RAGE 
 
 As a rule, it is undoubtedly easy for an observer to distinguish 
 an embittered, raging person, from a cheerful, joyous one, by 
 general bodily conditions, appearance, and attitude. But if the 
 
50 CABL GEORG LANGE 
 
 physiological conditions characteristic of these two affections are 
 analyzed rather more carefully, such striking agreement of funda- 
 mental relations wiU be found that it is not at all easy to specify 
 the difference. 
 W^ In the first place, both anger and joy manifest a dilation of the 
 fine blood vessels, an increased circulation to the skin, which 
 causes reddening, heat, swelling, "turgor." An angry person 
 "seethes," is "consumed" with anger; the blood rushes to his head 
 he "boils," he must "cool" his wrath, work off his rage, — he swells 
 up with rage, as is evident from these and similar figures of speech 
 by which common popular opinions on the influence of anger upon 
 the circulation is expressed. Yet the symptoms are on the whole 
 more exaggerated in anger than in joy, so strong indeed that rage 
 causes diseases and brings with it a feeling of dissatisfaction, in- 
 stead of the content due to temperature increase which accom- 
 panies joy. The mucous membranes share in the increased blood 
 supply, the eyes are bloodshot, and we find that where there is a 
 predisposition hemorrhages may even occur; nose bleedings and 
 lung hemorrhages have come under my personal observation. 
 
 However, the irregularities of circulation differ not alone in degree 
 and intensity in the two cases, but in anger we find an entirely new 
 element added of which we find no trace in joy, namely a swelling 
 and enlargement of the great blood vessels, especially of the veins. 
 This is most conspicuous on the forehead — "the veins of the 
 temples swell"^'' (14), but is noticeable in other parts too — in the 
 neck and hands for instance. In what physiological relation these 
 phenomena stand is not perfectly clear to me: there can, of course, 
 be no question of an actual dilation of the blood vessels as in 
 congestion. Such a dilation is not detectable even in the larger 
 blood vessels; nor can it be assumed that a paralysis of the insig- 
 nificant muscular apparatus of these veins lies at the root of these 
 swelHngs, No other explanation remains for these dilations except 
 in the congestion of the blood resulting from some obstacle in the 
 passage of the blood to the heart or from a defect in the secondary 
 circuit from the right ventricle through the lungs back to the 
 left ventricle. It is here perhaps only a question of a minor 
 phenomenon depending upon the irregular breathing, the strong 
 
 13 Ora tument ira, nigrescunt sanguine venae. Ovid, Ars am. Ill cf . 
 
THE EMOTIONS 51 
 
 expiration in consequence of the impulse of an enraged person to 
 call or cry out and upon all the powerful and somewhat tumul- 
 tuous innervation ; all of which factors favor the congestion of the 
 blood (15). An increased innervation of the voluntary muscles 
 and a consequent impulse to quick and forceful movements is 
 indeed the second point in the physiology of rage. Here again 
 we find a new agreement with joy, the physiognomy of which 
 obtains one of its most conspicuous characteristics from the feeling 
 of Hghtness, of desire for an inclination to lively movements that 
 accompany the feeling. But this impulse is again exaggerated in 
 anger. Instead of becoming lively, as a joyful person does, he 
 beccp3.es indignant — "goes up in the air," clenches his fists, waves 
 his arms, marches with long strides {ßaxpaßlßas) , clenches his 
 teeth, grits them, threatens, cries out, stamps his feet, thunders, 
 " carries on" and yells in his rage. Whereas we can be satisfied to 
 control our joy, we must ''check" our anger like a wild animal. 
 Even when anger, at its height ("foaming with rage"), assumes a 
 comical aspect, when it causes its victim to jump and dance 
 around in such a way as to remind us of a joyful individual, yet 
 these movements are much more powerful, less controlled, clumsy, 
 and leave us no doubt as to the actual state of affairs. The im- 
 pulse of an embittered person to use his strength, the physiological, 
 inmiediate expression of motor innervation; assumes a character 
 of power and vandahsm by his indiscriminate attacks upon every- 
 thing that crosses his path. Unintentionally, and without dis- 
 crimination, he strikes at friend and foe aUke, simply to use his 
 muscles. In some cases where there is a certain amount of seK- 
 control, he merely strikes the table with his fist, bangs the door, 
 tears something to pieces or otherwise destroys it. He would hke 
 to demoHsh the earth, and he may evince a power in his rage that 
 exceeds anything he is able to do under normal conditions. The 
 motions of a person in a rage are, however, not distinguishable as 
 much by their force as by their lack of control, their inaccuracy 
 and incoordination: again the opposite state of affairs from joy. 
 A joyful individual has easy flowing speech and a tendency to 
 measured rhythmical movements, as in dancing. The enraged 
 man stammers and stutters and howls when at last he is not suc- 
 cessful in uttering a word; his muscular innervation is so uncertain 
 
52 CARL GEORG LANGE 
 
 that he "trembles with rage." He misses his aim — strikes bhndly 
 and consequently is little to be feared by a cold blooded opponent. 
 ^iQ^ In rage — as in joy — but contrary to fear and sorrow, the face 
 shows decided muscular contractions. Wrinkles appear upon the 
 brow in rage, whereas, as has been mentioned above, sorrow pro- 
 duces folds, an effect produced by the vanishing of the skin tissue. 
 The unequal activity of the individual facial muscles in anger and 
 sorrow produce the difference in physiognomic expression of these 
 two emotions. I do not want to enter into their analysis here, 
 as has been done many times; for we lack all basis for conjecturing 
 why it is that the facial nerves are unequally innervated in different 
 emotions (16). 
 
 The physiological difference between pleasure and anger is, 
 therefore, in the main, limited to a difference in the degree of 
 dilation of the blood-vessels and the heightened innervation of the 
 voluntary muscles, and, therefore, in the coordination (17) of the 
 voluntary muscles. The measure of their strength ceases under 
 the rule of anger, so that the movements become uncontrolled 
 and inaccurate. Thus joy and anger may be considered to be 
 the opposites of sorrow and fear and to stand in mutual relation- 
 ship in the same way as the latter do. Anger also seems to have 
 an effect upon the secretions, at least upon some, which is of the 
 opposite nature to that produced by sorrow or fear. Where 
 sorrow and fear cause the sahvary secretion to decrease, and the 
 tongue and larvnx to become dry, we find expressions like "to 
 foam with rage" or to "snort" that point to a very different situa- 
 tion in anger. In the same way, we find it a well estabhshed 
 tradition that anger causes an increased gall secretion, "the gaU 
 runs over" in anger, he "lets his gall flow freely," for fear of letting 
 his worry cause jaundice. Even if the observation that probably 
 gave rise to these expressions — that a persistent, embittered dis- 
 position may cause jaundice — were true, it would be, of course, 
 no positive proof of the increased gaU secretion in any given indi- 
 vidual. It is, in fact, difficult to designate the actual peculiar 
 behavior of an enraged person in a physiologically incontrovertible 
 way. It is not sufiicient to say that they are mighty and uncon- 
 trolled activities. Rage is accompanied by an impulse to general 
 violent movements, not only to satisfy the desire for simple mus- 
 
THE EMOTIONS 53 
 
 cular exertion, but also to gratify the craving for noisy, wanton 
 activity which may even cause the subject pain or at least a very 
 strong sense impression. A silent struggUng with his hands and 
 feet would not satisfy his impulse; he must hear his movements 
 as weU as feel them. He strikes the table, stamps his feet, slams 
 the door, smashes a mirror, throws down everything that he can 
 lay his hands on, showing a preference for hard breakable objects 
 that make a lot of noise.^* He might just as well exert his respira- 
 tory muscles by rapid and deep breathing, without exactly yelling 
 and howhng, but he requires "noise." In his desire for strong 
 sense impressions, he does not spare himself bodily injury; he 
 beats his head against the waU, tears his hair, pulls his beard, 
 bites his Ups. How can this craving for sound and sense impres- 
 sions be explained physiologically? I can think of only one ex- 
 planation, which has, in fact, a great deal of probability. A desire 
 for abnormally strong sense-impressions can generally have no 
 other cause but an abnormally weak perception of sense-impres- 
 sions; a weakening of the powers of feehng, hearing, etc. It is 
 necessary to our well-being that our central sensory nerve-cells 
 be active to a certain degree determined by the amount of stimu- 
 lation carried to them by the sensory nerves. If, for any reason 
 whatever, as for example by a decrease in the functional power 
 of these cells, a weakening or anaesthesia is produced, then the 
 impulse to set these cells in their normal activity again, requires 
 an increased external sense-impression to neutralize the decreased 
 sensitivity. It can hardly be rigorously proved that such an 
 anaesthesia actually exists in anger, and it is hardly legitimate to 
 fall back upon such expressions as "bhnd with rage," "deafened 
 by passion" to bear witness to the agreement of popular observa- 
 tion. But for the sense of feehng, the matter is quite clear. In a 
 bitter fight, both parties may inflict upon each other serious 
 injuries, which are not felt until the heat of the excitement has 
 subsided. We can even beat two fighters or two dogs unmerci- 
 fully, and they will take no notice. 
 
 Anger, which can present in bodily manifestations such a de- 
 ceptive pictiure of maniacal conditions (ira furor hrevis), becomes 
 
 i^When Bonaparte, in Udine, wished to scare the Austrian agent by 
 pretended rage, he did the right thing in smashing the costly china. 
 
54 CARL GEORG LANGE 
 
 a cause for permanent mental disturbance as rarely as joy does, 
 and even more rarely leads to sudden death, Galen even observed 
 that only fright and joy kill, but not anger (jepi aWiwv avßrjTO- 
 ixäro^v, I. 5), and Willis {De anima hrutor) says that women 
 faint for joy and men die of it — but not of anger. With the 
 restriction that death, due to joy, occurs very rarely, at least 
 nowadays, when the affections on the whole are less overwhelming, 
 nevertheless the rule holds generally, with the possible exception 
 of one woman, who died at the height of her rage (c/. Schauen- 
 stein, in Maschka's Handbuch der gerichtlichen Median, Vol. I, 
 page 813) (18). 
 
 As I have mentioned before, it is not my purpose here to enter 
 into a physiological analysis of all the bodily phenomena occurring 
 with the different affections. 
 
 At present, I am satisfied with the attempt to deal with these 
 four great affections and then only with their most decided forms — 
 their conventional state — so to speak. For, indeed, it is obvious 
 that psychic conditions exist which come under the heads of 
 pleasure, anger, etc., but still do not fit the above representations 
 in their physiological manifestations. This is no sign of erroneous 
 or incomplete analysis, but merely the inevitable consequence of 
 the circumstance that I have already discussed, namely, that the 
 entire method of procedure used here, in which the starting 
 point was taken from popular conceptions, is in and for itself 
 wrong and illogical, even though it may serve as a means to attain 
 a tentative understanding. 
 
 A complete analysis of the less strong, that is, of physically less 
 decided affections, would hardly be successful, since our methods 
 of observation are still so crude, and therefore I shall not attempt 
 it here, although there are some among them whose physiological 
 peculiarities are obvious and instructive, and I shall give them 
 some brief discussion. 
 
 Embarrassment (shyness) is perhaps not characterized by a 
 very decided weakening of the voluntary innervation — although 
 a certain feeling of weakness always accompanies shjoiess, which 
 gives rise to the sensation of "sinking through the floor" — yet by 
 a very decided uncertainty of innervation, so that the amount is 
 not properly limited and other muscles are unintentionally set 
 
THE EMOTIONS 55 
 
 in action, with excessive contraction of some and insufficient 
 contraction of others, resulting briefly in "uncoordinated" 
 movements.^^ 
 
 An embarrassed person has only imperfect control of his mus- 
 cles. He can hardly articulate his words, stutters and stammers 
 in speaking, gesticulates, drops whatever he is holding, rolls his 
 eyes, walks unsteadily and even stumbles over his own feet. 
 
 A child that is very much embarrassed may present such a 
 perfect illusion of the first symptoms of St. Vitus' dance (a 
 disease which, in its early stages, is manifested by poor coordina- 
 tion of voluntary movements) as totally to deceive one. We also 
 find a similar uncertainty of innervation of the vascular muscles. 
 The capillaries are alternately contracted and dilated, apparently 
 without cause, and this accounts for the rapid change of color in 
 embarrassment, the one moment pale, and the next blushing. All 
 these physical conditions are accompanied by a decided disturb- 
 ance in the power to think, especially to concentrate on one fine 
 of thought, and the embarrassed person becomes confused, 
 "muddled." 
 
 Suspense and expectation resemble fear in so far as they are ac- 
 companied by an apathetic condition, a tendency to contract the 
 organic, involuntary muscles, and the various consequences of 
 such contractions. The desire for evacuation of the different 
 secretions and excretions; a feverish condition, which really shows 
 some of the most striking symptoms of fever; palpitation of heart, 
 quickened pulse, cold shivers, sleeplessness; all may be present. 
 But the paralysis of the voluntary muscles, as in fear, is absent. 
 On the other hand, suspense is accompanied by an animated and 
 Hvely innervation of the voluntary muscular system, which ex- 
 presses itseK in a desire for motion. A person held in suspense 
 becomes restless, can not stand still, but is as if on "pins" or "hot 
 coals," "on edge." He can not sit quiet for one instant, but con- 
 stantly jumps up, incessantly tramps up and down, tosses sleep- 
 
 ^^ But of a somewhat different nature from the coordination disturbance 
 in rage. The difference, is undoubtedly due to the fact that the latter 
 originate from functional disturbances in the brain, whereas the incoor- 
 dination of embarrassment is attributable to disturbances — increased 
 irradiation — of the functions of the spinal cord. 
 
56 CARL GEORG LANGE 
 
 lessly in bed at night. We say therefore that it is "disturbing" 
 to take part in events the results of which are unknown to us. 
 
 Disappointment is closely related to sorrow, since it is accom- 
 panied by a paralysis of the voluntary innervation, which is rec- 
 ognizable by a feeling of weariness, laxity (''long face") and 
 indisposition for any effort. But all spasmodic contractions of the 
 vessels, which are among the most conspicuous phenomena in 
 sorrow, are absent. 
 
 The above examples will, in spite of their brevity, show suf- 
 ficiently what such an analysis may lead to and what may be ex- 
 pected of it, with the assumptions that we can make today. They 
 may be considered numerous and various enough to give an idea 
 of what fundamental physiological phenomena are brought into 
 play by our affections. It is evident that they include all func- 
 tions of the nervous system, and appear partly as disturbances of 
 innervation, i.e., as disturbances of impulses which the muscles 
 (and also the glands) receive from the nerves; partly also, although 
 less conspicuously, as disturbances of sensibility, as weakening 
 or heightening of sensibility and subjective sensation; and 
 finally, as disturbances of inteUigence, by which mental life is 
 either lowered or elevated. 
 
 The disturbances of innervation, which not only forms the most 
 conspicuous phenomenon of the affections, but which, perhaps, 
 as we shall try to prove later, is their real immediate physical 
 expression, spread over the different parts of the entire system 
 of muscles and affect now the voluntary, now the organic, and 
 especially the vascular muscles, and the muscular apparatus of the 
 different vital organs. The disturbances may assume various 
 forms. The innervation may increase and the muscles contract 
 more strongly and easily than under ordinary conditions; or the 
 innervation may be decreased and be followed by weariness, 
 weakness and relaxing of the blood vessels, and other muscular 
 organs; finally, the innervation without actual increase or 
 decrease, may reach the muscles in variable strength and produce 
 incoordination (19) and a lack of precision in the concerted action 
 of the muscles. The kinds of innervational disturbances of the 
 various parts of the muscular system are not entirely analogous in 
 different affections. One part, the voluntary muscles for instance, 
 
THE EMOTIONS 57 
 
 may be paralyzed, whereas another, the vascular muscles, may be 
 in a convulsive condition, etc.^^ 
 
 We have, therefore, a series of different combinations which are 
 represented by the individual affections. As we have to deal with 
 three different systems of muscles, of which each, perhaps, may 
 be affected in three different ways, and suffer at times only one 
 or two functional disturbances, we seem to have 127 different 
 combinations to give somatic forms of affections, and this only 
 with regard to disturbances of innervation. Of course, we can 
 not assume a 'priori that all these hypothetical combinations 
 actually exist, while on the other hand the variabihties of the 
 relative strength of the phenomena require an endless number of 
 steps. We could represent the seven above mentioned forms of 
 affections by the following scheme. 
 
 Weakness of voluntary innervation. 
 
 Weakness of voluntary innervation + vascular contraction = dis- 
 appointment. 
 
 Weakness of voluntary innervation + vascular contraction + con- 
 vulsion of organic muscles = fright. 
 
 Weakness of voluntary innervation + incoordination = embarrass- 
 ment. 
 
 Increase of volimtary innervation + spasm of voluntary muscles = 
 suspense. 
 
 Increase of voluntary innervation + vascular dilation = joy. 
 
 Increase of volimtary innervation + vascular dilation and incoordina- 
 tion = anger. 
 
 It is clear that it is not correct to state offhand as a general 
 rule of affections, that they are accompanied by increased muscular 
 activity,^'^ and the division of the aft'ections into active and passive, 
 sthenic or asthenic, or however this contrast is to be expressed, is 
 unjustified, both from the physiological and the psychological 
 
 1' Perhaps, however, the functional disturbance of the vascular and other 
 organic muscles is always the same. 
 
 1^ The diffuse discharge, which accompanies feelings of every sort, pro- 
 duces an effect on the body, namely, stimulating the musculature. These 
 feelings arouse bodily activity, which is the more lively, the more intense 
 the feelings are. The most striking peculiarity of the discharge, which 
 accompanies feelings of every sort, is the circumstance that it arouses 
 muscular contraction, which is proportional to the degree of feeling. (H. 
 Spencer, Principles of Psychology , II, §§496, 497.) 
 
58 CARL GEORG LANGE 
 
 point of view, as we shall endeavor to show. Most emotions 
 possess an active as well as a passive, a sthenic and an asthenic 
 element, and some possess even a third, which we cannot call 
 either active or passive. 
 
 And so, a question arises concerning the various physical phe- 
 nomena of the affections, whose answer is of considerable signifi- 
 cance for the physiology of the affections, namely, whether these 
 phenomena are physiologically of equal value, are parallel; or 
 whether certain appearances are to be considered as caused by 
 others, and secondary to these; whether, for example, paralysis 
 and vascular convulsions of a mournful person are due immediately 
 to one and the same cause, or whether the original influence acted 
 only on one of these manifestations and that this one then caused 
 the others. In this last case, the further question arises: Which is 
 primary, and which is secondary? 
 
 Now, aU the phenomena discussed so far can be reduced to two 
 main groups: changes in the vascular innervation and changes in 
 the functions of the other nerves — and since, according to all our 
 physiological experiences, we can not assume that disturbances of 
 functions of the second group may become vasomotor changes, 
 whereas there is no a priori objection to the opposite state of 
 affairs, the problem finally reduces to the following question: 
 Is it possible that vasomotor disturbances, varied dilation of the 
 blood vessels, and consequent excess of blood, in the separate 
 organs, are the real, primary effects of the affections, whereas the 
 other phenomena, — motor abnormahties, sensation paralysis, sub- 
 jective sensations, disturbances of secretion and intelligence — are 
 only secondary disturbances, which have their cause in anomalies 
 of vascular innervation? Is it not, for example, possible that the 
 muscular weakness in the case of an anxious person may be due 
 to the fact that his nervous system may receive too little blood 
 just as his skin and other organs do, due to the contraction of the 
 fine arteries; and that the power and wildness of rage may be due 
 to the excessive blood supply to the brain, as this organ surely 
 must be involved, just as much as the skin and mucous membrane? 
 
 Our insight into the physiology of the nervous system is still 
 incomplete, especially our understanding of the very important 
 questions of the significance of the blood contained in the 
 
THE EMOTIONS 59 
 
 nervous organs in relation to their functions. In the face of 
 this incomplete comprehension of the subject, it is obvious that 
 the question as stated here cannot be answered with any decisive- 
 ness. Nevertheless, this much is known positively, that the indi- 
 vidual parts of the nervous system; brain, spinal cord, etc.; are 
 greatly influenced in their functional power by the condition of 
 their blood supply. An excessive blood supply, as well as a defi- 
 cient one, is a symptom of disease. We can easily convince our- 
 selves of the significance of excessive blood supply to the hesd by 
 a very simple experiment on ourselves; if we press the large pulse- 
 arteries in the neck, we rob the brain of its normal blood supply, 
 and the immediate results of this disturbance are dizziness, sensa- 
 tions of weakness, and faintness, decreased consciousness, which 
 soon forces us to terminate the experiment, whereupon the condi- 
 tions immediately become normal again. But if we interrupt the 
 circulation by means of a bandage, as is sometimes done in surgery, 
 there results a paralysis of that side of the body which is controlled 
 by the motor impulses of that side of the brain in question. This 
 paralysis endures until the circulation reaches a state of equili- 
 brium again in a round about way. Another experiment which 
 can be performed easily on certain animals, consists in artificially 
 cutting off the blood supply to the lower part of the spinal cord by 
 compressing the aorta. (Stenson's experiment.) As soon as the 
 pressure has been administered for some moments, a paralysis of 
 the abdomen and hind legs sets in. Movement and sensation are 
 made possible again as soon as the pressure is removed. That a 
 human being behaves in the same way is evident in certain dis- 
 eased conditions, in which the circulation through the aorta sup- 
 plying most of the blood to the spinal cord is for some reason in- 
 terrupted. These and similar experiments and attempts are, to 
 be sure, crude and coarse, in comparison to the processes of vaso- 
 motor disturbances, and changes in the innervation of the fine 
 blood-vessels, and their consequent degree of dilation. Such 
 disturbances may show innumerable degrees and may be limited 
 to certain parts of each organ in question, so that the effects occur 
 in steps of intensity, and assume many forms and variations that 
 can not be imitated experimentally. Certainly, the above facts 
 
60 CARL GEORG LANGE 
 
 offer sufficient proof of the immediate and far reaching effect of the 
 varying blood-content upon the functional power of those organs 
 which are concerned in our movements, the sensations and psychi- 
 cal activities. The fact that vascular spasms in the central 
 nervous organs lie at the root of the many and often intensive 
 disturbances of the functions of these organs, even when these 
 are merely temporary, as for example, in epilepsy and maniacal 
 paroxysms, is also evidence. This fact is hardly disputed by the 
 physiologists and pathologists of today; this circumstance is cer- 
 tainly strongly in favor of the mutual connection between the 
 emotions as here described. 
 
 If, then, no essential objection can be made to the theory 
 which holds that the various emotional disturbances are due to 
 disturbances in the vascular innervation that accompanies the 
 affections, and which, therefore, makes these vasomotor disturb- 
 ances the only primary symptoms; (20) nevertheless, there still 
 remains for us to investigate the problem whether those disturb- 
 ances which are so obvious if they involve the blood vessels in 
 the skin, by blushing or paling, by swelling or contracting, 
 by heat or cold, are as obvious if they involve the inner 
 organs, especially the central nervous system from which 
 most of the other emotional phenomena spring (21). That this 
 affection of the blood vessels occurs also in the nervous system is 
 a necessary assumption for the theory that they are fundamental 
 to the other disturbances of innervation. A priori, the assump- 
 tion that the change in degree of contraction of the blood vessels 
 during affection is not limited to the skin, but is spread all over 
 the entire organism, is undoubtedly the most probable. There 
 are, as we have already mentioned above, plenty of data, and I 
 have proceeded from the assumption of some such general dis- 
 tribution of hyperaemia or anaemia in my explanation of the dif- 
 ferent phenomena of the affections. Nevertheless, it would be 
 valuable if we could perform immediate observations and experi- 
 ments by which the truth or fallacy of my point of view might 
 be shown. But the number and value of such experiences leave 
 much to be desired for our physiological insight. It is not easy 
 to get rid of this inadequacy of empirical data, since experiments 
 
THE EMOTIONS 61 
 
 performed on animals are of little or no use in this field ;^^ and in 
 regard to human beings, we have so far been limited to drawing 
 our conclusions from very rare cases, which require direct observa- 
 tion of the brain and its blood vessels, which, under normal condi- 
 tions, possessed at least enough life to permit of changing 
 dispositions. 
 
 Attempts have been made to measure the changes in the blood 
 supply of the brain by temperature measurements outside of the 
 head. This method can easily be applied to all individuals, in 
 order to produce a wide range for the experiments. It has then 
 been attempted to prove that an increase in temperature occurs 
 following every mental effort, due to an increased blood flow to 
 the bj-ain. But, even if this method is indisputable, as it seems in 
 fact to be, it can hardly have any application to the study of the 
 affections, because the relations here change so rapidly that the 
 sudden changes in circulation hardly endure long enough to vary 
 the temperature outside of the head, and especially not in the case 
 of individuals who know that they are under observation. And 
 so our present immediate experiences of the blood-content of the 
 brain during dispositional changes depend upon such cases, 
 where rather large parts of the skull have been removed so that 
 the brain, or its skins, are laid bare, but where the patient is 
 nevertheless in a pretty normal mental condition. But the possi- 
 bility of observing such a case is, however, not sufficient; in order 
 to obtain results, one must have the good fortune to be present 
 as observer at just that moment when the patient is disturbed 
 naturally by a rather strong emotion, for of course it cannot be 
 controlled artificially; and not every one knows how to appreciate 
 the relations in question, especially the changes in pulsatory 
 brain-movements. 
 
 Obviously, our present data are insignificant, and sufficient only 
 
 1^ There are a few series of experiments (v. Bezold, Danilevsky, Conty 
 and Charpentier) which illustrate the change in blood pressure under the 
 influence of the emotions, especially of fright, the only emotion which can 
 be aroused experimentally, if need be. This influence is very obvious; a 
 sudden fright results — 'even after severing the N. vagus — 'in increased blood- 
 pressure in the large arteries, and that means a contraction of the fine 
 blood-vessels, as we have assumed to be the case in the effect of fear on 
 man. 
 
62 CARL GEORG LANGE 
 
 to prove rather tentatively that emotions are in fact accompanied 
 by disturbances in the brain circulation. Earlier observations of 
 this fact have boen made. The renowned English surgeon, 
 Astley Cooper, who lived at the beginning of this century, had 
 opportunity to observe a man, who suffered from a significant 
 defect of the base of the skull, and declared that the pulsations 
 of the brain were increased every time anything was said that dis- 
 pleased the patient. Several years ago, the Italian physiologist, 
 Mosso,^^ made more accurate observations under similar con- 
 ditions. A man, whose brain was laid open over a rather large 
 area, showed that any insult or sensation of anger increased the 
 pulsation of the brain, and also the pulse of the arteries in the 
 arm, even though the activity of the heart did not seem to be af- 
 fected in any way. One striking change in brain pulsation was 
 evidenced at noon, when the chimes began to ring: this Mosso 
 declared to be due to the fact that the patient was disturbed 
 because he could not cross himself as usual to say his Ave Maria. 
 On the whole, Mosso found that emotional disturbances affected 
 the brain-circulation much more than thought-activity, no mat- 
 ter how great the effort. 
 
 According to all physiological experiences, nothing opposes the 
 assumption that the immediate bodily expression of the affections 
 is a change in the function of the vasomotor apparatus, different 
 for each affection, and that the other bodily appearances, which 
 accompany the affections, are due to these vaso-motor disturbances, 
 these changes in the blood-content of the various organs, and 
 members of ,the body. Thus the changes in appearance (skin) 
 and in the functions (22) (nervous-system, secretory glands) of 
 the organs are explained. The assumption of such a relation 
 greatly simplifies the condition as a whole, and facilitates, as we 
 shall soon see, the physiological comprehension, which would 
 be difficult if we had to assume a direct primary origin for all 
 these various phenomena. Besides, we must mention particularly 
 that my fundamental conception of the psychology of the affec- 
 tions is in no way disturbed, if we should in future be forced to 
 the last mentioned conception. So far, there is on hand so great 
 a probability for a vasomotor theory, that we may proceed from 
 its assumption. 
 
 "A, Mosso, The Blood Circulation in the Human Brain. 1881. p. 13. 
 
THE EMOTIONS 63 
 
 We now face a problem of essential interest from a psycho- 
 physiological point of view, and which therefore constitutes the 
 main point of this investigation, namely: the question concerning 
 the nature of the relation of the emotions to the concomitant 
 body-phenomena. 
 
 So far, I have always, even if under protest, employed such 
 phrases as "the physiological phenomena produced by emotions" 
 or **the physiological phenomena which accompany the affec- 
 tions," in order, by using the popular expressions for the relation 
 in question, to facilitate temporarily their comprehension. 
 Strange to say this relation has never been defined even broadly; 
 I know of no attempt made to establish its real nature. For the 
 popular conception, the matter is very simple. The emotions 
 are entities, substances, forces, demons, which attack human 
 beings and cause physical as well as mental disturbances: ''I was 
 seized with sorrow," "I met with a great pleasure," *'I was con- 
 trolled by anger," "fear overwhelmed me," etc. (23); or one 
 may substitute the more English expressions : "seized with anger," 
 "in the clutches of fear." This naive conception, which, like 
 many other things in popular psychology and some in scientific 
 psychology, owes its force only to a certain demonstrativeness, 
 would hardly be recognized in modern psychology, if we could 
 substitute a more comprehensible and exact explanation. Most 
 modern authors of scientific psychology do not recognize this 
 question at a\lf° in fact, they seem purposely to pass over it in 
 silence, perhaps in order not to be forced — for lack of a physiolog- 
 ical explanation — to have recourse to the code-language of specu- 
 lative psychology. In fact, it may be said that even scientific 
 psychology shares in the belief that the affections call forth, cause, 
 the physical phenomena. But as to the real nature of the affec- 
 tions, that they can have such great influence upon the body, no 
 word of explanation is to be found in all modern psychology — even 
 in Wundt (Physiological-psychology, 2 ed.. Vol. II, Ch. 33). 
 
 If a clear understanding of relations which I have discussed 
 above is to be made possible, we must I think, put the facts in the 
 
 2" The external motions are always due to internal emotions (Wundt, 
 Concerning the Expression of Emotions, Deutsche Rundschau, April, 
 1877). 
 
64 CARL GEORG LANGE 
 
 following form: We have in every emotion as sure and tangible 
 factors: (1) a cause — a sensory impression which usually is modified 
 by memory or a previous associated image; and (2) an effect — 
 namely, the above mentioned vaso-motor changes and consequent 
 changes in bodily and mental functions. And now we have the 
 question: What lies between these two factors; or does anything 
 lie between them? If I start to tremble when I am threatened 
 with a loaded pistol, does a purely mental process arise, fear, 
 which is what causes my trembhng, palpitation of the heart, and 
 confusion; or are these bodily phenomena aroused immediately 
 by the frightening cause, so that the emotion consists exclusively 
 of these functional disturbances of the body? 
 
 The answer to this question is obviously not only of far-reaching 
 significance in the psychology of the affections, but also of the 
 greatest practical importance for every physician who has anything 
 to do with the pathological results of violent emotions. 
 
 The popular opinion seems to be that, as has been mentioned, 
 the immediate outcome of a situation which arouses an emotion 
 is a purely psychic one, that is, either a new power is generated in 
 the mind, or a modification of the mental condition takes place; 
 and furthermore, that this mental activity is the actual affection, 
 the real pleasure, pain, etc., whereas the physical phenomena are 
 merely secondary, always present, to be sure, but in themselves 
 quite unessential. 
 
 The purely mental affection is a hypothesis and, hke every 
 hypothesis, is justified only if (1) it explains the phenomena it is 
 assumed to explain, and (2) it is necessary for the explanation of 
 these phenomena. 
 
 In regard to the first of the above requirements, the questionable 
 hypothesis has as good chances as any hypothesis of speculative 
 science. Without objections being offered by experience, hypoth- 
 eses can be broadened at will and they can be endowed with any 
 attribute or power, and consequently they serve any purpose 
 which may be required of them. Can mental fear explain why we 
 turn pale and tremble? Even though we do not understand that, 
 we are free to assume it to be true, and as a rule that is sufficient 
 for us. 
 
THE EMOTIONS 65 
 
 If the hypothesis of the psychical nature of the affections, there- 
 fore, is indisputable in this point, especially because it lies outside 
 of the realm of proof, the question arises whether it fulfills the 
 second requirement; to be necessary for the explanation of that 
 group of phenomena which we call affections, so that they cannot 
 be understood without its help. 
 
 If anyone were to dispute it, if, for example, some one attempted 
 to prove to a man who has grown up with the popular conception of 
 this problem that when he is frightened, his fear is only a percep- 
 tion of the changes in his body, he would very probably meet with 
 the following objection first: — "The assumption of this relation 
 is disproved by personal experience, for fear, hke every emotion, 
 has a distinct sensation of a peculiar change, a specific condition 
 of the mind, quite independent of the body." I can well under- 
 stand how this objection may appear very significant to most 
 people, and be difficult to refute, and yet it has obviously no value 
 whatever, in and for itseK, since we have absolutely no immediate 
 means of differentiating between a sensation of mental and one of 
 physical nature. No man, in fact, is capable of differentiating 
 between a sensation of mental and one of physical nature. No 
 man, in fact, is capable of differentiating between psychical and 
 somatic feehngs. Whoever attributes a sensation to the mind, 
 does so only on basis of theory, not on basis of immediate percep- 
 tion. I have no doubt that a mother who mourns the death of 
 her child would resent, yes, be indignant, if any one were to tell 
 her that what she feels: the weariness and laxity of her muscles, 
 the coldness of her bloodless skin, the impossibility of her brain 
 to concentrate in clear, quick thought ;^^ may be attributed to an 
 image of the cause of these phenomena. But this is no ground for 
 indignation, for her feeling is just as strong, just as deep and pure, 
 if attributed to one as to the other cause. It cannot exist, how- 
 ever, without its physical attributes. 
 
 21 1 will not delay to consider the objection which might be offered, 
 namely, that a puFely mental sorrow, joy, etc., can be experienced when- 
 ever the affection is not strong enough to cause bodily symptoms. Such 
 an assumption obviously rests upon very incomplete observation, or upon 
 this, that purely subjective sensations — of lightness or of pressure, of 
 strength or weakness — are considered psychical. 
 
66 CARL GEORG LANGE 
 
 Take away the bodily symptoms from a frightened individual; 
 let his pulse beat cahnly, his look be firm, his color normal, his 
 movements quick and sure, his speech strong, his thoughts clear; 
 and what remains of his fear? 
 
 If, therefore, we cannot rely upon the testimony of personal, 
 subjective experiences in this question because they are incom- 
 petent here, nevertheless the question is by no means cleared up. 
 Even if this hypothesis of psychical affections is not made neces- 
 sary by subjective experiences, it may still be indispensable, since 
 perhaps we cannot understand how the bodily phenomena of the 
 affections arise^^ without it. 
 
 And so, next we have to examine whether the physical expres- 
 sions of affections may arise in a purely physical way; if this be 
 the case, then the necessity of the hypothesis is obviated. 
 
 As a matter of fact, it is not difficult to prove now, and by means 
 of the most ordinary and well known experiences, that emotions may 
 be induced by a variety of causes which are utterly independent of 
 disturbances of the mind, and that, on the other hand, they may 
 be suppressed and modified by pure physical means. The fact 
 that our whole manner of living, our daily diet, has developed in 
 the course of generations with this aim in view, to favor the pleas- 
 ant affections and to modify or entirely remove the unpleasant 
 ones, is very well accepted, even if without clear consciousness of 
 the actual connection of things. I will offer only one example: 
 it will suffice to recall many. It is one of the oldest experiences of 
 mankind that "wine gladdens the heart" and the power of alcohol- 
 ic hquors to reduce sorrow and fear and to substitute joy and 
 courage has found application, which is in and for itself natural 
 enough, and would be most wholesome, if the substance did not 
 produce other effects in addition. 
 
 We all understand "why Jeppe drinks."^* He seeks to free 
 himself from his marital troubles and his fear of Master Erich, and 
 
 22 It is hardly necessary to point out that the assumption of processes in 
 the mind for the explanation of the physical symptoms for a scientific con- 
 ception is in reality only another expression for the fact that the origin of 
 these symptoms is still a mystery to us. 
 
 23 Jeppe am Berge. Character in a classic comedy by Holberg (note 
 added by Kureila) . 
 
THE EMOTIONS 67 
 
 he wishes once again to sing and recall the happy past when he was 
 still "with Mahz." Brandy makes him gay and brave, without 
 requiring even a single brightening or enHvening impression, which 
 might act directly upon his mind, and without causing him to for- 
 get his cares or his enemies in the least. He wants only to look at 
 them from another point of view, under the influence of brandy; 
 he wants to impress the sexton and to beat his wife again; for 
 alcohol has excited his vasomotor apparatus, has increased the 
 speed and strength of his heart-beats, has dilated his capillaries, 
 thereby increasing his innervation enough to make him chatter 
 loudly, sing and row, instead of dragging himseK over the road, 
 moaning and whining. He receives a sensation of warmth, levity 
 and power, instead of his customary laxity and incompetence. 
 His dull brain wakes up under the influence of heightened circula- 
 tion, thoughts begin to come to him, old memories appear and 
 drive away the habitual feehng of misery, and all for one peg of 
 brandy, whose effect on the circulation we can understand and 
 which requires no intervention of the mind to affect the vaso- 
 motor centers. 
 
 All those who drink brandy bear a similar relation to it, and we 
 possess this relation to our daily luxuries and comforts, and to our 
 various arrangements which we make to ensure our comfort and 
 convenience. So long as we find ourselves in the easy, accustomed 
 path of our daily life, the relation of our emotions to material 
 influences (for example, to nourishment) is, of course, not so 
 obvious. A different relation obtains when certain substances are 
 partaken of, substances which have such a strong effect on the 
 system that they are used either as medicines or belong to the 
 category of poisons. This is well known in the case of certain 
 mushrooms, especially of the toad-stool, which call forth violent 
 outbreaks of rage and brutality in whoever partakes of them. 
 Our belligerent ancestors are supposed to have used them to get 
 into the proper spirit for the "Berserk rage," just as we today 
 "take a drink" to "get up" our courage. Attacks of rage may 
 also occur after using Hashish (Indian hemp), which as a rule, only 
 stimulates the system to unrestrained joyfulness in much the same 
 way that alcohol does. 
 
68 CABL GEORG LANGE 
 
 Certain sickening drugs, such as tartar emetic, ipecacuanha, etc., 
 have a depressing effect, which is in some respects comparable to 
 fear and sorrow, and, like these, is accompanied by phenomena of 
 collapse. 
 
 If emotional states can be induced by taking certain substances, 
 or in any other purely physical way, it follows that troublesome 
 affections can be counteracted and modified in a similar way. If 
 brandy or opium induces joy, then they wiU oppose sorrow, etc. 
 
 The power of a ''cold shower" to dampen violence and wrath 
 sometimes finds practical application, and yet this method can 
 hardly have any direct effect upon the mind, if applied in natura; 
 so much the stronger is the effect upon the vasomotor functions. 
 By means of one drug — the well-known potassium bromide — 
 which has a paralyzing effect on the vasomotor apparatus, we have 
 it in our power not only to allay fear and sorrow and other similar 
 unpleasant affections, but also to induce a condition of apathy, 
 which makes it impossible for the subject to be either Uvely or 
 depressed, fearful or angry, simply because the vasomotor func- 
 tions have been suspended. 
 
 If the conception of the nature of the affections as here repre- 
 sented is established, then we may expect that every influence 
 involving general changes in the vascular nervous system must 
 have an emotional expression. Of course, we cannot expect that 
 these emotions wiU coincide exactly with the phenomena for which 
 we usually reserve this denotation; the differences in cause wiU 
 naturally result in various effects. The various psychical causes 
 also have effects which are not at all congruent. Fear of a ghost, 
 for example, does not manifest itself in the same way as the fear 
 of the guns of the enemy. Nevertheless, the similarity between 
 physically and mentally induced affections has, in many cases, 
 deen so conspicuous as to force the immediate conception, as many 
 verbal expressions prove. We have the same expression for 
 mental and physical pain in many languages: their great physio- 
 logical similarity has been recognized, although the eminent 
 characteristic of physical pain, the subjective sensation resulting 
 from the transference of the peripheral stimulation to the sensory 
 center, is entirely absent in mental pain. The cause of the simi- 
 larity to emotional pain is the reflexive innervation of the vascular 
 
THE EMOTIONS 69 
 
 nerves, a regular effect of every strong stimulation of the sensory- 
 nerves. 
 
 In the same way "shudder" is used in speech for both the effect 
 of sudden cold upon the skin, and for phenomena due to impres- 
 sions from fright. That this naive conception knows no difference 
 between emotional and purely physical "shudders" is evident 
 from the story of the boy who set out to "get a thrill," and after 
 he had tried in vain to "thriU" in the presence of dead and of 
 ghosts, finally obtained his wish when he was thrown out of his 
 bed into a tub of cold water. This produced a far stronger effect 
 upon his vasomotor appartus than did the sight of death-beds or 
 ghosts. To call a man "feverish" who suffers great suspense is 
 another example of how striking is the similarity between the 
 sHght symptoms of fever which are induced chiefly by vasomotor 
 disturbances, and those physical conditions which are caused by 
 anxious expectation, etc. (24). 
 
 As has been mentioned, I do not wish to enter upon the great 
 problem of the relation of the affections to actual pathological 
 conditions, and to psychical and physical diseases. 
 
 But one relation does obtain here, which I cannot quite pass 
 over, because it wiU throw great hght upon the question, so vital 
 to us, of the necessity of the hypothesis of purely mental affec- 
 tions. K anything can prove absolutely the dispensibility of this 
 hypothesis, it certainly must be the fact that affections which 
 influence our psychical life are induced without any external 
 influence or circumstance, and aside from memory or association 
 of ideas; and that they occur in optima forma on the mere basis 
 of conditions of disease which develop in the body or are inherited. 
 
 If we proceed from the conception represented here, this cannot 
 appear strange to us; for, of course, the vasomotor apparatus may 
 also be affected by disease at times, just like any other part of the 
 nervous system, and be caused to function abnormally, or to be 
 put out of commission entirely. We may consider it especially 
 exposed to the danger of abnormal functioning, because it is a 
 part of the nervous system, which enjoys less rest and is more 
 frequently attacked by functional disturbances than any other or- 
 gan. Wherever this occurs, the patient becomes either depressed, 
 or raging, terrified, or excessively lively, or embarrassed, etc.. 
 
70 CARL GEORG LANGE 
 
 all without motive, even though he is conscious of not having any 
 reason for his anger, his fear or joy. What support can we find 
 here for an assumption of "mental affections?" 
 
 Such cases are extraordinarily common. Every psychiatrist 
 knows the sharply defined characteristics which occur in melan- 
 choha or mania. Every physician, who is interested in nervous 
 diseases, has plenty of opportunity to observe the still more in- 
 structive cases which he on the border between real insanity and 
 mere "indispositions," which come under the head of "irritabil- 
 ity," "eccentricity," "dejection," etc. Most frequently we find 
 "dejection" (the image of sorrow or even of despair), which often 
 leads to suicide in spite of the full, clear consciousness that there 
 is absolutely no mental motive for sorrow. Less frequent is the 
 diseased condition of fear, which is often combined with related 
 affection, with sorrow, but also occurs alone. Sometimes we also 
 find that joy occurs in disease; the mere fact that joy appears 
 immotivated and without cause is not sufiäcient proof for the lay- 
 man to consider it diseased, and stiU less to suggest medical 
 treatment. 
 
 It is usually necessary for the joy to express itseK most unre- 
 strainedly as a more or less decided mania, or that it alternate in a 
 striking manner with periods of depression: circumstances which 
 cause it to appear abnormal. The same holds true of anger. As 
 regards this affection, we are wont to accept much that presup- 
 poses no corresponding pathological condition, and we are not as 
 particular regarding the motivation. However, everything has its 
 limits and frequently there are outbreaks of anger which have so 
 little motive, and are so unbridled, that all wiU agree in considering 
 them expressions of a pathological condition. 
 
 There is perhaps nothing that can be more enhghtening to a 
 non-medical man than the observation of such a pathological 
 attack of rage, especially if it appears unmodified by any other 
 psychic disturbances, as happens rarely, by the way, in the so- 
 caUed "transitory mania" form of disease. Often the attack 
 comes without the slightest provocation to predisposed patients, 
 who are otherwise quite rational, and puts them (to speak with 
 the latest writer^ on the subject) in condition of "wild paroxysms 
 
 **0. Schwartzer, Die transitorische Tobsucht. Wien, 1880. 
 
THE EMOTIONS 71 
 
 of rage, with a terrible, blind raving impulse to destruction and 
 violence." The patient suddenly attacks his surroundings, 
 strikes, stamps his feet, kicks, crushes everything he can lay hands 
 on, throws down everything he can get hold of, smashes and tears 
 to pieces whatever is near him, tears his clothes, screams, yeUs, 
 howls and roUs his gleaming eyes and shows all symptoms of 
 vasomotor congestion that we have become acquainted with 
 before in rage. The face is reddened, swollen, the cheeks are 
 hot, the eyes protrude and their choroids become bloodshot, 
 the beat of the heart increases, and the pulse beats 100 to 120 
 times a minute. The arteries of the neck swell and pulsate, the 
 veins swell, salivation is increased. The attack lasts only a few 
 hours and comes to a sudden end in an 8 to 12 hour sleep, and the 
 patient on awakening has forgotten all that happened. 
 
 The pathological affections discussed above are due to physical 
 abnormahties and may appear either as symptoms of other dis- 
 eases, or because of some disturbance in metabohsm or digestion, 
 etc. Hence, they are influenced by purely material therapy and 
 may be improved and cured thereby. The above quoted case of 
 transitory mania, which obviously is due to a sudden congestion 
 in the brain can sometimes, according to the above quoted 
 author, be cured by ice compresses around the head (25) . 
 
 Here I foresee one objection, which I do not wish to pass over 
 unnoticed, in spite of its weakness logically. Undoubtedly many, 
 in agreement with daily usage of speech, will say: "The condi- 
 tions which are brought about by purely physical influences, or by 
 diseased conditions of the body, may look hke affections, but are 
 not." 
 
 The raving caused by a toadstool, for example, or by mania, 
 may have the same appearance as rage, but is not the real rage, 
 just as httle as the joy which comes of drinking wine is not real 
 joy; therefore, in absence of a mental joy, in cases of toadstool 
 poisoning, or mania, we cannot conclude that no such purely 
 mental state exists, if rage is as a rule caused by a mental im- 
 pression. 
 
 Now, it is easy to comprehend that such a division of affections 
 into real and apparent, such a limiting of the range of ''real affec- 
 tions," is quite consciously based upon a petitio principii. The 
 
72 CARL GEORG LANGE 
 
 reason for suggesting that such a group of the "real affections" 
 is due to purely mental influences, is the only possible assumption 
 that can be made, in which the disposition (Gemilth) is involved. 
 But that is precisely the point of this investigation. 
 
 In reahty, the difference between the Berserk-madness of a 
 man poisoned by a toad-stool, the maniacal-madness and the rage 
 of one who has suffered a bloody insult, lies only in the difference 
 of cause and in the consciousness of the respective causes, or in the 
 lack of consciousness of a cause. If we want to differentiate be- 
 tween these differences, there is, of course, no objection to offer; 
 only it must be clearly understood wherein the difference lies. 
 
 Indeed, it is not so easy to draw a line between material and 
 mental causes for affections; and if we try to sound the physiolog- 
 ical differences, they vanish into something quite insignificant 
 physiologically, and slip through our fingers. It has never 
 occurred to anyone to separate the emotion due to a suddenly 
 discharged shot, from the true affections. No one hesitates to 
 caU it fright, and it presents aU the ordinary characteristics of 
 fright. Nevertheless, it has no connection with any image of 
 danger, and is not caused by any association of ideas, memory, 
 or any other mental process. The phenomena of fright foUow 
 the shot immediately, without any trace of "mental" fright. 
 Many wiU never grow accustomed to standing beside a gun when 
 it is fired, merely on account of the noise, although they know 
 perfectly well that there is no danger present, either to them or to 
 any one else. We can also consider the case of the infant, which 
 presents all the phenomena of fright at every strong impression of 
 sound; we cannot assume that the sound arouses an image of 
 danger in this case. 
 
 Here, where we must assume that the pure vasomotor reflex is 
 released by a direct circuit from the center of hearing, if not in- 
 directly by the auditory nerves, we have an emotion of purely 
 material origin.^^ And so, we must either exclude this fright from 
 
 2^ It is not probable that this is a case of a pure, simple reflex of the motor 
 nerves, as Prayer, for example, seems to assume {Die Seele des Kindes, 
 2d ed., p. 51), partly because the apparent movements do not look as if they 
 were caused by a sudden impression that releases a reflex, partly, also, 
 because the effects are not limited to the motor phenomena. 
 
THE EMOTIONS 73 
 
 the real affections, or we cannot support the differentiation be- 
 tween mentally and physically induced affections. We meet with 
 the same difl&culty in the case of the usually less intense, but 
 nevertheless sufficiently decided, emotions that are aroused by 
 simple impressions made upon other sense organs, which have no 
 connection with any association of ideas; the pleasure we take in 
 a pretty color, or color combination, our repulsion towards a bad 
 taste or odor, discomfort in pain. 
 
 If we have begun to feel uncertain about the estabhshment of a 
 border hne between the mental and physical causes of affections, 
 we will discover a strong impulse to examine what physiological 
 significance this difference possesses, i.e., what difference exists in 
 the cerebral mechanism of emotions, in the brain activity when the 
 cause is mental and when it is purely material. 
 
 In the face of our present still incomplete knowledge of the 
 physiology of the brain, it is of course not very tempting to attempt 
 an explanation of what happens in the brain in mental activity. 
 It of course can be only a question of the crudest fundamental 
 outlines, and with every quahfication regarding the accuracy of 
 the results. Nevertheless, in physiological investigations, it is not 
 only justified, but even correct and desirable to determine defi- 
 nitely just what can be done in the light of our present physio- 
 logical knowledge. At least, we may derive encouragement from 
 the fact that these relations as described here are very easy to 
 grasp, in their fundamental outlines. 
 
 Whatever the causes may be that arouse affections, the effects 
 on the nervous system are identical in one point; in the effect upon 
 the vasomotor center, that group of nerve cells which regulates 
 the innervation of the bloodvessels. The stimulation of these 
 cells, which lie chiefly in the part of the cord between the brain 
 and the spinal cord, is the root of the causes of the affections, 
 however else they may be constituted; and is fundamental to the 
 physiological phenomena which are the essential components of 
 the affections. But the paths which lead thither are various, 
 according to the nature of the causes, not only according to 
 whether they enter by one or another sense-organ, but also accord- 
 ing to whether they are simple sense impressions, or comphcated, 
 so-called psychic processes. It seems that for the formation of 
 
74 
 
 CARL GEORG LANGE 
 
 those emotions which are due to a simple sense impression, a loud 
 noise, a beautiful color combination, etc., the path to the vaso- 
 motor center must be quite direct, and the cerebral mechanism 
 but slightly complicated. Consider to be the sense organ in the 
 following figure, the eye for example, which received the impres- 
 sion in question and which subsequently passes along the optic 
 nerve (N.O.) to the central optic organ (CO/), is diverted by a 
 simple nerve connection to the vasomotor center (C.V.) to lead off 
 the impulse first aroused in the eye and in this way to effect the 
 emotional changes in the vascular innervation (26). 
 
 CG.'^. 
 
 CO" 
 
 Fig. 1 
 
 The matter becomes somewhat more comphcated when those 
 affections are involved which are produced not by a simple im- 
 pression upon some sense-organ, but by some "mental process," 
 some memory or association of ideas, even if the latter be due to 
 sense-impression. Such causes usually produce a much stronger 
 emotional effect than do the simple sense-impressions. The latter 
 usually only arouse affections when they are very powerful, 
 and their effects are usually not so deep nor so lasting, especially 
 when compared with those aroused psychically. 
 
 Fortunately, things are arranged so that most sense-impres- 
 sions are entirely without emotional effects, and that they obtain 
 such effects only by stimulation through mental activity. When 
 
THE EMOTIONS 75 
 
 I begin to tremble, if threatened by a loaded gun, it is evidently 
 not the sense-impression which causes the fear, for a loaded gun 
 looks just like an empty one, which I would not have noticed at 
 all. What, then, happens in the brain, when an affection is induced 
 by a sense impression that can have no direct effect upon the 
 vascular nerve center as can a loud report, etc.? In order possibly 
 to give a somewhat adequate answer to this question, we must 
 proceed from the consideration of the simplest imaginable case. 
 There are undoubtedly an infinite number of possibüities which 
 are for the most part very comphcated and impossible of analysis. 
 But, on the other hand, a very simple case contributes by its sug- 
 gestion of the relation, to the solution of this complicated problem 
 for future physiological research. 
 
 As an example of the simplest type, I shall offer the following 
 case, for the correctness of which every mother would testify. 
 A young child wiU cry at the sight of the spoon which has pre- 
 viously been used several times to give him nasty medicine; how 
 does that happen? Such a case, or analogous ones, are frequently 
 cited from the psychological point of view, and very diverse answers 
 will be found for our question. " He cries, because he considers the 
 spoon to be the cause of his former distress," we say. But this does 
 not help to explain the fact. Or he cries "because the spoon re- 
 awakens memories of former sufferings," which may be quite true, 
 but does not transfer the case to the field of physiology; or "be- 
 cause the spoon arouses fear of future discomforts;" but the ques- 
 tion is, just how does the sight of the spoon arouse fear because of 
 its previous use, i.e., how is it capable of setting the vaso-motor 
 center in action in a certain way? 
 
 Whenever the child received medicine from that spoon, his 
 visual sense was stimulated as well as his gustatory sense, by the 
 sight of the spoon as well as by the taste of the medicine. Both 
 impressions are conveyed to the brain from the peripheral sense 
 organs, and there, after they have become sensations in the cen- 
 tral sense organ (in C.G.' and CO.' in the above figure), they are 
 brought to consciousness in that they are brought to the centers 
 of taste and vision in the cortex (in C.G." and CO."). But the 
 dispositional outbreaks of the child show conclusively that each 
 impression of taste is always conveyed to the vaso-motor center 
 
76 CARL GEORG LANGE 
 
 (C.V. from CG.') and hereby arouses the phenomena which express 
 fright, disgust, et al. The sight of the spoon alone therefore can 
 not set the vascular nerves in action; if we show the spoon to a 
 child in a condition of ignorance, before he has tasted the bitters 
 that he may receive from it, he wiU reach for it instead of begin- 
 ning to cry. 
 
 But if he has seen the spoon in action a few times, and has 
 noticed that this sight is always followed by a disgusting taste, 
 it becomes evident that the sight of the spoon alone has the power 
 to make the child cry, i.e., to stimulate his vasomotor center to 
 activity. This must now be capable of being aroused either from 
 the point CO.' or from the point CO.", which before had no 
 influence whatever. 
 
 From which of these points now does the impulse to CV. start, 
 when the child sees the hated spoon? Surely from CO.", the 
 cortical center, since this is the first organ where an image of the 
 spoon becomes conscious. Now it is a question why the group of 
 cells CO.", which formerly had no influence upon the vasomotor 
 center, is now capable of stimulating it to emotional activity. 
 When we recall that the fact that visual and gustatory impressions 
 have been received simultaneously numerous times is the cause, 
 we begin to think immediately that a functional connection must 
 have been established by these simultaneous stimulations between 
 the two cell groups CO." and CG.", the conscious centers for the 
 appearance of the spoon and the taste of the medicine; so we must 
 add that whenever CO." are activated by the sight of the spoon, 
 the impulse is conducted to CG.", from whence again, as is evi- 
 dent in view of the well known power of memory to arouse 
 emotions, it is easily conducted to CV.^^ I fear that the assump- 
 tion of a new, so far untried, functional relation between CG." 
 and CO." must, at first sight, look like one of the many subter- 
 fuges which physiological psychology does not always scorn 
 
 2* Whether this takes place over the paths C.G."-C.G.' and C.G.'- 
 C.V., or over other unknown ones, cannot be determined. But there is 
 no reason to object to the above mentioned courses, for they also take 
 care of a reversed direction, since the reversible conduction of the nerve 
 fibers, which obviously cannot be observed in the peripheral nerves, cer- 
 tainly must play an important part in the central organs, when their 
 amphicellular arrangement favors and necessitates it. 
 
THE EMOTIONS 77 
 
 to make use of in its theories. It is temptingly easy to " open new 
 roads" by a pen-stroke, when we wish to have something done 
 between two points in the brain, which before have possessed no 
 relation. If then we consider such "roads" to be represented by 
 nerve-fibers, we certainly build on a very shaky hypothesis; for, 
 outside of early evolutionary periods, we have no proof of the con- 
 dition that nerve fibers which formerly have been inert will begin 
 activity. But the matter is different, if we consider the conduc- 
 tion of an impulse from one place to another by means of connected 
 nerve-cells, as we would have to assume the path of conduction 
 between CO." and CG." to be. The numerous phenomena of 
 irradiation, ordinary and pathological, demonstrate adequately 
 that the "blazing of the trau" easily takes place under these con- 
 ditions as a result of repeated stimulation of one or the other cell 
 group. 
 
 But we must not be satisfied with such an indeterminate rep- 
 resentation like the one contained in the expression ''to blaze a 
 new trau." We must make it clear to ourselves, how this relation 
 is to be understood in each individual case; the new connection 
 between the two points may be estabhshed in a number of dif- 
 ferent ways. 
 
 In the above case, we see that the point CG." which originally 
 was not stimulated when an impulse reached CO.", now is acti- 
 vated by an impression received at CO.", after both points have 
 been simultaneously stimulated a few times. If we were to say 
 now, that this is a simple phenomenon of irradiation; the stimula- 
 tion at CO." spreads, irradiates by means of cell connections to 
 CG."; nothing would, in fact, be explained, for it would stiU 
 remain a mystery just what leads the irradiation to CG.", as we 
 can assume beforehand that the phenomenon can take place in 
 any direction from CO.", with equal ease. Our supposition does 
 not justify our assuming that the process of irradiation takes 
 place in one direction only, although this is very possible. We 
 must proceed from the theory that it radiates from CO." in all 
 directions, and decreases in intensity with the distance from this 
 point. 
 
 What has occurred in the above case is not a "blazing of a new 
 trail" in the sense of opening paths which have not been traversed 
 
78 CARL GEORG LANGE 
 
 before. The new effect of this sense-impression upon the child 
 does not depend upon his being led along new paths, which for- 
 merly were closed, but upon the fact that the point C.G." is in a 
 condition to be influenced by the irradiation from the point CO.", 
 more strongly than any other group of cells which may be affected; 
 or rather, C.G." is the only group which responds recognizably 
 to the impulse propagated by irradiation. 
 
 We can only consider the fact that this group has previously 
 been stimulated simultaneously with CO." as a reason for this 
 greater sensitivity. A change has hereby been produced in its 
 ceUs, a condition of excitability, which is not to be found in the 
 other brain cells, which may be reached by irradiation. A sum- 
 mation of functional activity occurs in CG." due to the existing 
 activity and the additional activity conducted to it from C.O.^^ 
 The reason for the fact that CG." is only stimulated by irradia- 
 tion coming from CO.", and not by that coming from any other 
 point in the cortex, is quite easily explained. But an investiga- 
 tion of this point would require trespassing in other fields of 
 psychophysiology. Therefore, I pass over the question, and that 
 the more wiUingly, since it is here only a question of sketching the 
 main direction of the path over which we can conceive the proc- 
 ess of stimulation of the vasomotor centers to pass, wherever it is 
 a question of an indirect "mental" affection. 
 
 The exemplary case quoted above, as has been mentioned, has 
 been taken as simple and as uncomplicated as possible. Of 
 course, the process is much more comphcated in most indirect 
 affections; in other words, the impulse coming from outside must 
 traverse a much more round-about path in the brain, must pass 
 more stations, before it reaches the vasomotor center (27); but 
 the outlines of the physiological procedure will essentially remain 
 
 ^"^ This relation will perhaps become clearer when we recall the phe- 
 nomena of interference, which shows that one wave motion may be reinforced 
 by another wave of the same nature. The irradiation which proceeds from 
 the point CO." and which spreads with decreasing intensity in all direc- 
 tions may be compared to the circular wave motion set up when a stone is 
 thrown into a pool of still water. If, now, one of the disturbances coming 
 from CO." meets a similar one that has started earlier, but which is still 
 active and coming from CG.", then the tract between may be set into 
 stronger motion by interference than any other ray from CO." 
 
THE EMOTIONS 79 
 
 constant: a conduction of the stimulation from the cells of the 
 central sense organs to the cortical cells, and from these finally to 
 the vasomotor cells in the mid-brain. 
 
 And, so, I probably was justified in my statement (on page 72) 
 that the difference between emotions induced by material and 
 mental methods was not absolute, not even essential, from a 
 physiological point of view. The chief requisites for formation 
 remains the same for both, the stimulation of the vasomotor 
 centers; the difference Hes in the path which the impulse pursues 
 to reach this center. To this we must still add the fact that an 
 increase of impulse occurs in the case of indirect, "mental" affec- 
 tions, due to a previous brain stimulation which has not yet quite 
 died away, and the effect of which is added to the impulse coming 
 from the external impression. 
 
 I hope that it will now be obvious that, as I have already re- 
 marked in the introduction, the problem is reversed, if we, as 
 often has been done in the past, and as still happens, set out to 
 determine the physiological and pathological effects of affections 
 upon the body. 
 
 The statement of the problem is wrong in principle, for the 
 emotions are not forces which stand outside of the body and con- 
 trol it, and whoever proceeds conscientiously in his investigation 
 will soon come to the conclusion that this problem is practically 
 insolvable. If, nevertheless, it has been beheved that it is possible 
 to offer a thousand answers to the question of the influence of joy 
 and sorrow, of fright and anger, etc., upon the pshsiological expres- 
 sions of life, only a quite arbitrary and impossible schematization 
 has been obtained, by which every phenomenon which did not fit 
 into the scheme was excluded. And so I too have proceeded in 
 the above sketch of the bodily expressions of the affections. Any- 
 one who has followed this sketch wül easily see that it holds good 
 only for certain cases which we will call the typical, or better still, 
 the conventional ones, because it is they that have gradually 
 assumed in the course of time a kind of symbolic significance in 
 art and hterature, representing groups of related phenomena. 
 But we have all seen people struck dumb with joy, rather than 
 made loquacious, we have seen fright rush the blood to the head 
 of its victim, instead of making him turn pale, and have seen the 
 
80 CARL GEORG LANGE 
 
 mourner rush about restless and moaning, rather than silent and 
 dejected, etc. This is natural, for the same cause may have a 
 different effect upon the vascular nerves of different people, since 
 these do not always give the same reaction in different individuals, 
 and besides, the impulse has been influenced by various factors 
 previous to its path through the brain, under the psychological 
 form of memories and associated ideas. But he who states the 
 problem in the traditional form must do violence to the facts in 
 another respect, namely, in a conscious schematization of the 
 affections, an establishment of definite forms; whereas in reahty 
 a multitude of unnoticeable transitions occur. That is a dehberate 
 act, which is perhaps more flagrant than would be the establishing 
 of seven definite colors to represent the entire range of colors. 
 Such an act might be permissible in daily speech, but is quite out 
 of the question in a scientific investigation, where it can only 
 happen by trespassing and neglecting aU the innumerable shades 
 of transition, which so far have no name in speech. 
 
 How often are we not embarrassed when called upon to decide 
 how to classify our momentary disposition under the conventional 
 headings? How often must we not be satisfied with vague ex- 
 pressions for some emotional process ("I became excited," "I was 
 irritated," "my disposition was upset," etc.), and be unable 
 to bring it under any one affection that has a name in the language? 
 
 The truly scientific problem in this field is the determination of 
 the emotional reaction of the vasomotor system to various influ- 
 ences. The solution of this problem is still a long ways off. The 
 present investigation goes no further than to point out the 
 problem. 
 
 We owe all the emotional side of our mental hfe, our joys and 
 sorrows, our happy and unhappy hours, to our vasomotor system. 
 If the impressions which faU upon our senses did not possess the 
 power of stimulating it, we would wander through life unsympa- 
 thetic and passionless, all impressions of the outer world would 
 only enrich our experience, increase our knowledge, but would 
 arouse neither joy nor anger, would give us neither care nor fear 
 (28). 
 
 It is true of the vasomotor apparatus as well as of aU parts of the 
 nervous system, that its irritability is very different for different 
 
THE EMOTIONS 81 
 
 people. In some, it is easily stimulated and reacts to compara- 
 tively slight impulses. 
 
 Everyday experience teaches how much more easily some indi- 
 viduals' hearts palpitate than others; how much more easily some 
 blush or pale; how some are more sensitive to heat and cold; and 
 we all know that those individuals whose vasomotor systems are 
 so easily stimulated are the ones who easily become violent and 
 angry, or excessively joyful, etc. Not only individual, but also 
 inherited differences frequently occur here; more general and fre- 
 quently highly significant relations play a part. Women, whose 
 nervous system and especially the vasomotor division, proves to 
 be much more sensitive than that of men, are much oftener the 
 prey of affections than is the other sex. The same analogy holds 
 true for children in comparison with adults. As is well known, 
 racial peculiarities may cause differences, and since we cannot 
 learn very much about the difference in sensitivity of the 
 vasomotor systems of the various races, we may be allowed to 
 reverse the conclusion and consider the greater or lesser mobihty 
 of the vascular nerves in response to a given stimulus. On account 
 of the perspective into the future which it gives, one circumstance 
 deserves particular notice, namely that individuals as well as races 
 are subject to a greater degree of emotion the lower their posi- 
 tion in society. 
 
 The so-called savage races, when racial peculiarities do not act 
 in the opposite direction, are more violent and unrestrained, more 
 excessive in their joy, more subjugated by sorrow, than civilized 
 nations. The same difference occurs between the various genera- 
 tions of one and the same race; we are calm and tame compared 
 to our barbarian ancestors, whose greatest delight lay in working 
 themselves up to an insane rage for battle, but who, on the other 
 hand, were so depressed by misfortune as to end their hves for a 
 mere bagatelle. And, finally, we see a similar difference existing 
 between the various classes of society in the same generation. 
 The surest sign of ''refinement" is the self-control with which 
 educated persons bear misfortunes that would call forth out- 
 breaks of passion in the uneducated. 
 
 This repression of emotion during the progressive education of 
 individuals and of generations proceeds hand in hand, not only 
 
82 CARL GEORG LANGE 
 
 with advancing development of mental life, but is also a result of 
 this development. 
 
 Mental life, too, is dependant upon vasomotor function, though 
 in a somewhat different manner from emotional life. Intellectual 
 operations cause, and are due to, an increase of blood supply to 
 the brain, naturally, to parts of the brain other than those which 
 are especially involved in emotions. 
 
 To a certain degree a contradiction exists between the mental 
 hfe and the emotional. The former acts "derivatively" (in the 
 original sense of the word), conducting the blood away from the 
 latter; and when Hermann von Bremen counts twenty, he reheves 
 the motor part of his brain of such an amount of blood by this bit 
 of intellectual activity that he no longer feels the impulse to 
 strike.^^ 
 
 Education acts along the same hues. The aim of all education, 
 (which must not be confused with instruction) is to increase self- 
 control and the opposition or suppression of impulses, which are 
 the immediate effects of our bodily organization, but which do not 
 fit into estabhshed social conditions. Physiologically, we consider 
 education to consist in practice in the abihty to control simple 
 elementary reflexes by higher ones. We are taught from earhest 
 childhood to control the vasomotor reflexes of emotions and other 
 reflexes not fitting for decent society. A child is punished when 
 he starts to cry as a result of emotional vascular convulsions, just 
 as much as when he does not keep himself clean, because of the 
 uncontrolled reflexes of his bladder. 
 
 In the course of years, the center of the vascular nerves loses 
 more and more of its emotional activity by reason of the influence 
 of control and lack of practice, and, as we have discovered so 
 often in acquired characters, this result of development of the 
 mental life and of education is transmitted to posterity by inherit- 
 ance; generations arise which have less and less prompt emotional 
 vascular innervation, and with always slighter innervation of the 
 vascular nerves for the organs of intelligence. If our develop- 
 ment continues to progress along these lines, we shall finally reach 
 
 2® Hermann V. Br., a hero of the Holberg classical comedy, always counted 
 twenty after his wife had struck him a blow, and he was then in a position 
 to remain calm (note by Kurella). 
 
THE EMOTIONS 83 
 
 Kant's ideal of the "man of pure reason," who will consider every 
 affection, every joy and sadness, fear and fright, as a disease, a 
 mental disturbance, which is not proper for him. 
 
 ADDENDA 
 
 (1) In the older philosophical terminology, the word "passiones" was 
 
 used for both groups of phenomena. Thus, Descartes recognizes 
 six primitivae passiones": "astonishment, love, hate, desire, joy and 
 sorrow (De passionibus Art. 69), and does not differentiate between 
 the two kinds of psychical phenonena. Similarly, Spinoza uses the 
 word "affectus" in a like manner. His five kinds are: desire, joy, 
 sorrow, astonishment, scorn (Ethics ps. Ill, De origine et natura 
 affectum). Later, however, attempts began to be made to estab- 
 lish a certain difference between affectus and passiones — •passions 
 — 'and to make affections correspond to our emotions and "passions" 
 to our passions. Kant differentiates between affections and pas- 
 sions (passiones animi), but does not divide the phenomena under 
 these heads. He considers love, hope, modesty, to be affections 
 just like joy and sorrow. And although there is a tendency in 
 later psychological usage to assign to "passiones" a definition which 
 approximately corresponds to the German "Gemüthsbewegimg," 
 and the French and English "emotions," which we are dealing with 
 here, yet we find even in the most recent works of the most rigorous 
 scientific character that "Passion" and "Emotion" "Gemüthsbewe- 
 gung," "Affect" and "Leidenschaft" are used rather interchange- 
 ably, with no attempt at differentiation of the individual psychical 
 disturbances. 
 
 One author alone, the court-physician Lion, has made an attempt 
 to differentiate between affections and passions (affections and 
 passions from the point of view of modern science and of the legis- 
 lature of 1866). After he justly bemoaned the fact of this general 
 confusion, he established a series of diagnostic characteristics for 
 both, but meeting, it seems to me, with no greater success than 
 every other attempt at definition which proceeds from that unfor- 
 tunate realistic conception to which our science is still wedded. 
 
 (2) A sharp, and therefore scientific, differentiation can, of course, only 
 
 be reached as a conclusion to a scientific investigation of the emo- 
 tional phenomena. For immediate application here, it is fortu- 
 nately not of the least importance to have a detailed differentiation 
 between the two groups of phenomena as a starting point. We 
 are only interested in obtaining homogeneous material for our in- 
 vestigation, and that is not difficult since we can ourselves make the 
 differentiation between the psychic phenomena that are involved 
 in our investigation. 
 
84 CARL GEORG LANGE 
 
 (3) Kant bases his definition of affections as sensations which (contrary 
 
 to passions) permit of no consideration, whether we surrender our- 
 selves to them, or whether we oppose them, on the part that 
 reflection plays in passion. (Anthropologie, hook S, ^70). 
 
 (4) In older psychological writers, we may still meet with attempts to 
 
 define the individual emotions; but we find no explanation of the 
 nature of the affections in these definitions. As a rule, they are 
 purely causal, like those of Descartes, who defines joy as "jucunda 
 commotio animae in qua consistit possessio boni quod itnpressiones 
 cerebri ei repraesentant ut suum {I. c. Art. 91) ; and so he attributes 
 joy to a consciousness of the possession of good; but about what 
 joy itself really is, he says nothing. In the same way, Kant: when 
 he defines modesty as fear due to anxious scorn of a person present 
 (Anthropologie, hooks, §79). A definition like Spinoza's: "Laetitia 
 est hominis transitio a minore ad majorem perfectionem'' (Ethics 
 ps. Ill), is purely nominal. 
 
 (5) In Denmark, we find the brief and superficial presentation of Professor 
 
 Klingberg's in the " Skandinavisk Liter aturselskabs Skrijter," 9 '^^ 
 Aargang, 1813. More thorough and detailed is the work of 
 Sibbern in his book, "Om Forholdet mellem Sjäel og Legeme," 1849. 
 Also, the work of A. Sell (^'Om Betydn. af. Sindsbevaegels . Som 
 Sygdomsaarsager, 1884). This deals chiefly with the pathological 
 relations. 
 
 (6) I have (cf. Lecture on the pathology of the spinal cord, Forlaesn over 
 
 Rygmarvens Patol., p. 455 ff.) used the term "patent innervation" 
 to describe a phenomenon which is very significant for the under- 
 standing of many pathological symptoms, but which so far has not 
 been noticed by physiologists and pathologists. For, besides the 
 obvious impulses from the brain, which control the so-called volunt- 
 ary muscles, there are other continuous motor impulses which, as a 
 rule, are not observed under normal conditions, because they are 
 so slight that they do not effect an actual contraction of the 
 muscles, but only cause a slight tension. Thus, our muscles suffer 
 a slight contraction, even when at rest, as in sleep, so that our body 
 usually assumes a position in sleep which it could not hold in 
 death. 
 
 (7) A heightened activity of the constrictor apparatus of the blood- 
 
 vessels (vascular spasm, vascular convulsion) may, as a rule, only 
 cause a contraction of the smaller vessels, whose thin walls possess 
 a relatively strong muscular coat. The consequence of a vascular 
 convulsion is a change in the distribution of the blood in the vessels, 
 so that the large vessels, which are not contracted, are over-filled 
 with blood, whereas the smaller ones receive less blood than usual, 
 or are even so completely contracted as to allow no blood to enter. 
 
 (8) I am myself not so sure of the truth of my above explanation of the 
 
 apparent paradox that a sorrowful person weeps. We might also 
 
THE EMOTIONS 85 
 
 assume that weeping is the effect of a spasmodic dilatation of the 
 blood-vessels, and the profuse secretions which so frequently cause 
 the swelliag and reddening of the fleshy parts of the face are facts 
 in favor of the assumption, this spasmodic dilation occurring fre- 
 quently in sorrow, instead of the usual contraction. Physiological 
 and pathological experiments prove adequately that one and the 
 same vascular nerves may be caused to contract or dilate by the 
 same stimulus, and we can discover no reason for the different 
 effects. 
 (9) That an overwhelming sorrow can turn the hair gray very rapidly, 
 over night, is an old experience, and we have reliable observations 
 of the phenomenon of recent date. An experienced and keen ob- 
 server, our well-known psychiatrist Selmer, with whom I was dis- 
 cussing the subject, was inclined to attribute the rapid turning 
 gray of the hair, especially of women, after violent emotion, to the 
 fact that they no longer took the trouble to conceal the gray hairs 
 under the others so carefully, and he has often noticed that the 
 original color returned as soon as the patients regained their normal 
 self-control. It may be, of course, that this explanation is adequate 
 for certain cases, especially in such cases where the hair literally 
 turns gray ''over night." Such a sudden change defies all explana- 
 tion, even if we consider the only existing observation made by 
 handois (Virchows Archiv vol. 35), who thought it was due to an 
 acute generation of gas in the hair. But that such a conspicuous 
 fading of the hair should occur in an inconceivably short time, at 
 least in the course of a few weeks, when the sorrow is extreme, I 
 have myself observed to happen in a few cases. 
 
 (10) The Italian physiologist, Mantegazza, relates how, a few years ago, 
 
 an animal trainer raised great excitement because, after a dangerous 
 fight with a lion that attacked him in the cage, all his hair fell out 
 over night. 
 
 A few years ago, it happened in a French town that a young 
 girl, who saved herself in the collapse of a house by clinging to a 
 rafter, lost not only the hair on her head, but also her eye-brows 
 and eye-lashes, in short, all the hairs on her body, within the fol- 
 lowing few days, (Cf. Arch, generates de medecine, June 1879, p. 
 746.) 
 
 Undoubtedly it is easier to explain a sudden falling out of the 
 hair than a sudden turning gray, which plays a certain part in 
 popular imagination and in novels. {Cf. Addenda 9.) 
 
 The nails, too, are supposed to drop off under the influence of 
 fear, though not as rapidly. (Cardanus, De suhtilitate, lib. XV.) 
 
 (11) That fright can, according to its degree, produce either an increase 
 
 or a paralysis of the activity of the heart, is not difficult to explain 
 physiologically; at least, this holds true for that conception ac- 
 cording to which the vagus nerve acts as the motor nerve for the 
 
86 CARL GEORG LANGE 
 
 heart and possesses the power of causing the contractions of the 
 heart to increase at every slight stimulation, no matter of what kind, 
 and to inhibit the contraction at any stronger stimulation. 
 
 (12) The involuntary evacuation of the bladder and intestine are, as a 
 
 rule, described as paralytic phenomena, caused by a paralysis 
 of the sphincter muscles. In another place, I have demonstrated 
 the fallacy of this conception. (C/. Hospitals-Tidende 1872, No. 
 30, J ., and Forlaes overRygm. Patologi, p. 175 Jff.) Besides, De Marees 
 (Z.C., p. 370) has come to the conclusion that these phenomena involve 
 a convulsion. In those not rare cases where sudden fear necessi- 
 tates an evacuation, it can only be a question of a convulsion of 
 those involuntary muscles. 
 
 (13) When the sensory elements of one of the nervous centers, the brain 
 
 or spinal cord, are subjected to stimulation, sensations do not arise 
 at the place of stimulation, but at the peripheral end of the nerve- 
 fiber. This sensation is called eccentric or projected, according to 
 its origin. 
 
 (14) Surely it rests upon an illusion to claim to observe a pulsation of this 
 
 blood-vessel in cases of anger. (Thus the Mohammedans claim 
 that "the great artery in the center of the Prophet's brow beat 
 when he was angry.") 
 
 (15) Perhaps we will be asked here whether the above described con- 
 
 gestion of the capillaries is not also of a nervous nature and attrib- 
 utable to the same stemming of the blood as the dilation of the 
 larger veins. However, various facts contradict this explanation. 
 On the one hand, a rich blood-supply occurs in anger without show- 
 ing any dilation of the larger blood-vessels. On the other hand, 
 the skin does not retain its peculiar blue (cyanotic) coloring, which 
 occurs in cases of superfluity of venous blood. Finally, an experi- 
 ment on turkeys shows that after severing certain nerves, making 
 the active dilation of the blood-vessels in the neck and head im- 
 possible, the characteristic high red coloring and the swelling of 
 their beak and throat gills does not take place, even in violent 
 attacks of anger. 
 
 (16) It is well known that Darwin made an attempt to demonstrate the 
 
 theory of evolution in physiognomic expression and in emotional 
 movements. The very entertaining and inspiring book in which he 
 published these observations and theories (The Expression of 
 Emotions in Man and Animals) bears, as do all the works from the 
 pen of that great investigator, the stamp of genius and contains a 
 quantity of fine observations and remarks. But his theories in 
 this field are not tenable. It is questionable whether the decided 
 evolutionary tendency which his pioneer researches have imparted 
 to modern, and especially to English, psychology has been fortunate. 
 Surely not in so far as the psychology of the emotions is concerned, 
 for here this tendency has led to a neglect of real physiological 
 
THE EMOTIONS 87 
 
 analysis and hence has digressed from the only true way by which 
 Malebranche, Leuhossek, Libbern, and others have tried to reach 
 their aim, and they would have attained it, too, if the essential 
 physiological fact, the vasomotor function, had not been unknown 
 at that time. 
 
 (17) By coordination, we mean the distribution of motor impulse, which 
 
 reaches only those muscles which are requisite to the performance 
 of a certain determined action, and by which the amount of impulse 
 sent to each part is properly regulated. As I have pointed out 
 elsewhere, it is for this reason that coordination is an acquired 
 skill, not a faculty innate in any specific organ of the nervous sys- 
 tem as is so frequently assumed. There is one coordination which 
 is active in the brain, another which is situated in the spinal cord. 
 The disturbance in coordination discussed here must proceed 
 probably from the brain. However, I cannot deal with the question 
 in detail here. 
 
 (18) Tissot (Traite des nerfs, T. II, ps. I, p. 358) contradicts Galen ab- 
 
 solutely and offers several partly plausible examples of sudden death 
 due to a violent attack of rage. Brain hemorrhages, however, were 
 the cause of these deaths, and, in the light of our modern knowledge 
 of the causes of apoplexy, we can assume that a predisposition to 
 these was present, even if the congestion due to the emotion did 
 cause the catastrophy. 
 
 (19) The phenomenon of incoordination, as considered here, is only to be 
 
 fotmd in voluntary muscle action. However, a simultaneous 
 analogous uncertainty of vascular innervation may possibly occur 
 with incoordination. Whether anything similar to this takes place 
 in other organs, it is not in my power to state. 
 
 (20) So far, I have brought the vasomotor function into opposition with 
 
 the rest of the nervous activity, essentially in order to simplify the 
 matter. Yet I have not lost sight of the fact that, in the question 
 of the expression of the affection, it may occur to one that the vaso- 
 motor apparatus is involved only as a part of the involuntary nerve- 
 muscle apparatus, and that it is the latter which, in emotion, is 
 opposed to the rest of the primarily affected nervous system, so that 
 the disturbances of the bladder and intestinal movements would 
 have to be considered to be primary phenomena. Since this problem 
 cannot yet be decided definitely, and since its solution had no par- 
 ticular significance for our investigation, I shall confine myself to 
 a suggestion of this possibility. On the other hand, I wish to re- 
 call the fact that a spasmodic vascular contraction can undoubtedly 
 stimulate the organic muscles to contraction, and also the reflex 
 center for the changes in circulation. Thus we will meet with no 
 difl&culty of a physiological nature in tracing the convulsive condi- 
 tion to changes in circulation. 
 
88 CARL GEORG LANGE 
 
 (21) Changes in the blood content of the skin must necessarily be accom- 
 
 panied by variations in the blood supply in the brain and other 
 internal organs. Either the processes in the inner organs are the 
 same as those in the skin, or the vessels in the former do not share in 
 the changes which occur in the innervation of the skin-vessels. In 
 that case hyperaemia in the skin must cause a derived anaemia in 
 the other organs, and conversely anaemia in the skin will result in 
 hyperaemia in the other organs. These latter changes — ^compared 
 to the secondary ones in the skin — 'in the blood content, may be 
 very significant, partly because the skin can take up a great deal 
 of blood, and also because it may be deprived of very nearly all its 
 blood as a result of motor effects. Consider, for example the several 
 stages of fever. 
 
 (22) It is rather strange that it was possible to establish a complete vaso- 
 
 motor theory for the bodily expressions of the emotions almost 200 
 years ago. It was Malebranche, who, in spite of the total absence 
 of any physiological assumptions, knowing nothing of vascular 
 muscles and nerves, was able to recognize the situation. In his 
 famous work "De la recherche de laverite" (1674) he gives an explana- 
 tion of the part which the heart plays in violent emotions corres- 
 ponding to the physiology of his time, and then proceeds {liher V) : 
 "Besides this, there are nerves to the brain for the more rapid and 
 finer regulation of the flow of the essence of life, which surround 
 the arteries of the brain as well as those which lead to other organs. 
 
 "This is how it can happen that an imexpected sight or movement 
 in the brain, accompanying any other circumstance, which must 
 modify all the affections, will cause the essence of life to flow to 
 those nerves which surround the arteries. Thus, a contraction of 
 the arteries leading to the brain can cut off the circulation and a 
 dilation can open the way which leads to every part of the body." 
 
 "If those arteries which supply the brain are empty, and all other 
 arteries of the body are contracted by these nerves, then the head 
 must be overfilled with blood and the face must be reddened. But 
 if this distribution of blood is changed by a change in the condition 
 of the brain, then the contracted arteries relax and the others con- 
 tract. Thus the head is emptied of blood, the face turns pale and the 
 slight amount of blood that leaves the heart all streams to che 
 low extremities of the body. The life essence in the brain decreases, 
 and the rest of the body begins to tremble and weaken." 
 
 Translated into modern physiological terms, the theory of Male- 
 branche means that every strong emotional impression causes a 
 heightened vasomotor innervation and a contraction of the arteries. 
 If this contraction involves the arteries of the brain, then too little 
 blood reaches the brain, and too much stays in the body. Anemia 
 of the brain leads to general appearances of paralysis. If, on the 
 other hand, in another kind of affection, the head arteries are 
 
THE EMOTIONS 89 
 
 relaxed, while others are contracted, then brain and face are flooded 
 with blood. 
 
 Malebranche's theory necessarily had to be rather vague in view 
 of the time, when nothing was known in physiology about the ac- 
 tive changes in caliber of the blood vessels, and did not arouse much 
 notice. Incomplete, as obviously it had to be, and inaccurate in 
 some of the details, nevertheless the theory is very remarkable be- 
 cause of the fact that the originator considered the disturbances 
 of circulation to be the only primary symptoms of the physical con- 
 comitants of emotions. 
 
 (23) "Man has only one soul, which influences the entire body, and so, 
 
 if a simple affection directs the whole force of the soul to one point 
 and fills it with ideas and sensations of one kind, then the whole 
 body must share in the expression of this affection and every move- 
 ment, every member must contribute to it." (Engle, Ideen zu 
 einer Mimik, Part I, 'page 310.) We can hardly wish for a clearer 
 expression of the popular conception that affections are some sort of 
 demons, sometimes good, sometimes bad, which occasionally dis- 
 turb the soul of man. 
 
 (24) I also wish to recall the oft quoted etymology of the word "Angst" 
 
 according to Max MüUer's theory. From the Sanskrit root ah or 
 anh (to crush, torture, murder) we have the Sanskrit ahi, snake-^ 
 the latin anguis; furthermore, the latin ango, to compress, frighten 
 and angor, which applies to the physical sensation of oppression, 
 contraction of the throat {angina) as well as the emotional feeling. 
 From the same root we have the Gothic ages, fear, and the English 
 anguish, the Germanic Angst, the Latin angustiae, the French 
 angoisse, etc. 
 
 (25) Still more instructive are the cases where emotional outbreaks are 
 
 caused by inadequate stimuli. I have found no reference to this 
 phenomena in other authors, and it seems to be rare; however, I 
 have observed several cases. One of these was a very intelligent 
 man, not at all nervous, whom I was treating with a painful caustic 
 . for a small sore on his tongue. Invariably a fit of laughter appeared 
 at the height of this operation, although there was nothing to laugh 
 at. In the case of a lady, who suffered from paralysis of one side 
 in consequence of a brain disease, but whose mental life had not 
 been impaired in the least, she suddenly began to laugh whenever 
 anyone told her a sad or disagreeable tale, although she was not at 
 all humorously affected. It is evident that a case like the latter can 
 contribute greatly to the solution of our problem if it be subjected 
 to a rigorous analysis. Unfortunately, my observations took place 
 at a time when I could not devote myself to their study. 
 
 (26) From more recent times, we have experiments of Bechtereff in St. 
 
 Petersburg (c/. Neurolog. Centralblatt 1883, No. 4), in which he 
 believes to have proved that the occipital lobe "involves essentially 
 
90 CAEL GEORG LANGE 
 
 the so-called movements of expression and expressive sounds." 
 This surely does not follow from his observations, and might just 
 as well prove that emotions may arise even after the destruction of 
 the hemispheres. 
 
 (27) Since sometimes a mere "memory" may call forth an emotion, with- 
 
 out any sense-impression, and with only internal brain processes; 
 then the process may for the moment be even simpler than the ex- 
 ample quoted, in the text. Nevertheless, a process must be pre- 
 supposed to have happened in the past; a circumstance which has 
 conditioned a permanent change in certain brain cells; and this 
 process must, strictly speaking, be considered an emotional process, 
 even though separated by an interval of time. 
 
 (28) I do not know whether a similar conception of the nature of the affec- 
 
 tions has ever been made before. At least, there are no records of 
 it in scientific physiology. Spinoza approaches it most closely, in 
 so far as he does not make the bodily phenomena in affections de- 
 pendent upon mental activity, but in that he places them in the 
 same plane as the latter, as is evident from his definition: ^'Per 
 affectum intelligo corporis affectiones quibus ipsius corporis potentia 
 augetur, vel mimiturjuvatur, vel coercetur, et simul harum affectionem 
 ideas." (Ethics p. III.) But he pursues the problem no further. 
 
 In an Italian book of the last century, which bears the curious 
 title "Delia Fisiinomia, Principi derivati dalV Anatomia, dalla 
 Fisiologia, e Dinamica del corpo umano par mezzo de' quali si dis- 
 tinguono Gli Aristocratici, ed i Bealisti dai Democratici di Girolamo 
 Bocalosi, V. ed Milano, Anno VI repubbl." However, it has an 
 otherwise very scientific point of view. I found in it (p. 20 f) the 
 following declaration. "Jo chiamo passione d'un corpo quella tal 
 tendenza e disposizione che hanno le parti componenti, e il tuttin- 
 sieme di qualunque corpo a un tale e tal movimento a azione qualunque, 
 dipendente da una causa estrinseca, e per cui quella data azione e 
 necessario effeto di quella tal causa." 
 
 "Se questa e la vera definizione delle passioni in genere, noi avremo 
 adesso una limpida idea della parola passione, e vedrassi ora da 
 questo, che dalla tal data organizzazione d'un homo, dalla struttura 
 de' suoi nervi, de suoi vasi, e della tempra ed equilibrio dh suoi umori 
 dee dipender la natura, la diver sita e I'energia maggiore o minore delle 
 sue passioni. A parlar dunque propriamente le passioni sono negli 
 organi dell' uomo, e non nello spirito, e cosl le loro buone o vie 
 qualita, dalla contruzione dipender devono di tuto I'organico, mentre 
 la spirito non sembra che un attributo di quello o se si vuole, ci non 
 agisce che in consequenza della natura e testura dell' organo." 
 
 The author does not seem to approach very closely the theory which 
 I have set forth here; but the last passage of the quoted abstract, 
 which he does not carry out with more detail, makes his point seem 
 somewhat hazy to me. 
 
THE EMOTIONS 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM JAMES 
 
THE EMOTIONS! 
 WILLIAM JAMES 
 [Chapter XXV of the Principles of Psychology] 
 
 In speaking of the instincts it has been impossible to keep them 
 separate from the emotional excitements which go with them. 
 Objects of rage, love, fear, etc., not only prompt a man to outward 
 deeds, but provoke characteristic alterations in his attitude and 
 visage, and affect his breathing, circulation, and other organic 
 functions in specific ways. When the outward deeds are inhibited, 
 these latter emotional expressions stiU remain, and we read the 
 anger in the face, though the blow may not be struck, and the 
 fear betrays itself in voice and color, though one may suppress aU 
 other sign. Instinctive reactions and emotional expressions thus 
 shade imperceptibly into each other. Every object that excites an 
 instinct excites an emotion as well. Emotions, however, faU short of 
 instincts, in that the emotional reaction usually terminates in the 
 subject's own body, whilst the instinctive reaction is apt to go 
 farther and enter into practical relations with the exciting object. 
 
 Emotional reactions are often excited by objects with which we 
 have no practical deahngs. A ludicrous object, for example, or a 
 beautiful object are not necessarily objects to which we do any- 
 thing; we simply laugh, or stand in admiration, as the case may be. 
 The class of emotional, is thus rather larger than that of instinctive, 
 impulses, conmaonly so called. Its stimuli are more numerous, 
 and its expressions are more internal and dehcate, and often less 
 practical. The physiological plan and essence of the two classes 
 of impulse, however, is the same. 
 
 As with instincts, so with emotions, the mere memory or imagi- 
 nation of the object may suffice to hberate the excitement. One 
 may get angrier in thinking over one's insult than at the moment 
 of receiving it; and we melt more over a mother who is dead than 
 we ever did when she was living. In the rest of the chapter I 
 
 1 Parts of this chapter have already appeared in an article published in 
 1884 in Mind. 
 
 93 
 
94 WILLIAM JAMES 
 
 shall use the word object of emotion indifferently to mean one 
 which is physically present or one which is merely thought of. 
 
 It would be tedious to go through a complete list of the reactions 
 which characterize the various emotions. For that the special 
 treatises must be referred to. A few examples of their variety, 
 however, ought to find a place here. Let me begin with the 
 manifestations of Grief as a Danish physiologist, C. Lange, 
 describes them:^ 
 
 The chief feature in the physiognomy of grief is perhaps its paralyzing 
 effect on the voluntary movements. This effect is by no means as extreme 
 as that which fright produces, being seldom more than that degree of weak- 
 ening which makes it cost an effort to perform actions usually done with 
 ease. It is, in other words, a feeling of weariness ; and (as in all weariness) 
 movements are made slowly, heavily, without strength, unwillingly, and 
 with exertion, and are limited to the fewest possible. By this the grieving 
 person gets his outward stamp : he walks slowly, imsteadily, dragging his 
 feet and hanging his arms. His voice is weak and without resonance, 
 in consequence of the feeble activity of the muscles of expiration and of the 
 larynx. He prefers to sit still, simk in himself and silent. The tonicity or 
 "latent innervation" of the muscles is strikingly diminished. The neck 
 is bent, the head hangs ("bowed down" with grief), the relaxation of the 
 cheek- and jaw-muscles makes the face look long and narrow, the jaw may 
 even hang open. The eyes appear large, as is always the case where the 
 orbicularis muscle is paralyzed, but they may often be partly covered by 
 the upper lid which droops in consequence of the laming of its own levator. 
 With this condition of weakness of the voluntary nerve- and muscle-appara- 
 tus of the whole body, there coexists, as aforesaid, just as in all states of 
 similar motor weakness, a subjective feeling of weariness and heaviness, 
 of something which weighs upon one; one feels "downcast," "oppressed," 
 "laden," one speaks of his "weight of sorrow," one must "bear up" 
 under it, just as one must "keep down" his anger. Many there are who 
 "succumb" to sorrow to such a degree that they literally cannot stand up- 
 right, but sink or lean against surrounding objects, fall on their knees, 
 or, like Romeo in the monk's cell, throw themselves upon the earth in their 
 despair. 
 
 But this weakness of the entire voluntary motor apparatus (the so-called 
 apparatus of "animal" life) is only one side of the physiology of grief. 
 Another side, hardly less important, and in its consequences perhaps even 
 more so, belongs to another subdivision of the motor apparatus, namely, 
 the involuntary or "organic" muscles, especially those which are found in 
 
 2 Ueber,Gemüthsbewegungen, uebersetzt vonH. Kurella (Leipzig, 1887). 
 
THE EMOTIONS 95 
 
 the walls of the blood-vessels, and the use of which is, by contracting, to 
 diminish the latter's calibre. These muscles and their nerves, forming 
 together the "vaso-motor apparatus," act in grief contrarily to the volun- 
 tary motor apparatus. Instead of being paralyzed, like the latter, the vas- 
 cular muscles are more strongly contracted than usual, so that the tissues 
 and organs of the body become anaemic. The immediate consequence of 
 this bloodlessness is pallor and shrunkenness, and the pale color and col- 
 lapsed features are the peculiarities which, in connection with the relaxa- 
 tion of the visage, give to the victim of grief his characteristic physiognomy, 
 and often give an impression of emaciation which ensues too rapidly to be 
 possibly due to real disturbance of nutrition, or waste uncompensated by 
 repair. Another regular consequence of the bloodlessness of the skin is a 
 feeling of cold, and shivering. A constant symptom of grief is sensitive- 
 ness to cold, and difficulty in keeping warm. In grief, the inner organs 
 are unquestionably anaemic as well as the skin. This is of course not 
 obvious to the eye, but many phenomena prove it. Such is the diminu- 
 tion of the various secretions, at least of such as are accessible to observa- 
 tion. The mouth grows dry, the tongue sticky, and a bitter taste ensues 
 which it would appear, is only a consequence of the tongue's dryness. [The 
 expression "bitter sorrow" may possibly arise from this.] In nursing 
 women the milk diminishes or altogether dries up. There is one of the 
 most regular manifestations of grief, which apparently contradicts these 
 other physiological phenomena, and that is the weeping, with its profuse 
 secretion of tears, its swollen reddened face, red eyes, and augmented se- 
 cretion from the nasal mucous membrane. 
 
 Lange goes on to suggest that this may be a reaction from a 
 previously contracted vaso-motor state. The explanation seems 
 a forced one. The fact is that there are changeable expressions 
 of grief. The weeping is as apt as not to be immediate, especially 
 in women and children. Some men can never weep. The tear- 
 ful and the dry phases alternate in all who can weep, sobbing 
 storms being followed by periods of calm; and the shrunken, cold 
 and pale condition which Lange describes so well is more charac- 
 teristic of a severe settled sorrow than of an acute mental pain. 
 Properly we have two distinct emotions here, both prompted by 
 the same object, it is true, but affecting different persons, or the 
 same person at different times, and feeling quite differently whilst 
 they last, as anyone's consciousness will testify. There is an 
 excitment during the crying fit which is not without a certain 
 pungent pleasure of its own; but it would take a genius for felicity 
 to discover any dash of redeeming quality in the feeling of dry and 
 shrunken sorrow. — Our author continues: 
 
96 WILLIAM JAMES 
 
 If the smaller vessels of the lungs contract so that these organs become 
 anaemic, we have (as is usual under such conditions) the feeling of insuflB- 
 cient breath, and of oppression of the chest, and these tormenting sensa- 
 tions increase the sufferings of the griever, who seeks relief by long-drawn 
 sighs, instinctively, like every one who lacks breath from whatever cause.^ 
 
 The ansemia of the brain in grief is shown by intellectual inertia, dull- 
 ness, a feeling of mental weariness, effort, and indisposition to work, often 
 by sleeplessness. Indeed it is the ansemia of the motor centres of the brain 
 which lies at the bottom of all that weakening of the voluntary powers 
 of motion which we described in the first instance. 
 
 My impression is that Dr. Lange simplifies and universalizes 
 the phenomena a little too much in this description, and in partic- 
 ular that he very likely overdoes the ansemia business. But such 
 as it is, his account may stand as a favorable specimen of the sort 
 of doscriptive work to which the emotions have given rise. 
 
 Take next another emotion, Fear, and read what Mr. Darwin, 
 says of its effects: 
 
 Fear is often preceded by astonishment, and is so far akin to it that 
 both lead to the senses of sight and hearing being instantly aroused. In 
 both cases the eyes and mouth are widely opened and the eyebrows raised. 
 
 * The bronchial tubes may be contracted as well as the ramifications of 
 the pulmonary artery. Professor J. Henle has, amongst his Anthropolo- 
 gische Vorträge, an exquisite one on the "National History of the Sigh," 
 in which he represents our inspirations as the result of a battle between the 
 red muscles of our skeleton, ribs, and diaphragm, and the white ones of 
 the lungs, which seek to narrow the calibre of the air-tubes. "In the 
 normal state the former easily conquer, but under other conditions they 
 
 either conquer with difficulty or are defeated The contrasted 
 
 emotions express themselves in similarly contrasted wise, by spasm and 
 paralysis of the unstriped muscles, and for the most part alike in all the 
 organs which are provided with them, as arteries, skin, and bronchial 
 tubes. The contrast among the emotions is generally expressed by divid- 
 ing them into exciting and depressing ones. It is a remarkable fact that 
 the depressing emotions, like fear, horror, disgust, increase the contraction 
 of these smooth muscles, whilst the exciting emotions, like joy, anger, 
 etc., make them relax. Contrasts of temperature act similarly, cold like 
 the depressing, and warmth like the exciting, emotions. Cold produces 
 pallor and goose-flesh, warmth smooths out the skin and widens the vessels. 
 If one notices the uncomfortable mood brought about by strained expec- 
 tation, anxiety before a public address, vexation at an unmerited affront, 
 etc., one finds that the suffering part of it concentrates itself principally in 
 
THE EMOTIONS 97 
 
 The frightened man at first stands like a statue, motionless and breathless, 
 or crouches down as if instinctively to escape observation. The heart 
 beats quickly and violently, so that it palpitates or knocks against the 
 ribs; but it is very doubtful if it then works more efficiently tlian usual, 
 so as to send a greater supply of blood to all parts of the body; for the skin 
 instantly becomes pale as during incipient faintness. This paleness of the 
 surface, however, is probably in largo part, or is exclusively, due to the 
 vaso-motor centre being affected in such a manner as to cause the con- 
 traction of the small arteries of the skin. That the skin is much affected 
 under the sense of great fear, we sec in the marvellous manner in which 
 perspiration immediately exudes from it. This exudation is all the more 
 remarkable, as the surface is then cold, and hence the term, a cold sweat; 
 whereas the sudorific glands are properly excited into action when the sur- 
 face is heated. The hairs also on the skin stand erect, and the superficial 
 muscles shiver. In connection with the disturbed action of the heart the 
 breathing is hurried. The salivary glands act imperfectly; the mouth be- 
 comes dry and is often opened and shut. I have also noticed that under 
 slight fear there is strong tendency to yawn. One of the best marked 
 symptoms is the trembling of all the muscles of the body; and this is often 
 first seen in the lips. From this cause, and from the dryness of the mouth, 
 the voice becomes husky or indistinct or may altogether fail. "Obstupui 
 steteruntque coma), et vox faucibus ha;sit." .... As fear increases 
 into an agony of terror, we behold, as under all violent emotions, diversi- 
 
 the chest, and that it consists in a soreness, hardly to be called pain, felt in 
 the middle of the breast and due to an unpleasant resistance which is 
 offered to the movements of inspiration, and sets a limit to their extent. 
 The insufficiency of the diaphragm is obtruded upon consciousness, and 
 we try by the aid of the external voluntary chest-muscles to draw a deeper 
 breath. [This is the sigh.] If we fail, the unpleasantness of the situation 
 is increased, for then to our mental distress is added the corporeally re- 
 pugnant feeling of lack of air, a slight degree of suffocation. If, on the 
 contrary, the outer muscles overcome the resistance of the inner ones, 
 the oppressed breast is lightened. We think we speak symbolically when 
 we speak of a stone weighing on our heart, or of a burden rolled from off 
 our breast. But really we only express the exact fact for we should have to 
 raise the entire weight of the atmosphere (about 820 kilog.) at each inspi- 
 ration, if the air did not balance it by streaming into our lungs" (p. 55). It 
 must not be forgotten that an inhibition of the inspiratory centre similar 
 to that produced by exciting the superior laryngeal nerve may possibly 
 play a part in these phenomena. For a very interesting discussion of 
 the respiratory difficulty and its connection with anxiety and fear see 
 "A Case of Hydrophobia," by the lamented Thomas B, Curtis in the 
 Boston Med. and Surg. Journal, November 7 and 14, 1878, and remarks 
 thereon by James J. Putnam, 'ibid, November 21. 
 
98 WILLIAM JAMES 
 
 fied results. The heart beats wildly or must fail to act and faintness 
 ensues; there is a death-like pallor; the breathing is labored; the wings of 
 the nostrils are widely dilated; there is a gasping and convulsive motion 
 of the lips, a tremor on the hollow cheek, a gulping and catching of the 
 throat; the uncovered and protruding eyeballs are fixed on the object of 
 terror; or they may roll restlessly from side to side, hue illuc volens oculos 
 totumque pererrat. The pupils are said tobe enormously dilated. All the 
 muscles of the body may become rigid or may be thrown into convulsive 
 movements. The hands are alternately clenched and opened, often with 
 a twitching movement. The arms may be protruded as if to avert some 
 dreadful danger, or may be thrown wildly over the head. The Rev. Mr. 
 Hagenauer has seen this latter action in a terrified Australian. In other 
 cases there is a sudden and uncontrollable tendency to headlong flight; 
 and so strong is this that the boldest soldiers may be seized with a sudden 
 panic* 
 
 Finally take Hatred, and read the synopsis of its possible effects 
 as given by Sig. Mantegazza:^ 
 
 Withdrawal of the head backwards, withdrawal of the trunk; projec- 
 tion forwards of the hands, as if to defend one's self against the hated 
 object; contraction or closure of the eyes; elevation of the upper lip and 
 closure of the nose, — these are all elementary movements of turning away. 
 Next threatening movements, as: intense frowning; eyes wide open; 
 display of teeth; grinding teeth and contracting jaws; opened mouth with 
 tongue advanced; clenched fists; threatening action of arms; stamping with 
 the feet; deep inspirations — panting; growling and various cries; automatic 
 repetition of one word or syllable; sudden weakness and trembling of 
 voice; spitting. Finally, various miscellaneous reactions and vaso-motor 
 symptoms: general trembling; convulsions of lips and facial muscles, of 
 limbs and of trunk; acts of violence to one's self, as biting fist or nails; 
 sardonic laughter; bright redness of face; sudden pallor of face; extreme 
 dilatation of nostrils; standing up of hair on head. 
 
 Were we to go through the whole list of emotions which have 
 been named by men, and study their organic manifestations, we 
 should but ring the changes on the elements which these three 
 typical cases involve. Rigidity of this muscle, relaxation of that, 
 constriction of arteries here, dilatation there, breathing of this 
 sort or that, pulse slowing or quickening, this gland secreting and 
 that one dry, etc, etc. We should, moreover, find that our de- 
 scriptions had no absolute truth; that they only appHed to the 
 
 ^Origin of the Emotions, Darwin, pp. 290-2 
 
 ^La Physionomie et I'Expression des Sentiments (Paris, 1885), p. 140. 
 
THE EMOTIONS 99 
 
 average man; that every one of us, almost, has some personal 
 idiosyncrasy of expression, laughing or sobbing differently from 
 his neighbor, or reddening or growing pale where others do not. 
 We should find a like variation in the objects which excite emotion 
 in diffefrent persons. Jokes at which one explodes with laughter 
 nauseate another, and seem blasphemous to a third; and occa- 
 sions which overwhelm me with fear or bashfulness are just what 
 give you the full sense of ease and power. The internal shadings of 
 emotional feeling, moreover, merge endlessly into each other. 
 Language has discriminated some of them, as hatred, antipathy, 
 animosity, dislike, aversion, malice, spite, vengefulness, abhor- 
 rence, etc., etc.; but in the dictionaries of synonyms we find these 
 feelings distinguished more by their severally appropriate objective 
 stimuli than by their conscious or subjective tone. 
 
 The result of aU this flux is that the merely descriptive literature 
 of the emotions 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 pre- 
 tences 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 hterary 
 works of aphoristic philosophy also flash lights into our emotional 
 life, and give us a fitful dehght. But as far as "scientific psy- 
 chology" of the emotions goes, I may have been surfeited by too 
 much reading of classic works on the subject, but I should as lief 
 read verbal descriptions of the shapes of the rocks on a New Hamp- 
 shire 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 infinitum without ever 
 getting on to another 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, but I fear that few will 
 take it. 
 
100 WILLIAM JAMES 
 
 The trouble with the emotions in psychology is that 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 immutable species in natural history, so long all that 
 can be done with them is reverently to catalogue their separate 
 characters, points, and effects. But if we regard them as prod- 
 ucts 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. Now the general causes of the 
 emotions are indubitably physiological. Prof. C. Lange, of Copen- 
 hagen, in the pamphlet from which I have already quoted, pub- 
 lished in 1885 a physiological theory of their constitution and 
 conditioning, which I had already broached the previous year in 
 an article in Mind. None of the criticisms which I have heard 
 of it have made me doubt its essential truth. I wiU therefore 
 devote the next few pages to explaining what it is. I shaU limit 
 myself in the first instance to what may be called the coarser emo- 
 tions, grief, fear, rage, love, in which every one recognizes a 
 strong organic reverberation, and afterwards speak of the subtler 
 emotions, or of those whose organic reverberation is less obvious 
 and strong. 
 
 EMOTION FOLLOWS UPON THE BODILY EXPRESSION IN THE 
 COARSER EMOTIONS AT LEAST 
 
 Our natural way of thinking about these coarser emotions is 
 that the mental perception of some fact excites the mental affec- 
 tion called the emotion, and that this latter state of mind gives 
 rise to the bodily expression. My theory, on the contrary, is 
 that the bodily changes follow directly the perception of the exciting 
 fact, and that our feeling of the same changes as they occur is the 
 emotion. Common-sense says, we lose our fortune, are sorry and 
 weep; we meet a bear, are frightened and run; 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 
 manifestations must first be interposed between, and that the more 
 
THE EMOTIONS 101 
 
 rational statement is that we feel sorry because we cry, angry be- 
 cause 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 percep- 
 tion, 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 feel afraid or angry. 
 
 Stated in this crude way, the hypothesis is pretty sure to meet 
 with immediate disbehef . 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, no reader of the last two chapters* will be incHned 
 to doubt the fact that objects do excite bodily changes by a preor- 
 ganized mechanism, or the farther fact that the changes are so 
 indefinitely numerous and subtle that the entire organism may be 
 called a sounding-board, which every change of consciousness, 
 however shght, may make reverberate. The various permuta- 
 tions and combinations of which these organic activities are sus- 
 ceptible make it abstractly possible that no shade of emotion, 
 however slight, should be without a bodily reverberation as unique, 
 when taken in its totahty, as is the mental mood itself. The 
 immense number of parts modified in each emotion is what makes 
 it so difficult for us to reproduce in cold blood the total and inte- 
 gral expression of any one of them. We may catch the trick with 
 the voluntary muscles, but fail with the skin, glands, heart, and 
 other viscera. Just as an artificially imitated sneeze lacks some- 
 thing of the reahty, so the attempt to imitate an emotion in the 
 absence of its normal instigating cause is apt to be rather "hollow." 
 
 The next thing to be noticed is this, that every one of the bodily 
 changes, whatsoever it be, is felt, acutely or obscurely, the moment 
 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 feehngs he can detect in himself as charac- 
 teristic of his various emotional moods. It would be perhaps too 
 much to expect him to arrest the tide of any strong gust of pas- 
 
 * The chapters on The Production of Movement and on Instinct are 
 in the Principles. — [Ed.] 
 
102 WILLIAM JAMES 
 
 sion for the sake of any such curious analysis as this; but he can 
 observe more tranquil states, and that may be assumed 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, pleas- 
 ant, painful, or dubious, to that sense of personality that 
 every one of us unfailingly carries with him. It is surprising 
 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 incon- 
 siderable, of the eyes and brows. When momentarily embarrassed, 
 it is something in the pharynx that compels either a swallow, 
 a clearing of the throat, or a slight cough; and so on for as many 
 more instances as might be named. Our concern here being with 
 the general view rather than with the details, I will not linger to 
 discuss these, but, assuming the point admitted that every change 
 that occurs must be felt, I will pass on. 
 
 1 now proceed to urge the vital point of my whole theory, which 
 is this: If we fancy some strong emotion, and then try to abstract 
 from our consciousness of it all the feelings of its bodily symptoms, 
 we find we have nothing left behind, no "mind-stuff" out of which 
 the emotion, can be constituted, and that a cold and neutral state 
 of intellectual perception is aU that remains. It is true that, 
 although most people when asked say that their introspection ver- 
 ifies this statement, some persist in saying theirs does not. Many 
 cannot be made to understand the question. When you beg them 
 to imagine away every feeling of laughter and of tendency to laugh 
 from their consciousness of the ludicrousness of an object, and then 
 to tell you what the feeling of its ludicrousness would be like, 
 whether it be anything more than the perception that the object 
 belongs to the class ''funny," they persist in repljdng that the 
 thing proposed is a physical impossibihty, and that they always 
 7nust laugh if they see a funny object. Of course the task pro- 
 posed is not the practical one of seeing a ludicrous object and anni- 
 hilating one's tendency to laugh. It is the purely speculative 
 one of subtracting certain elements of feeling from an emotional 
 state supposed to exist in its fulness, and saying what the residual 
 elements are. I cannot help thinking that aU who rightly appre- 
 
THE EMOTIONS 103 
 
 hend this problem will agree with the proposition above laid down. 
 What kind of an emotion of fear would be left if the feeling neither 
 of quickened heart-beats nor of shallow breathing, neither of 
 trembhng lips nor of weakened limbs, neither of goose-flesh nor 
 of visceral stirrings, were present, it is quite impossible for me to 
 think. Can one fancy the state of rage and picture no ebullition 
 in the chest, no flushing of the face, no dilatation of the nostrils, 
 no clenching of the teeth, no impulse to vigorous action, but in 
 their stead limp muscles, calm breathing, and a placid face? The 
 present writer, for one, certainly cannot. The rage is as com- 
 pletely 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 dispassionate judicial sentence, confined 
 entirely to the intellectual realm, to the effect that a certain 
 person or persons merit chastisement for their sins. In Hke 
 manner of grief: what would it be without its tears, its sobs, its 
 suffocation of the heart, its pang in the breast-bone? A feehng- 
 less cognition that certain circimistances are deplorable, and noth- 
 ing more. Every passion in turn tells the same story. A purely 
 disembodied human emotion is a nonentity. I do not say that it 
 is a contradiction in the nature of things, or that pure spirits are 
 necessarily condemned to cold intellectual lives; but I say that for 
 us, emotion dissociated from all bodily feeling is inconceivable. 
 The more closely I scrutinize my states, the more persuaded I 
 become that whatever moods, 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 corporeally anaes- 
 thetic, I should be excluded from the life of the aö"ections, harsh 
 and tender alike, and drag out an existence of merely cognitive 
 or intellectual form. Such an existence, although it seems to 
 have been the ideal of ancient sages, is too apathetic 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 emo- 
 tions are conditioned by nervous processes. No reader of this 
 book is likely to rebel against such a saying so long as it is ex- 
 
104 WILLIAM JAMES 
 
 pressed in general terms; and if any one still finds materialism in 
 the thesis now defended, that must be because of the special pro- 
 cesses invoked. They are sensational processes, processes due to 
 inward currents set up by physical happenings. Such processes 
 have, it is true, always been regarded by the platonizers in 
 psychology as having something peculiarly base about them. 
 But 'Our emotions must always be inwardly what they are, 
 whatever be the physiological ground of their apparition. If 
 they are deep, pure, worthy, spiritual facts on any conceivable 
 theory of their physiological source, they remain no less deep, 
 pure, spiritual, and worthy of regard on this present sensational 
 theory. They carry their own inner measure of worth with them; 
 and it is just as logical to use the present theory of the emotions 
 for proving that sensational processes need not be vile and ma- 
 terial, as to use their vileness and materiality as a proof that such 
 a theory cannot be true. 
 
 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 the exciting object. 
 Definite questions now inunediately arise — questions very dif- 
 ferent from those which were the only possible ones without this 
 view. Those were questions of classification: "Which are the 
 proper genera of emotion, and which the species under each?" or 
 of description: "By what expression is each emotion charac- 
 terized?" The questions now are causal: "Just what changes does 
 this object and what changes does that object excite?" and "How 
 come they to excite these particular changes and not others?" 
 We step from a superficial to a deep order of inquiry. Classifi- 
 cation and description are the lowest stage of science. They sink 
 into the background the moment questions of genesis are formu- 
 lated, and remain important only so far as they facilitate our 
 answering these. Now the moment the genesis of an emotion is 
 accounted for, as the arousal by an object of a lot of reflex acts 
 which are forthwith felt, we immediately see why there is no limit 
 to the number of possible different emotions which may exist, and why 
 the emotions of different individuals may vary indefinitely, both as to 
 their constitution and as to objects which call them forth. For 
 
THE EMOTIONS 105 
 
 there is nothing sacramental or eternally fixed in reflex action. 
 Any sort of reflex effect is possible, and reflexes actually varj^ 
 indefinitely, as we know. 
 
 We have all seen men dumb, instead of talkative, with joy; we have 
 seen fright drive the blood into the head of its victim, instead of making 
 him pale; we have seen grief run restlessly about lamenting, instead of 
 sitting bowed down and mute; etc., etc.; and this naturally enough, for one 
 and the same cause can work differently on different men's blood-vessels 
 (since these do not always react alike), whilst moreover the impulse on its 
 way through the brain to the vaso-motor centre is differently influenced 
 by different earlier impressions in the form of recollections or associations 
 of ideas.' 
 
 In short, any classification of the emotions is seen to be as true and 
 as "natural" as any other, if it only serves some purpose; and such 
 a question as ''What 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 "expres- 
 sion" 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. 
 
 / 
 
 DIFFICULTY OF TESTING THE THEORY EXPERIMENTALLY 
 
 I have thus fairly propounded what seems to me the most 
 fruitful way of conceiving of the emotions. It must be admitted 
 that it is so far only a hypothesis, only possibly a true conception, 
 and that much is lacking to its definitive proof. The only way 
 coercively to disprove it, however, would be to take some emotion, 
 and then exhibit qualities of feehng in it which should be demon- 
 strably additional to aU those which could possibly be derived 
 from the organs affected at the time. But to detect with cer- 
 tainty such purely spiritual quahties of feehng would obviously 
 be a task beyond human power. We have, as Professor Lange 
 says, ^absolutely no immediate criterion by which to distinguish 
 
 8 Lange, op. cit., p. 75. 
 
106 WILLIAM JAMES 
 
 between spiritual and corporeal feelings; and, I may add, the more 
 we sharpen our introspection, the more localized all our qualities 
 of feeling become and the more difficult the discrimination conse- 
 quently grows.'^ 
 
 A positive proof of the theory would, on the other hand, be 
 given if we could find a subject absolutely anaesthetic inside and 
 out, but not paralytic, so that emotion-inspiring objects might 
 evoke the usual bodily expressions from him, but who, on being 
 consulted, should say that no subjective emotional affection was 
 felt. Such a man would be like one who, because he eats, appears 
 to bystanders to be hungry, but who afterwards confesses that he 
 had no appetite at all. Cases like this are extremely hard to 
 find. Medical literature contains reports, so far as I know, of 
 but three. In the famous one of Remigius Leins no mention is 
 made by the reporters of his emotional condition. In Dr. G. 
 Winter's case^ the patient is said to be inert and phlegmatic, but 
 no particular attention, as I learn from Dr. W., was paid to his 
 psychic condition. In the extraordinary case reported by Pro- 
 fessor Strümpell (to which I must refer later in another connec- 
 tion)^ we read that the patient, a shoemaker's apprentice of fifteen, 
 entirely anaesthetic, inside and out, with the exception of one eye 
 and one ear, had shown shame on the occasion of soiling his bed, 
 and grief, when a formerly favorite dish was set before him, at 
 the thought that he could no longer taste its flavor. Dr. Strüm- 
 pell is also kind enough to inform me that he manifested surprise, 
 fear, and anger on certain occasions. In observing him, however, 
 no such theory as the present one seems to have been thought of; 
 and it always remains possible that, just as he satisfied his natural 
 appetites and necessities in cold blood, with no inward feeling, so 
 his emotional expressions may have been accompanied by a quite 
 
 ^Professor Hoff ding, in his excellent treatise op. Psychology, admits 
 (p. 432) the mixture of bodily sensation with purely spiritual affection 
 in the emotions. He does not, however, discuss the difficulties of discern- 
 ing the spiritual affection (nor even show that he has fairly considered 
 them) in his contention that it exists. 
 
 ^Ein Fall von allgemeiner Anaesthesie (Heidelberg, 1882), 
 'Ziemssen's Deutsches Archiv für klinische Medicin, xxii, 321. 
 
THE EMOTIONS 107 
 
 cold heart.i" Any new case which turns up of generalized anaes- 
 thesia ought to be carefully examined as to the inward emotional 
 sensibility as distinct from the "expressions" of emotion which 
 circumstances may bring forth. 
 
 Objections considered 
 
 Let me now notice a few objections. The replies will make the 
 theory still more plausible. 
 
 First objection. There is no real evidence, it may be said, for the 
 assimaption that particular perceptions do produce wide-spread 
 bodily effects by a sort of immediate physical influence, antecedent 
 to the arousal of an emotion or emotional idea? 
 
 Reply. There is most assuredly such evidence. In hstening to 
 poetry, drama, or heroic narrative we are often surprised at the 
 cutaneous shiver which like a sudden wave flows over us, and at 
 the heart-swelling and the lachrymal effusion that unexpectedly 
 
 1" The not very uncommon cases of hysterical hemiansesthesia are not 
 complete enough to be utilized in this inquiry. Moreover, the recent re- 
 searches, of which some account was given in Chapter IV, tend to show 
 that hysterical anaesthesia is not a real absence of sensibility, but a "disso- 
 ciation," as M. Pierre Janet calls it, or splitting-off of certain sensations 
 from the rest of the person's consciousness, this rest forming the self which 
 remains connected with the ordinary organs of expression. The split- 
 off consciousness forms a secondary self; and M. Janet writes me that he 
 sees no reasons why sensations whose "dissociation" from the body of 
 consciousness makes the patient practically anaesthetic, might not, never- 
 theless, contribute to the emotional life of the patient. They do still con- 
 tribute to the function of locomotion; for in his patient L. there was no 
 ataxia in spite of the anaesthesia . M . Janet writes me, a propos of his anaes- 
 thetic patient L., that she seemed to "suffer by hallucination." "I have 
 often pricked or burned her without warning, and when she did not see 
 me. She never moved, and evidently perceived nothing. But if after- 
 wards in her movements she caught sight of her wounded arm, and saw 
 on her skin a little drop of blood resulting from a slight cut, she would be- 
 gin to cry out and lament as if she suffered a great deal. 'My blood flows,' 
 she said one day; 'I must be suffering a great deal.' She suffered by hal- 
 lucination. This sort of suffering is very general in hysterics. It is enough 
 for them to receive the slightest hint of a modification in their body, when 
 their imagination fills up the rest and invents changes that were not felt." 
 See the remarks published at a later date in Janet's Automatisme Psycho- 
 logique, pp. 214-15. 
 
108 WILLIAM JAMES 
 
 catch US at intervals. In listening to 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 danger can arise. If our friend 
 goes near to the edge of a precipice, we get the well-known feeling 
 of "aU-overishness," and we shrink back, although we positively 
 know 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 deceive him, 
 he stirred it round and saw it drip from the stick with no feeHng 
 save that of childish curiosity. Suddenly the world grew black 
 before his eyes, his ears began to buzz, and he knew no more. He 
 had never heard of the sight of blood producing faintness or sick- 
 ness, and he had so little repugnance to it, and so little apprehen- 
 sion 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 occasion 
 in him such formidable bodily effects. 
 Professor Lange writes: 
 
 No one has ever thought of separating the emotion produced by an 
 unusually loud sound from the true inward affections. No one hesitates to 
 call it a sort of fright, and it shows the ordinary signs of fright. And yet 
 it is by no means combined with the idea of danger, or in any way occasioned 
 by associations, memories, or other mental processes. The phenomena 
 of fright follow the noise immediately without a trace of "spiritual" 
 fear. Many men can never grow used to standing beside a cannon when it 
 is fired off, although they perfectly know that there is danger neither for 
 themselves nor for others — the bare sound is too much for them." 
 
 Imagine two steel knife-blades with their keen edges crossing 
 each other at right angles, and moving to and fro. Our whole 
 nervous organization is "on-edge" at the thought; and yet what 
 emotion can be there except the unpleasant nervous feeling itself, 
 or the dread that more of it may come? The entire fund and 
 capital of the emotion here is the senseless bodily effect which the 
 blades immediately arouse. This case is typical of a class: where 
 an ideal emotion seems to precede the bodily symptoms, it is 
 
 " Op. CiL, p. 63. 
 
THE EMOTIONS 109 
 
 often nothing but an anticipation of the symptoms themselves. 
 One who has already fainted at the sight of blood may witness the 
 preparations for a surgical operation with uncontrollable heart- 
 sinking and anxiety. He anticipates certain feelings, and the 
 anticipation precipitates their arrival. In cases of morbid terror 
 the subjects often confess that what possesses them seems, more 
 than anything, to be fear of the fear itself. In the various forms 
 of what Professor Bain calls "tender emotion," although the ap- 
 propriate object must usually be directly contemplated before the 
 emotion can be aroused, yet sometimes thinking of the symptoms 
 of the emotion itself may have the same effect. In sentimental 
 natures the thought of "yearning" will produce real "yearning." 
 And, not to speak of coarser examples, a mother's imagination of 
 the caresses she bestows on her child may arouse a spasm of 
 parental longing. 
 
 In such cases as these we see plainly how the emotion both 
 begins and ends with what we call its effects or manifestations. 
 It has no mental status except as either the vivid feeling of the 
 manifestations, or the idea of them; and the latter thus constitute 
 its entire material, and sum and substance. And these cases ought 
 to make us see how in all cases the feeling of the manifestations 
 may play a much deeper part in the constitution of the emotion 
 than we are wont to suppose. 
 
 The best proof that the immediate cause of emotion is a physical 
 effect on the nerves is furnished by those pathological cases in 
 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 pathological cases and normal cases under 
 a common scheme. In every asylum we find examples of abso- 
 lutely 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 inappro- 
 priate) causes it to upset in that way, and to engender the partic- 
 ular complex of feelings of which the psychic body of the emotion 
 consists. Thus, to take one special instance, if inability to draw 
 
110 WILLIAM JAMES 
 
 deep breath, fluttering of the heart, and that peculiar epigastric 
 change felt as "precordial anxiety," with an irresistible tendency 
 to take a somewhat crouching attitude and to sit still, and with 
 perhaps other visceral processes not now known, all spontaneously 
 occur together in a certain person; his feeling of their combination 
 is the emotion of dread, and he is the victim of what is known as 
 morbid fear. A friend who has had occasional attacks of this 
 most distressing of all maladies tells me that in his case the whole 
 drama seems to centre about the region of the heart and respira- 
 tory apparatus, that his main effort during the attacks is to get 
 control of his inspirations and to slow his heart, and that the mo- 
 ment 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. 
 
 All physicians who have been much engaged in general practice have seen 
 cases of dyspepsia in which constant low spirits and occasional attacks of 
 terror rendered the patient's condition pitiable in the extreme. I have 
 observed these cases often, and have watched them closely, and I have 
 never seen greater suffering of any kind than I have witnessed during these 
 
 attacks Thus, a man is suffering from what we call nervous 
 
 dyspepsia. Some day, we will suppose in the middle of the afternoon, 
 without any warning or visible cause, one of these attacks of terror comes 
 on. The first thing the man feels is great but vague discomfort. Then 
 he notices that his heart is beating much too violently. At the same time 
 shocks or flashes as of electrical discharges, so violent as to be almost pain- 
 ful, pass one after another through his body and limbs. Then in a few 
 minutes he falls into a condition of the most intense fear. He is not afraid 
 
 12 It must be confessed that there are cases of morbid fear in which 
 objectively the heart is not much perturbed. These, however, fail to 
 prove anything against our theory, for it is of course possible that the 
 cortical centres normally percipient of dread as a complex of cardiac and 
 other organic sensations due to real bodily change, should become pri- 
 marily excited in brain-disease, and give rise to an hallucination of the 
 changes being there, — an hallucination of dread, consequently, coexistent 
 with a comparatively calm pulse, etc. I say it is possible, for I am ignorant 
 of observations which might test the fact. Trance, ecstasy, etc., offer an- 
 alogous examples, — not to speak of ordinary dreaming. Under all these 
 conditions one may have the liveliest subjective feelings, either of eye or 
 ear, or of the more visceral and emotional sort, as a result of pure nerve- 
 central activity, and yet, as I believe, with complete peripheral repose. 
 
THE EMOTIONS 111 
 
 of anything; he is simply afraid. His mind is perfectly clear. He looks 
 for a cause of his wretched condition, but sees none. Presently his terror 
 is such that he trembles violently and utters low moans; his body is damp 
 with perspiration; his mouth is perfectly dry; and at this stage there are 
 no tears in his eyes, though his suffering is intense. When the climax to 
 the attack is reached and passed, there is a copious flow of tears, or else a 
 mental condition in which the person weeps upon the least provocation. 
 At this stage a large quantity of pale urine is passed. Then the heart's 
 action becomes again normal, and the attack passes off.^' 
 
 Again: 
 
 There are outbreaks of rage so groundless and unbridled that all must 
 admit them to be expressions of disease. For the medical layman hardly 
 anything can be more instructive than the observation of such a patholo- 
 gical attack of rage, especially when it presents itself pure and unmixed 
 with other psychical disturbances. This happens in that rather rare dis- 
 ease named transitory mania. The patient predisposed to this — 'Other- 
 wise an entirely reasonable person — will be attacked suddenly without 
 the slightest outward provocation, and thrown (to use the words of the 
 latest writer on the subject, O. Schwartzer, Die transitorische Tobsucht, 
 Wien, 1880), "into a paroxysm of the wildest rage, with a fearful and blindly 
 furious impulse to do violence and destroy." He flies at those about him; 
 strikes, kicks, and throttles whomever he can catch; dashes every object 
 about which he can lay his hands on; breaks and crushes what is near him; 
 tears his clothes, shouts, howls, and roars, with eyes that flash and roll, 
 and shows meanwhile all those symptoms of vaso-motor congestion which 
 we have learned to know as the concomitants of anger. His face is red, 
 swollen, his cheeks hot, his eyes protuberant and their whites bloodshot, 
 the heart beats violently, the pulse marks 100-120 strokes a minute. The 
 arteries of the neck are full and pulsating, the veins are swollen, the saliva 
 flows. The fit lasts only a few hours, and ends suddenly with a sleep of 
 from 8 to 12 hours, on waking from which the patient has entirely forgot- 
 ten what has happened. ^^ 
 
 In these (outwardly) causeless emotional conditions the partic- 
 ular paths which are explosive are discharged by any and every 
 incoming sensation. Just as, when we are seasick, every smell, 
 every taste, every sound, every sight, every movement, every 
 sensible experience whatever, augments our nausea, so the morbid 
 terror or anger is increased by each and every sensation which 
 stirs up the nerve-centres. Absolute quiet is the only treatment 
 
 13 R. M. Bucke: Man's Moral Nature (N. Y., 1879), p. 97. 
 1* Lange, op. cit,, p. 61. 
 
112 WILLIAM JAMES 
 
 for the time. It seems impossible not to admit that in all this 
 the bodily condition takes the lead, and that the mental emotion 
 follows. The intellect may, in fact, be so little affected as to play 
 the cold-blooded spectator all the while, and note the absence of a 
 real object for the emotion. ^^ 
 
 A few words from Henle may close my reply to this 
 first objection: 
 
 Does it not seem as if the excitations of the bodily nerves met the ideas 
 half way, in order to raise the latter to the height of emotions? [Note 
 how justly this expresses our theory!] That they do so is proved by the 
 cases in which particular nerves, when specially irritable, share in the 
 emotion and determine its quality. When one is suffering from an open 
 wound, any grievous or horrid spectacle will cause pain in the woimd. In 
 sufferers from heart-disease there is developed a psychic excitability, which 
 is often incomprehensible to the patients themselves, but which comes 
 from the heart's liability to palpitate. I said that the very quality of the 
 emotion is determined by the organs disposed to participate in it. Just 
 as surely as a dark foreboding, rightly grounded on interference from the 
 constellations, will be accompanied by a feeling of oppression in the chest, 
 so surely will a similar feeling of oppression, when due to disease of the 
 thoracic organs, be accompanied by groimdless forebodings. So small a 
 thing as a bubble of air rising from the stomach through the oesophagus, 
 and loitering on its way a few minutes and exerting pressure on the heart, 
 is able during sleep to occasion a nightmare, and during waking to produce 
 a vague anxiety. On the other hand, we see that joyous thoughts dilate 
 our blood-vessels, and that a suitable quantity of wine, because it dilates 
 the vessels, also disposes us to joyous thoughts. If both the jest and the 
 
 15 1 am inclined to think that in some hysteriform conditions of grief, 
 rage, etc., the visceral disturbances are less strong than those which go to 
 outward expression. We have then a tremendous verbal display with a 
 hollow inside. Whilst the bystanders are wrung with compassion, or pale 
 with alarm, the subject all the while lets himself go, but feels his insincerity, 
 and wonders how long he can keep up the performance. The attacks 
 are often surprisingly sudden in their onset. The treatment here is to 
 intimidate the patient by a stronger will. Take out your temper, if he 
 takes out his — "Nay, if thou'lt mouth, I'll rant as well as thou." These 
 are the cases of apparently great bodily manifestation with comparatively 
 little real subjective emotion, which may be used to throw discredit on the 
 theory advanced in the text. — It is probable that the visceral manifesta- 
 tions in these cases are quite disproportionately slight, compared with 
 those of the vocal organs. The subject's state is somewhat similar to that 
 of an actor who does not feel his part. 
 
THE EMOTIONS 113 
 
 wine work together, they supplement each other in producing the emotional 
 effect, and our demands on the jest are the more modest in proportion as 
 the wine takes upon itself a larger part of the task.'* 
 
 Second objection. 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 ought to give 
 us the emotion itself. Now this (the objection says) is not found 
 to be the case. An actor can perfectly simulate an emotion and 
 yet be inwardly cold; and we can all pretend to cry and not feel 
 grief; and feign laughter without being amused. 
 
 Reply. In the majority of emotions this test is inapplicable; 
 for many of the manifestations are in organs over which we have 
 no voluntary control. Few people in pretending to cry can shed 
 real tears, for example. But, within the limits in which it can be 
 verified, experience corroborates rather than disproves the corol- 
 lary from our theory, upon which the present objection rests. 
 Every one knows how panic is increased by flight, and how the 
 giving way to the sjrmptoms of grief or anger increases those pas- 
 sions 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 everything with a dismal 
 voice, and your melancholy lingers. There is no more valuable 
 precept in moral education than this, as all who have experience 
 know: if we wish to conquer undesirable emotional tendencies 
 in ourselves, we must assiduously, and in the first instance cold- 
 bloodedly, go through the outward movements of those contrary 
 dispositions which we prefer to cultivate. The reward of persist- 
 ency will infallibly come, in the fading out of the suUenness or 
 depression, and the advent of real cheerfulness and kindliness in 
 
 "Op. dt., p. 72. — Lange lays great stress on the neurotic drugs, as part 
 of his proof that influences of a physical nature upon the body are the 
 first thing in order in the production of emotions. 
 
114 WILLIAM JAMES 
 
 their stead. Smooth the brow, brighten the eye, contract the 
 dorsal rather than the ventral 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! 
 
 This is recognized by aU psychologists, only they fail to see its 
 full import. Professor Bain writes, for example: 
 
 We find that a feeble [emotional] wave ... is suspended inwardly 
 by being arrested outwardly; the currents of the brain and the agitation of 
 the centres die away if the external vent is resisted at every point. It 
 is by such restraint that we are in the habit of suppressing pity, anger, fear, 
 pride — on many trifling occasions. If so, it is a fact that the suppression 
 of the actual movements has a tendency to suppress the nervous currents 
 that incite them, so that the external quiescence is followed by the internal. 
 The effect would not happen in any case; if there were not some dependence 
 
 of the cerebral wave upon the free outward vent or manifestation 
 
 By the same interposition we may summon up a dormant feeling. By 
 acting out the external manifestations, we gradually infect the nerves 
 leading to them, and finally waken up the diffusive current by a sort of 
 action ab extra. . . . Thus it is that we are sometimes able to assume 
 a cheerful tone of mind by forcing a hilarious expression. i" 
 
 We have a mass of other testimony of similar effect. Burke, 
 in his treatise on The Sublime and Beautiful, writes as follows of 
 the physiognomist Campanella: 
 
 This man, it seems, had not only made very accurate observations on 
 human faces, but was expert in mimicking such as were in any way re- 
 markable. When he had a mind to penetrate into the inclinations of those 
 he had to deal with, he composed his face, his gesture, and his whole body, 
 as nearly as he could, into the exact similitude of the person he intended to 
 examine; and then carefully observed what turn of mind he seemed to ac- 
 quire by the change. So that, says my author, he was able to enter into 
 the dispositions and thoughts of people as effectually as if he had been 
 changed into the very men. I have often observed [Burke now goes on 
 in his own person] that, on mimicking the looks and gestures of angry, or 
 placid, or frightened, or daring men, I have involuntarily foimd my mind 
 turned to that passion whose appearance I strove to imitate; nay, I am con- 
 vinced it is hard to avoid it, though one strove to separate the passion from 
 its corresponding gestures. i^ 
 
 ^''Emotions and Will, pp. 361-2. 
 
 i^Quoted by Dugald Stewart, Memewis, etc. (Hamilton's ed.), Ill, 140. 
 Fechner {Vorschule der Aesthetik, 156) says almost the same thing of him- 
 
THE EMOTIONS 115 
 
 Against this it is to be said that many actors who perfectly- 
 mimic the outward appearances of emotion in face, gait, and voice 
 declare that they feel no emotion at all. Others, however accord- 
 ing to Mr. Wm. Archer, who has made a very instructive statistical 
 inquiry among them, say that the emotion of the part masters 
 them whenever they play it well."^^ Thus: 
 
 "I often turn pale," writes Miss Isabel Bateman, "in scenes of terror or 
 great excitement. I have been told this many times, and I can feel myself 
 getting very cold and shivering and paie in thrilling situations." "When 
 I am playing rage or terror, ' ' writes Mr. Lionel Brough, ' ' I believe I do turn 
 pale. My mouth gets dry, my tongue cleaves to my palate. In Bob Acres, 
 for instance (in the last act), I have to continually moisten my mouth, or 
 I shall become inarticulate. I have to 'swallow the lump,' as I call it." 
 All artists who have had much experience of emotional parts are absolutely 
 unanimous "Playing with the brain," says Miss Alma Mur- 
 ray, "is far less fatiguing than playing with the heart. An adventuress 
 taxes the physique far less than a sympathetic heroine. Muscular ex- 
 ertion has comparatively little to do with it." . . . "Emotion while 
 acting," writes Mr. Howe, "will induce perspiration much more than physi- 
 cal exertion. I always perspired profusely while acting Joseph Surface, 
 which requires little or no exertion." .... "I suffer from fatigue," 
 writes Mr. Forbes Robertson, "in proportion to the amount of emotion 
 I may have been called upon to go through, and not from physical ex- 
 ertion." .... "Though I have played Othello," writes Mr. Cole- 
 man, "ever since I was seventeen (at nineteen I had the honor of acting the 
 Moor to Macready's lago), husband my resources as I may, this is the one 
 part, the part of parts, which always leaves me physically prostrate. I 
 have never been able to find a pigment that would stay on my face, though 
 I have tried every preparation in existence. Even the titanic Edwin 
 Forrest told me that he was always knocked over in Othello, and I have 
 heard Charles Kean, Phelps, Brooke, Dillion, say the same thing. On the 
 other hand, I have frequently acted Richard III without turning a hair. "^o 
 
 self: "One may find by one's own observation that the imitation of the 
 bodily expression of a mental condition makes us understand it much 
 better than the merely looking on. . . . When I walk behind some one 
 whom I do not know, and imitate as accurately as possible his gait and 
 carriage, I get the most curious impression of feeling as the person himself 
 must feel. To go tripping and mincing after the fashion of a young woman 
 puts one, so to speak, in a femine mood of mind." 
 
 18 "The Anatomy of Acting," in Longman Magazine, vol. xi, pp. 266, 
 375, 498 (1888), since republished in book form. 
 
 20 Page 394. 
 
116 WILLIAM JAMES 
 
 The explanation for the discrepancy amongst actors is probably 
 that which these quotations suggest. The visceral and organic 
 part of the expression can be suppressed in some men, but not in 
 others, and on this it is probable that the chief part of the felt 
 emotion depends. Coquelin and the other actors who are in- 
 wardly cold are probably able to affect the dissociation in a com- 
 plete way. Prof. Sikorsky of Kieff has contributed an important 
 article on the facial expression of the insane to the NeurologischiS 
 Centralblatt for 1887. Having practised facial mimicry himself 
 a great deal, he says: 
 
 When I contract my facial muscles in any mimetic combination, / 
 feel no emotional excitement, so that the mimicry is in the fullest sense of 
 the word artificial, although quite irreproachable from the expressive point 
 of view. 2^ 
 
 We find, however, from the context that Professor S.'s practice 
 before the mirror has developed in him such a virtuosity in the 
 control of his facial muscles that he can entirely disregard their 
 natural association and contract them in any order of grouping, 
 on either side of the face isolatedly, and each one alone. Probably 
 in him the facial mimicry is an entirely restricted and localized 
 thing, without sympathetic changes of any sort elsewhere. 
 
 Third objection. Manifesting an emotion, so far from increasing 
 it, makes it cease. Rage evaporates after a good outburst; it is 
 pent-up emotions that "work like madness in the brain." 
 
 Reply. The objection fails to discriminate between what is felt 
 during and what is felt after the manifestation. During the mani- 
 festation the emotion is always felt. In the normal course of 
 things this, being the natural channel of discharge, exhausts the 
 nerve-centres, and emotional cahn ensues. But if tears or anger 
 are simply suppressed, whilst the object of grief or rage remains 
 unchanged before the mind, the current which would have invaded 
 the normal channels turns into others, for it must find some outlet 
 of escape. It may then work different and worse effects later on. 
 Thus vengeful brooding may replace a burst of indignation; a dry 
 heat may consume the frame of one who fain would weep, or he 
 may, as Dante says, turn to stone within; and then tears or a 
 
 21 Page 496. 
 
THE EMOTIONS 117 
 
 storming fit may bring a grateful relief. This is when the current 
 is strong enough to strike into a pathological path when the normal 
 one is dammed. When this is so, an immediate outpour may be 
 best. But here, to quote Professor Bain again: 
 
 There is nothing more implied than the fact that an emotion may be 
 too strong to be resisted, and we only waste our strength in the endeavor. 
 If we are really able to stem the torrent, there is no more reason for 
 refraining from the attempt than in the case of weaker feelings. And 
 vmdoubtedly the habitual control of the emotions is not to be attained 
 without a systematic restraint, extended to weak and strong. 
 
 When we teach children to repress their emotional talk and dis- 
 play, it is not that they may feel more — quite the reverse. It is 
 that they may think more; for, to a certain extent, whatever cur- 
 rents are diverted from the regions below must swell the activity 
 of the thought-tracts of the brain. In apoplexies and other brain 
 injuries we get the opposite condition — an obstruction, namely, 
 to the passage of currents among the thought-tracts, and with 
 this an increased tendency of objects to start downward currents 
 into the organs of the body. The consequence is tears, laughter, 
 and temper-fits, on the most insignificant provocation, accom- 
 panying a proportional feebleness in logical thought and the power 
 of volitional attention and decision, — just the sort of thing from 
 which we try to wean our child. It is true that we say of certain 
 persons that "they would feel more if they expressed less." And 
 in another class of persons the explosive energy with which passion 
 manifests itself on critical occasions seems correlated with the 
 way in which they bottle it up during the intervals. But these 
 are only eccentric types of character, and within each type the 
 law of the last paragraph prevails. The sentimentaHst is so con- 
 structed that "gushing" is his or her normal mode of expression. 
 Putting a stopper on the "gush" will only to a limited extent 
 cause more "real" activities to take its place; in the main it will 
 simply produce listlessness. On the other hand, the ponderous 
 and bilious "slumbering volcano," let him repress the expression 
 of his passions as he will, will find them expire if they get no vent 
 at all; whilst if the rare occasions multiply which he deems worthy 
 of their outbreak, he wül find them grow in intensity as life pro- 
 ceeds. On the whole, I cannot see that this third objection carries 
 any weight. 
 
118 WILLIAM JAMES 
 
 If our hypothesis is true, it makes us realize more deeply than 
 ever how much our mental life is knit up with our corporeal frame, 
 in the strictest sense of the term. Rapture, love, ambition, 
 indignation, and pride, considered as feelings, are fruits of the same 
 soil with the grossest bodily sensations of pleasure and of pain. 
 But the reader will remember that we agreed at the outset to 
 affirm this only of what we then called the "coarser" emotions, 
 and that those inward states of emotional sensibility which ap- 
 peared devoid at first sight of bodily results should be left out of 
 our account. We must now say a word or two about these latter 
 feelings, the "subtler" emotions, as we then agreed to call them. 
 
 THE SUBTLER EMOTIONS 
 
 These are the moral, intellectual, and aesthetic feelings. Con- 
 cords of sounds, of colors, of lines, logical consistencies, teleological 
 fitnesses, affect us with a pleasure that seems ingrained in the 
 very form of the representation itself, and to borrow nothing from 
 any reverberation surging up from the parts below the brain. 
 The Herbartian psychologists have distinguished feelings due to 
 the form in which ideas may be arranged. A mathematical dem- 
 onstration may be as "pretty," and an act of justice as "neat," 
 as a drawing or a tune, although the prettiness and neatness seem 
 to have nothing to do with sensation. We have, then, or some of 
 us seem to have, genuinely cerebral forms of pleasure and dis- 
 pleasure, apparently not agreeing in their mode of production 
 with the "coarser" emotions we have been analyzing. And it is 
 certain that readers whom our reasons have hitherto failed to con- 
 vince will now start up at this admission, and consider that by 
 it we give up our whole case. Since musical perceptions, since 
 logical ideas, can immediately arouse a form of emotional feeling, 
 they will say, is it not more natural to suppose that in the case of 
 the so-called "coarser" emotions, prompted by other kinds of 
 objects, the emotional feeling is equally inunediate, and the 
 bodily expression something that comes later and is added on? 
 
 In reply to this we must immediately insist that aesthetic 
 emotion, yure and simple, the pleasure given us by certain lines 
 and masses, and combinations of colors and sounds, is an abso- 
 lutely sensational experience, an optical or auricular feehng that 
 
THE EMOTIONS 119 
 
 is primary, and not due to the repercussion backwards of other 
 sensations elsewhere consecutively aroused. To this simple pri- 
 mary and immediate pleasure in certain pure sensations and har- 
 monious combinations of them, there may, it is true, be added 
 secondary pleasures; and in the practical enjoyment of works of 
 art by the masses of mankind these secondary pleasures play a 
 great part. The more classic one's taste is, however, the less 
 relatively important are the secondary pleasures felt to be in 
 comparison with those of the primary sensation as it comes 
 in,^2 Classicism and romanticism have their battles over this 
 point. Complex suggestiveness, the awakening of vistas of mem- 
 ory and association, and the stirring of our flesh with pictu- 
 resque mystery and gloom, make a work of art romantic. The classic 
 taste brands these effects as coarse and tawdry, and prefers the 
 naked beauty of the optical and auditory sensations, unadorned 
 with frippery or foliage. To the romantic mind, on the contrary, 
 the immediate beauty of these sensations seems dry and thin. I 
 am of course not discussing which view is right, but only showing 
 that the discrimination between the primary feeling of beauty, as 
 a pure incoming sensible quality, and the secondary emotions 
 which are grafted thereupon, is one that must be made. 
 
 These secondary emotions themselves are assuredly for the most 
 part constituted of other incoming sensations aroused by the 
 diffusive wave of reflex effects which the beautiful object sets up. 
 A glow, a pang in the breast, a shudder, a fulness of the breathing, 
 a flutter of the heart, a shiver down the back, a moistening of the 
 
 22 jEven the feelings of the lower senses may have this secondary escort, 
 due to the arousing of associational trains which reverberate. A flavor 
 may fairly shake us by the ghosts of "banquet halls deserted," which it 
 suddenly calls up ; or a smell may make us feel almost sick with the waft it 
 brings over our memory of "gardens that are ruins, and pleasure-houses 
 that are dust." "In the Pyrenees," says M.Guyau, "after a summer-day's 
 tramp carried to the extreme of fatigue, I met a shepherd and asked him for 
 some milk. He went to fetch from his hut, under which a brook ran, a jar 
 of milk plimged in the water and kept at a coldness which was almost 
 icy. In drinking this fresh milk into which all the mountain had put its 
 perfume, and of which each savory swallow seemed to give new life, I cer- 
 tainly experienced a series of feelings which the word agreeable is insuflBcient 
 to designate. It was like a pastoral symphony, apprehended by the taste 
 
120 WILLIAM JAMES 
 
 eyes, a stirring in the hypogastrium, and a thousand unnamable 
 symptoms besides, may be felt the moment the beauty excites us. 
 And these symptoms also result when we are excited by moral 
 perceptions, as of pathos, magnanimity, or courage. The voice 
 breaks and the sob rises in the struggling chest, or the nostril 
 dilates and the fingers tighten, whilst the heart beats, etc., etc. 
 
 As far as these ingredients of the subtler emotions go, then the 
 latter form no exception to our account, but rather an additional 
 illustration thereof. In all cases of intellectual or moral rapture 
 we find that, unless there be coupled a bodily reverberation of 
 some kind with the mere thought of the object and cognition of 
 its quality; unless we actually laugh at the neatness of the demon- 
 stration or witticism; unless we thrill at the case of justice, or 
 tingle at the act of magnanimity; our state of mind can hardly 
 be called emotional at all. It is in fact a mere intellectual per- 
 ception of how certain things are to be called — neat, right, witty, 
 generous, and the like. Such a judicial state of mind as this is 
 to be classed among awarenesses of truth; it is a cognitive act. As 
 a matter of fact, however, the moral and intellectual cognitions 
 
 instead of by the ear" (quoted by F, Paulhan from "Les Prohlemes de 
 I'^sthetique Contemporaine, p. 63). — Compare the dithyrambic about 
 whiskey of Col. R. Ingersoll, to which the presidential campaign of 1888 
 gave such notoriety: "I send you some of the most wonderful whiskey 
 that ever drove the skeleton from a feast or painted landscapes in the brain 
 of man. It is the mingled souls of wheat and corn. In it you will find the 
 sunshine and shadow that chase each other over the billowy fields, the 
 breath of June, the carol of the lark, the dews of the night, the wealth of 
 summer, and autumn's rich content — all golden with imprisoned light. 
 Drink it, and you will hear the voice of men and maidens singing the 'Har- 
 vest Home/ mingled with the laughter of children. Drink it, and you 
 will feel within your blood the star-lit dawns, the dreamy, tawny dusks 
 of many perfect days. For forty years this liquid joy has been within the 
 happy staves of oak, longing to touch the lips of man." — It is in this way 
 that I should reply to Mr. Gurney's criticism on my theory. My "view," 
 this writer says {Mind, ix, 425), "goes far to confound the two things which 
 in my opinion it is the prime necessity of musical psychology to distinguish 
 — the effect chiefly sensuous of mere streams or masses of finely colored 
 sound, and the distinctive musical emotion to which the /o?'m of a sequence 
 of sound, its melodic and harmonic individuality, even realized in com- 
 plete silence, is the vital and essential object. It is with the former of 
 these two very different things that the physical reactions, the stirring of 
 the hair — 'the tingling and the shiver — are by far most markedly connected. 
 
THE EMOTIONS 121 
 
 hardly ever do exist thus unaccompanied. The bodily sounding- 
 board is at work, as careful introspection will show, far more than 
 we usually suppose. Still, where long familiarity with a certain 
 class of effects, even aesthetic ones, has blunted mere emotional 
 excitability as much as it has sharpened taste and judgment, we 
 do get the intellectual emotion, if such it can be called, pure and 
 undefiled. And the dryness of it, the paleness, the absence of all 
 glow, as it may exist in a thoroughly expert critic's mind, not only 
 shows us what an altogether different thing it is from the " coarser" 
 emotions we considered first, but makes us suspect that almost 
 the entire difference Hes in the fact that the bodily sounding- 
 board, vibrating in the one case, is in the other mute. "Not so 
 very bad" is, in a person of consummate taste, apt to be the high- 
 est limit of approving expression. "Bien ne me choque" is said 
 to have been Chopin's superlative of praise of new music. A 
 sentimental layman would feel, and ought to feel, horrified, on 
 being admitted into such a critic's mind, to see how cold, how 
 thin, how void of human significance, are the motives for favor or 
 disfavor that there prevail. The capacity to make a nice spot 
 
 . . . . If I may speak of myself, there is plenty of music from which I 
 have received as much emotion in silent representation as when presented 
 by the finest orchestra; but it is with the latter condition that I almost 
 exclusively associate the cutaneous tingling and hair-stirring. But to 
 call my enjoyment of the form, of the note-after-noteness of a melody, a mere 
 critical 'judgement of right' [see below, p. 472] would really be to deny to 
 me the power of expressing a fact of simple and intimate expression in 
 
 English. It is quintessentially emotion Now there are 
 
 hundreds of other bits of music . . . which I judge tobe ngr^if without 
 receiving an iota of the emotion. For purposes of emotion they are to me 
 like geometrical demonstrations or like acts of integrity performed in 
 Peru." The Beethoven-rightness of which Gurney then goes on to speak, 
 as something different from the Clementi-rightness (even when the respec- 
 tive pieces are only heard in idea), is probably a purely auditory-sensational 
 thing. The Clementi-rightness also; only, for reasons impossible to assign, 
 the Clementi form does not give the same sort of purely auditory satis- 
 faction as the Beethoven form, and might better be described perhaps nega- 
 tively as non-wrong, i.e., free from positively unpleasant acoustic quality. 
 In organizations as musical as Mr. Gurney's, purely acoustic form gives so 
 intense a degree of sensible pleasure that the lower bodily reverberation 
 is of no account. But I repeat that I see nothing in the facts which Mr. 
 Gurney cites, to lead one to believe in an emotion divorced from sensa- 
 tional processes of any kind. 
 
122 WILLIAM JAMES 
 
 on the wall will outweigh a picture's whole content; a foolish trick 
 of words will preserve a poem; an utterly meaningless fitness of 
 sequence in one musical composition set at naught any amount 
 of "expressiveness" in another. 
 
 I remember seeing an English couple sit for more than an hour 
 on a piercing February day in the Academy at Venice before the 
 celebrated "Assumption" by Titian; and when I, after being 
 chased from room to room by the cold, concluded to get into the 
 sunshine as fast as possible and let the pictures go, but before 
 leaving drew reverently near to them to learn with what superior 
 forms of susceptibility they might be endowed, aU I overheard was 
 the woman's voice murmuring: "What a deprecatory expression 
 her face wears! What seli-ahnegationl How unworthy she feels 
 of the honor she is receiving!" Their honest hearts had been 
 kept warm all the time by a glow of spurious sentiment that would 
 have fairly made old Titian sick. Mr. Ruskin somewhere makes 
 the (for him terrible) admission that rehgious people as a rule 
 care little for pictures, and that when they do care for them they 
 generally prefer the worst ones to the best. Yes! in every art, 
 in every science, there is the keen perception of certain relations 
 being right or not, and there is the emotional flush and thrill con- 
 sequent thereupon. And these are two things, not one. In the 
 former of them it is that experts and masters are at home. The 
 latter accompaniments are bodily commotions that they may hard- 
 ly feel, but that may be experienced in their fulness by cretins and 
 phiKstines in whom the critical judgment is at its lowest ebb. 
 The "marvels" of Science, about which so much edifying popular 
 literature is written, are apt to be "caviare" to the men in the 
 laboratories. And even divine Philosophy itself, which common 
 mortals consider so "sublime" an occupation, on account of 
 the vastness of its data and outlook, is too apt to the practical 
 philosopher himseK to be but a sharpening and tightening busi- 
 ness, a matter of "points," of screwing down things, of split- 
 ting hairs, and of the "intent" rather than the "extent" of 
 conceptions. Very little emotion here! — except the effort of 
 setting the attention fine, and the feeling of ease and rehef (mainly 
 in the breathing apparatus) when the inconsistencies are overcome 
 and the thoughts run smoothly for a while. Emotion and cogni- 
 
THE EMOTIONS 123 
 
 tion seem then parted even in this last retreat; and cerebral pro- 
 cesses are almost feelingless, so far as we can judge, mitil they 
 summon help from parts below. 
 
 NO SPECIAL BRAIN-CENTRES FOR EMOTION 
 
 If the neural process underlying emotional consciousness be 
 what I have now sought to prove it, the physiology of the brain be- 
 comes a simpler matter than has been hitherto supposed. Sensa- 
 tional, associational, and motor elements are all that the organ 
 need contain. The physiologists who, during the past few years, 
 have been so industriously exploring the brain's functions, have 
 limited their explanations to its cognitive and volitional perform- 
 ances. Dividing the brain division into sensory and motor 
 centres, they have found their division to be exactly paralleled by 
 the analysis made by empirical psychology of the perceptive and 
 volitional parts of the mind into their simplest elements. But 
 the emotions have been so ignored in all these researches that one 
 is tempted to suppose that if these investigators were asked for a 
 theory of them in brain-terms, they would have to reply, either 
 that they had as yet bestowed no thought upon the subject, or 
 that they had found it so difficult to make distinct hypotheses 
 that the matter lay among the problems of the future, only to be 
 taken up after the simpler ones of the present should have been 
 definitively solved. 
 
 And yet it is even now certain that of two things concerning the 
 emotions, one must be true. Either separate and special centres, 
 affected to them alone, are their brain-seat, or else they correspond 
 to processes occurring in the motor and sensory centres already 
 assigned, or in others like them, not yet known. If the former be 
 the case, we must deny the view that is current, and hold the 
 cortex to be something more than the surface of "projection" for 
 every sensitive spot and every muscle in the body. If the latter 
 be the case, we must ask whether the emotional process in the 
 sensory or motor centre be an altogether peculiar one, or whether 
 it resembles the ordinary perceptive processes of which those cen- 
 tres are already recognized to be the seat. Now if the theory I 
 have defended be true, the latter alternative is all that it demands. 
 
124 WILLIAM JAMES 
 
 Supposing the cortex to contain parts, liable to be excited by 
 changes in each special sense-organ, in each portion of the skin, 
 in each muscle, each joint, and each viscus, and to contain abso- 
 lutely nothing else, we still have a scheme capable of representing 
 the process of the emotions. An object faUs on a sense-organ, 
 affects a cortical part, and is perceived; or else the latter, excited 
 inwardly, gives rise to an idea of the same object. Quick as a 
 flash, the reflex currents pass down through their preordained 
 channels, alter the condition of muscle, skin, and viscus; and 
 these alterations, perceived, like the original object, in as many 
 portions of the cortex, combine with it in consciousness and trans- 
 form it from an object-simply-apprehended into an object-emo- 
 tionally-felt. No new principles have to be invoked, nothing 
 postulated beyond the ordinary reflex circuits, and the local 
 centres admitted in one shape or another by all to exist. 
 
 EMOTIONAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN INDIVIDUALS 
 
 The revivdbility in memory of the emotions, like that of all the 
 feehngs of the lower senses, is very small. We can remember 
 that we underwent grief or rapture, but not just how the grief 
 or rapture felt. This difficult ideal revivability is, however, 
 more than compensated in the case of the emotions by a very 
 easy actual revivability. That is, we can produce, not remem- 
 brances of the old grief or rapture, but new griefs and raptures, 
 by summoning up a lively thought of their exciting cause. The 
 cause is now only an idea, but this idea produces the same organic 
 irradiations, or almost the same, which were produced by its 
 original, so that the emotion is again a reality. We have "recap- 
 tured" it. Shame, love, and anger are particularly liable to be 
 thus revived by ideas of their object. Professor Bain admits^^ 
 that "in their strict character of emotion proper, they [the emo- 
 tions] have the minimum of revivability; but being always incor- 
 porated with the sensations of the higher senses, they share in 
 the superior revivability of sights and sounds." But he fails to 
 point out that the revived sights and sounds may be ideal without 
 ceasing to be distinct; whilst the emotion, to be distinct, must 
 
 2' In his chapter on "Ideal Emotion," to which the reader is referred for 
 farther details on this subject. 
 
THE EMOTIONS 125 
 
 become real again. Professor Bain seems to forget that an 
 "ideal emotion" and a real emotion prompted by an ideal object 
 are two very different things. 
 
 An emotional temperament on the one hand, and a lively imagina- 
 tion for objects and circumstances on the other, are thus the conditions, 
 necessary and sufficient, for an abundant emotional life. No matter 
 how emotional the temperament may be, if the imagination be 
 poor, the occasions for touching off the emotional trains will fail 
 to be reaHzed, and the life will be pro tanto cold and dry. This 
 is perhaps a reason why it may be better that a man of thought 
 should not have too strong a visualizing power. He is less Hkely 
 to have his trains of meditation disturbed by emotional interrup- 
 tions. It will be remembered that Mr. Galton found the members 
 of the Royal Society and of the French Academy of Sciences to be 
 below par in visualizing power. If I may speak of myself, I am 
 far less able to visualize now, at the age of 46, than in my earlier 
 years; and I am strongly inclined to beUeve that the relative slug- 
 gishness of my emotional life at present is quite as much connected 
 with this fact as it is with the invading torpor of hoary eld, or 
 with the omnibus-horse routine of settled professional and do- 
 mestic life. I say this because I occasionally have a flash of the 
 old stronger visual imagery, and I notice that the emotional com- 
 mentary, so to call it, is then liable to become much more acute 
 that is its present wont. Charcot's patient, whose case is given 
 in Progres Medical, 21 jiiillet, complained of his incapacity for 
 emotional feeling after his optical images were gone. His mother's 
 death, which in former times would have wrung his heart, left him 
 quite cold; largely as he himself suggests, because he could form 
 no definite visual image of the event, and of the effect of the loss 
 on the rest of the family at home. 
 
 One final generahty about the emotions remains to be noted: 
 They blunt themselves by repetition more rapidly than any other sort 
 of feeling. This is due not only to the general law of "accommoda- 
 tion" to their stimulus which we saw to obtain of all feehngs what- 
 ever, but to the peculiar fact that the "diffusive wave" of reflex 
 effects tends always to become more narrow. It seems as if it were 
 essentially meant to be a provisional arrangement, on the basis 
 of which precise and determinate reactions might arise. The more 
 
126 WILLIAM JAMES 
 
 we exercise ourselves at anything, the fewer muscles we employ; 
 and just so, the oftener we meet an object, the more definitely we 
 think and behave about it; and the less is the organic perturbation 
 to which it gives rise. The first time we saw it we could perhaps 
 neither act nor think at all, and had no reaction but organic 
 perturbation. The emotions of startled surprise, wonder, or 
 curiosity were the result. Now we look on with absolutely no 
 emotion.^* This tendency to economy in the nerve-paths through 
 which our sensations and ideas discharge, is the basis of all growth 
 in efficiency, readiness, and skill. Where would the general, 
 the surgeon, the presiding chairman, be, if their nerve-currents 
 kept running down into their viscera, instead of keeping up amid 
 their convolutions? But what they gain for practice by this law, 
 they lose, it must be confessed, for feeling. For the world-v/orn 
 and experienced man, the sense of pleasure which he gets from the 
 free and powerful flow of thoughts, overcoming obstacles as they 
 arise, is the only compensation for that freshness of the heart 
 which he once enjoyed. This free and powerful flow means that 
 brain-paths of association and memory have more and more 
 organized themselves in him, and that through them the stimulus 
 is drafted off into nerves which lead merely to the writing finger or 
 the speaking tongue.^^ The trains of intellectual association, the 
 
 ** Those feelings which Professor Bain calls "emotions of relativity," 
 excitement of novelty, wonder, rapture of freedom, sense of power, hardly 
 survive any repetition of the experience. But as the text goes on to ex- 
 plain, and as Goethe as quoted by Prof. Höffding says, this is because "the 
 soul is inwardly grown larger without knowing it, and can no longer be 
 filled by that first sensation. The man thinks that he has lost, but really 
 he has gained. What he has lost in rapture, he has gained in inward 
 growth." "It is," as Professor Höffding himself adds, in a beautiful figure 
 of speech, "with our virgin feelings, as with the first breath drawn by the 
 new-born child, in which the lung expands itself so that it can never be 
 emptied to the same degree again. No later breath can feel just like that 
 first one." On this whole subject of emotional blunting, compare Höff- 
 ding's Psychologie, vi. E., and Bain's Emotions and Will, chapter iv of the 
 first part. 
 
 25 M. Fr. Paulhan, in a little work full of accurate observations of detail 
 {Les Phenomenes Affectifs et les Lois de leur Apparition), seems to me rather 
 to turn the truth upside down by his formula that emotions are due to 
 an inhibition of impulsive tendencies. One kind of emotion, namely, 
 
THE EMOTIONS 127 
 
 memories, the logical relations, may, however, be voluminous in 
 the extreme. Past emotions may be among the things remem- 
 bered. The more of all these trains an object can set going in us, 
 the richer our cognitive intimacy with it is. This cerebral sense 
 of richness seems itseh to be a source of pleasure, possibly even 
 apart from the euphoria which from time to time comes up from 
 respiratory organs. If there he such a thing as a purely spiritual 
 emotion, I should be inchned to restrict it to this cerebral sense 
 of abundance and ease, this feeling, as Sir W. Hamilton would 
 call it, of unimpeded and not overstrained activity of thought. 
 Under ordinary conditions, it is a fine and serene but not an ex- 
 cited state of consciousness. In certain intoxications it becomes 
 exciting, and it may be intensely exciting. I can hardly imagine 
 a more frenzied excitement than that which goes with the con- 
 sciousness of seeing absolute truth, which characterizes the coming 
 to from nitrous-oxide drunkenness. Chloroform, ether, and alco- 
 hol all produce this deepening sense of insight into truth; and with 
 all of them it may be a "strong" emotion; but then there also 
 come with it aU sorts of strange bodily feeMngs and changes in the 
 incoming sensibiHties. I cannot see my way to affirming that 
 the emotion is independent of these. I will concede, however, 
 that if its independence is anywhere to be maintained, these 
 theoretic raptures seem the place at which to begin the defence. 
 
 THE GENESIS OP THE VARIOUS EMOTIONS 
 
 On a former page (pp. 453-4) I said that two questions, and 
 only two, are important, if we regard the emotions as constituted 
 by feelings due to the diffusive wave. 
 
 (1) What special diffusive effects do the various special objective 
 and subjective experiences excite? and 
 
 (2) How come they to excite themf 
 
 loneasiness, annoyance, distress, does occur when any definite impulsive 
 tendency is checked, and all of M. P.'s illustrations are drawn from this 
 sort. The other emotions are themselves primary impulsive tendencies of 
 a diffusive sort (involving, asM. P. rightly says, a multipKcite des pMno- 
 mhies); and just in proportion as more and more of these multiple tenden- 
 cies are checked, and replaced by some few narrow forms of discharge, 
 does the original emotion tend to disappear. 
 
128 WILLIAM JAMES 
 
 The works on physiognomy and expression are all of them at- 
 tempts to answer question 1. As is but natural, the effects upon 
 the face have received the most careful attention. The reader who 
 wishes details additional to those given above on pp. 443-7 is 
 referred to the works mentioned in the note below.^^ 
 
 As regards question 2, some little progress has of recent years 
 been made in answering it. Two things are certain: 
 
 a. The facial muscles of expression are not given us simply for 
 expression's sake;^'' 
 
 b. Each muscle is not affected to some one emotion exclusively, 
 as certain writers have thought. 
 
 Some movements of expression can be accounted for as weakened 
 repetitions of movements which formerly (when they were stronger) 
 were of utility to the subject. Others are similarly weakened repeti- 
 tions of movements which under other conditions were physio- 
 logically necessary effects. Of the latter reactions the respiratory 
 disturbances in anger and fear might be taken as examples — ■ 
 organic reminiscences, as it were; reverberations in imagination 
 of the blowings of the man making a series of combative efforts, 
 of the pantings of one in precipitate flight. Such at least is a 
 suggestion made by Mr. Spencer which has found approval. And 
 he also was the first, so far as I know, to suggest that other move- 
 ments in anger and fear could be explained by the nascent excita- 
 tion of formerly useful acts. 
 
 ' 'To have in a slight degree, ' ' he says, ' 'such psychical states as accompany 
 the reception of wounds, and are experienced during flight, is to be in a state 
 of what we call fear. And to have in a slight degree such psychical states as 
 the processes of catching, killing, and eating imply, is to have the desires 
 
 2* A list of the older writings on the subject is given in Mantegazza's 
 work, La Physionomie et l' Expression, chap, i; others in Darwin's first 
 chapter. Bell's Anatomy of Expression, Mosso's La Paura, Piderit's 
 Wissenschaftliches System der Mimik und Physiognomik, Duchenne's 
 Möcanisme de la Physionomie Humaine, are besides Lange and Darwin, 
 the most useful works with which I am acquainted. Compare also Sully: 
 Sensation and Intuition, chap. ii. 
 
 ^''One must remember, however, that just in so far forth as sexual selec- 
 tion may have played a part in determining the human organism, selec- 
 tion of expressive faces must have increased the average mobility of the 
 human countenance. 
 
THE EMOTIONS 129 
 
 to catch, kill, and eat. That the propensities to the acts are nothing else 
 than nascent excitations of the psychical state involved in the acts, is 
 proved by the natural language of the propensities. Fear, when strong, 
 expresses itself in cries, in efforts to escape, in palpitations, in tremblings; 
 and these are just the manifestations that go along with an actual suffer- 
 ing of the evil feared. The destructive passion is shown in a general 
 tension of the muscular system, in gnashing of teeth and protrusion of the 
 claws, in dilated eyes and nostrils, in growls; and these are weaker forms of 
 the actions that accompany the killing of prey. To such objective evi- 
 dences every one can add subjective evidences. Every one can testify that 
 the psychical state called fear consists of mental representations of cer- 
 tain painful results; and that the one called anger consists of mental repre- 
 sentations of the actions and impressions which would occur while inflict- 
 ing some kind of pain."^* 
 
 About fear I shall have more to say presently. Meanwhile the 
 principle of revival in weakened form of reactions useful in more 
 violent dealings with the object inspiring the emotion has found 
 many apphcations. So slight a symptom as the snarl or sneer, 
 the one-sided uncovering of the upper teeth, is accounted for by 
 Darwin as a survival from the time when our ancestors had large 
 canines, and unfleshed them (as dogs now do) for attack. Simi- 
 larly the raising of the eyebrows in outward attention, the opening 
 of the mouth in astonishment, come, according to the same author, 
 from the utility of these movements in extreme cases. The 
 raising of the eyebrows goes with the opening of the eye for better 
 vision; the opening of the mouth with the intensest Ustening, and 
 with the rapid. catching of the breath which precedes muscular 
 effort. The distention of the nostrils in anger is interpreted by 
 Spencer as an echo of the way in which our ancestors had to 
 breathe when, during combat, their "mouth was filled up by a 
 part of an antagonist's body that had been seized (!)." The 
 trembling of fear is supposed by Mantegazza to be for the sake of 
 warming the blood (!). The reddening of the face and neck is 
 called by Wundt a compensatory arrangement for relieving the 
 brain of the blood-pressure which the simultaneous excitement of 
 the heart brings with it. The effusion of tears is explained both 
 by this author and by Darwin to be a blood-withdrawing agency 
 of a similar sort. The contraction of the muscles around the eyes, 
 
 ^^ Psychol., §213. 
 
130 WILLIAM JAMES 
 
 of which the primitive use is to protect those organs from being 
 too much gorged with blood during the screaming fits of infancy, 
 survives in adult life in the shape of the frown, which instantly 
 comes over the brow when anything difficult or displeasing pre- 
 sents itself either to thought or action. 
 
 "As the habit of contracting the brows has been followed by infants 
 during innumerable generations, at the commencement of every crying 
 or screaming fit," says Darwin, "it has become firmly associated with the 
 incipient sense of something distressing or disagreeable. Hence, under 
 similar circumstances, it would be apt to be continued during maturity 
 although never then developed, into a crying fit. Screaming or weeping 
 begins to be voluntarily restrained at an early period of life, whereas frown- 
 ing is hardly ever restrained at any age."^^ 
 
 The intermittent expirations which constitute laughter have, 
 according to Dr. Hecker, the purpose of counteracting the anaemia 
 of the brain, which he supposes to be brought about by the action 
 of the joyous or comic stimulus upon the vaso-motor nerves.^" A 
 smile is the weak vestige of a laugh. The tight closure of the 
 mouth in all effort is useful for retaining the air in the lungs so as 
 to fix the chest and give a firm basis of insertion for the muscles 
 of the flanks. Accordingly, we see the lips compress themselves 
 upon every slight occasion of resolve. The blood-pressure has to 
 
 ^'Weeping in childhood is almost as regular a symptom of anger as it 
 is of grief, which would account (on Darwin's principles) for the frown of 
 anger. Mr. Spencer has an account of the angry frown as having arisen 
 through the survival of the fittest, by its utility in keeping the sun out of 
 one's eyes when engaged in mortal combat(!). {Principles of Psychology, 
 II. 546). Professor Mosso objects to any explanation of the frown by its 
 utility for vision, that it is coupled, during emotional excitement, with a 
 dilatation of the pupil which is very unfavorable for distinct vision, and 
 that this ought to have been weeded out by natural selection, if natural 
 selection had the power to fix the frown (see La Paura, chap, ix, §vi). 
 Unfortunately this very able author speaks as if all the emotions affected 
 the pupil in the same way. Fear certainly does make it dilate. But 
 Gratiolet is quoted by Darwin and others as saying that the pupils contract 
 in anger. I have made no observations of my own on the point, and Mosso's 
 earlier paper on the pupil (Turin, 1875) I have not seen. I must repeat, 
 with Darwin, that we need more minute observations on this subject. 
 
 ^"Physiologie u. Psychologie des Lachens und des Komischen (Berlin, 
 1873), pp. 13-15. 
 
THE EMOTIONS 131 
 
 be high during the sexual embrace; hence the palpitations, and 
 hence also the tendency to caressing action, which accompanies 
 tender emotion in its fainter forms. Other examples might be 
 given; but these are quite enough to show the scope of the principle 
 of revival of useful action in weaker form. 
 
 Another principle, to which Darwin perhaps hardly does suffi- 
 cient justice, may be called the principle of reacting similarly to 
 analogous-feeling stimuli. There is a whole vocabulary of de- 
 scriptive adjectives common to impressions belonging to different 
 sensible spheres — experiences of all classes are sweet, impressions 
 of all classes rich or solid, sensations of all classes sharp. Wundt 
 and Piderit accordingly explain many of our most expressive 
 reactions upon moral causes as symbolic gustatory movements. 
 As soon as any experience arises which has an affinity with the 
 feeling of sweet, or bitter, or sour, the same movements are 
 executed which would result from the taste in point.^^ "All the 
 states of mind which language designates by the metaphors bitter, 
 harsh, sweet, combine themselves, therefore, with the correspond- 
 ing mimetic movements of the mouth." Certainly the emotions 
 of disgust and satisfaction do express themselves in this mimetic 
 way. Disgust is an incipient regurgitation or retching, limiting 
 its expression often to the grimace of the lips and nose; satisfaction 
 goes with a sucking smile, or tasting motion of the lips. In 
 Mantegazza's loose if learned work, the attempt is made, much 
 less successfully, to bring in the eye and ear as additional sources 
 of symboHcally expressive reaction. The ordinary gesture of 
 negation' — among us, moving the head about its axis from side to 
 side — is a reaction originally used by babies to keep disagreeables 
 from getting into their mouth, and may be observed in perfection 
 in any nursery .^^ It is now evoked where the stimulus is only an 
 
 31 These movements are explained teleologically, in the first instance, 
 by the efforts which the tongue is forced to make to adapt itself to the 
 better perception or avoidance of the sapid body. (Cf. Physiol. Psych., 
 II, 423.) 
 
 '2 Professor Henle derives the negative wag of the head from an incipient 
 shudder, and remarks how fortunate is the abbreviation, as when a lady 
 declines a partner in the ballroom. The clapping of the hands for 
 
132 WILLIAM JAMES 
 
 unwelcome idea. Similarly the nod forward in affirmation is 
 after the analogy of taking food into the mouth. The connection 
 of the expression of moral or social disdain or dislike, especially 
 in women, with movements having a perfectly definite original 
 olfactory function, is too obvious for comment. Winking is the 
 effect of any threatening surprise, not only of what puts the eyes 
 in danger; and a momentary aversion of the eyes is very apt to 
 be one's first symptoms of response to an unexpectedly unwelcome 
 proposition. — These may suffice as examples of movements expres- 
 sive from analogy. 
 
 But if certain of our emotional reactions can be explained by 
 the two principles invoked — and the reader will himself have felt 
 how conjectural and fallible in some of the instances the explana- 
 tion is — there remain many reactions which cannot so be explained 
 at all, and these we must write down for the present as purely 
 idiopathic effects of the stimulus. Amongst them are the effects 
 on the viscera and internal glands, the dryness of the mouth and 
 diarrhoea and nausea of fear, the liver-disturbances which sometimes 
 produce jaundice after excessive rage, the urinary secretion of san- 
 guine excitement, and the bladder-contraction of apprehension, the 
 gaping of expectancy, the ''lump in the throat" of grief, the 
 tickling there and the swallowing of embarrassment, the "pre- 
 cordial" anxiety" of dread, the changes in the pupil, the various 
 sweatings of the skin, cold or hot, local or general, and its flushings, 
 together with other symptoms which probably exist but are too 
 hidden to have been noticed or named. It seems as if even the 
 changes of blood-pressure and heart-beat during emotional excite- 
 ment might, instead of being teleologically determined, prove to 
 be purely mechanical or physiological outpourings through the 
 easiest drainage-channels — the pneumogastrics and synapathetic 
 nerves happening under ordinary circimistances to be such 
 channels. 
 
 Mr. Spencer argues that the smallest muscles must be such 
 
 applause he explains as a symbolic abridgment of an embrace. The pro- 
 trusion of the lips (der prüfende Zug) which goes with all sorts of dubious 
 and questioning states of mind is derived by Dr. Piderit from the tasting 
 movement which we can see on any one's mouth when deciding whether a 
 wine is good or not. 
 
THE EMOTIONS 133 
 
 channels; and instances the tail in dogs, cats, and birds, the ears 
 in horses, the crest in parrots, the face and fingers in man, as the 
 first organs to be moved by emotional stimuli .^^ This principle 
 (if it be one) would apply stiU more exactly to the muscles of the 
 smaller arteries (though not exactly to the heart) ; whilst the great 
 variability of the circulatory symptoms would also suggest that 
 they are determined by causes into which utility does not enter. 
 The quickening of the heart lends itself, it is true, rather easily 
 to explanation by inherited habit, organic memory of more violent 
 excitement; and Darwin speaks in favor of this view (see his 
 Expression, etc., pp. 74-5). But, on the other hand, we have so 
 many cases of reaction which are indisputably pathological, as 
 we may say, and which could never be serviceable or derived from 
 what was serviceable, that I think we should be cautious about 
 pushing our explanations of the varied heart-beat too far in the 
 teleological direction. Trembling, which is found in many excite- 
 ments besides that of terror, is, pace Mr. Spencer and Sig. Mante- 
 gazza, quite pathological. So are terror's other strong symptoms. 
 Professor Mosso, as the total result of his study, writes as follows: 
 
 We have seen that the graver the peril becomes, the more do the reac- 
 tions which are positively harmful to the animal prevail in number and 
 ineflBcacy. We already saw that the trembling and the palsy make it in- 
 capable of flight or defense ; we have also convinced ourselves that in the 
 most decisive moments of danger we are less able to see [or to think] than 
 when we are tranquil. In face of such facts we must admit that the phe- 
 nomena of fear cannot all be accounted for by "selection." Their extreme 
 degrees are morbid phenomena which show an imperfection in the organism. 
 We might almost say that Nature had not been able to frame a substance 
 which would be excitable enough to compose the brain and spinal marrow, 
 and yet which should not be so excited by exceptional stimulation as to 
 overstep in its reactions those physiological bounds which are useful to 
 the conservation of the creature. 
 
 ^^Loc. cit. §497. Why a dog's face-muscles are not more mobile than 
 they are Mr. Spencer fails to explain, as also why different stimuli should 
 innervate these small muscles in such different ways, if easy drainage be 
 the only principle involved. Charles Bell accounted for the special part 
 played by the facial muscles ta expression by their being accessory muscles 
 of respiration, governed by nerves whose origin is close to the respiratory 
 centre in the medulla oblongata. They are an adjuvant of voice, and like 
 it their function is communication. (See Bell's Anatomy of Expression, 
 Appendix by Alexander Shaw.) 
 
134 WILLIAM JAMES 
 
 Professor Bain, if I mistake not, had long previously commented 
 upon fear in a similar way. 
 
 Mr. Darwin accounts for many emotional expressions by what 
 he calls the principle of antithesis. In virtue of this principle, 
 if a certain stimulus prompted a certain set of movements, then 
 a contrary-feeling stimulus would prompt exactly the opposite 
 movements, although these might otherwise have neither utihty 
 nor significance. It is in this wise that Darwin explains the 
 expression of impotence, raised eyebrows, and shrugged shoulders, 
 dropped arms and open palms, as being the antithesis of the 
 frowning brow, the thrown-back shoulders and clenched fists of 
 rage, which is the emotion of power. No doubt a certain 
 number of movements can be formulated under this law; but 
 whether it expresses a causal principle is more than doubtful. 
 It has been by most critics considered the least successful of 
 Darwin's speculations on this subject. 
 
 To sum up, we see the reason for a few emotional reactions; 
 for others a possible species of reason may be guessed; but others 
 remain for which no plausible reason can even be conceived. 
 These may be reactions which are purely mechanical results of the 
 way in which our nervous centres are framed, reactions which, 
 although permanent in us now, may be called accidental as far 
 as their origin goes. In fact, in an organism as complex as the 
 nervous system there must be many such reactions, incidental to 
 others evolved for utiUty's sake, but which would never them- 
 selves have been evolved independently, for any utihty they 
 might possess. Sea-sickness, the love of music, of the various 
 intoxicants, nay, the entire aesthetic life of man,' shall have ta 
 trace to this accidental origin.^* It would be foohsh to suppose 
 that none of the reactions called emotional could have arisen in 
 this quasi-a,ccidental way. 
 
 This is all I have to say about the emotions. If one should 
 seek to name each particular one of them of which the human 
 heart is the seat, it is plain that the limit to their number would 
 lie in the introspective vocabulary of the seeker, each race of men 
 having found names for some shade of feehng which other races 
 have left undiscriminated. If then we should seek to break 
 
 ^^La Paura, Appendice, p. 295. 
 
THE EMOTIONS 135 
 
 the emotions, thus enumerated, into groups, according to their 
 affinities, it is again plain that all sorts of groupings would be 
 possible, according as we chose this character or that as a basis, 
 and that all groupings would be equally real and true. The only- 
 question would be, does this grouping or that suit our purpose 
 best? The reader may then class the emotions as he will, as sad 
 or joyous, sthenic or asthenic, natural or acquired, inspired by 
 animate or inanimate things, formal or material, sensuous or 
 ideal, direct or reflective, egoistic or non-egoistic, retrospective, 
 prospective or immediate, organismally or environmentally 
 initiated, or what more besides. AU these are divisions which 
 have been actually proposed. Each of them has its merits, and 
 each one brings together some emotions which the others keep 
 apart. For a fuller account, and for other classificatory schemes, 
 I refer to the Appendix to Bain's Emotions and the Will, and to 
 Mercier's, Stanley's and Read's articles on the Emotions, in Mind, 
 vols. IX, X, and xi. In vol. ix. p. 421 there is also an article by 
 the lamented Edmund Gurney in criticism of the view which in 
 this chapter I continue to defend^ 
 
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