The Emotions Volume I

121 768

PSYCHOLOGY CLASSICS

A SERIES OF REPRINTS ANT> TRANSLATIONS

EI>ITEI> BY

KNIGHT I>TJNLAP

Johns Hopkins University

THE EMOTIONS

CARL GEORG LANGE (1834^-1900)
University of Copenhagen

WILLIAM JAMES (1&42-1910)
Harvard University

VOLUME I

BALTIMORE

WILLIAMS & WILKINS COMPANY
1922

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

COMPOSED AND FEINTED AT THE

WAVERLY PRESS

BY ram WILLIAMS & WILSONS COMPAKT

BALXIMOBB, MD., TJ. S. A.

CONTENTS

PAGE

EDITOB'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 the 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 Ueler
Omuthsbewegungen, made by Miss Istar A. Haupt from Karelia's
German 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 EDITOB'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
although his first university appointment, in 1872, was as Lec-
turer in Physiology in the Harvard Department of Natural
History, he expressed a strong preference for a position in
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 7 article appeared in Mind in 1884,
and his Principles of Psychotogy 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 earlier, 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

The Johns Hopkins University
March 4,

WHAT IS AN EMOTION?

BY
WILLIAM JAMES

WHAT IS AN EMOTION?

WILLIAM JAMES
iMind, 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.
y^ And yet it is even now certain that of two things concerning the
emotions, one must be true. Either separate and special centers
affectecLtp. them ak>ne r 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

11

12 WILLIAM JAMBS

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-
plications 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 sufficient 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
nossessed. The bodily disturbances are said to be the "mani-

WHAT IS AN EMOTION 13

festation" of thepe 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
p, 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 7 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 bodv and determinate imnulses 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 elicits 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
peculiarly 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 deliberate
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 op. And the locks are indifferent to any
but their own keys. The gg 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 Witte 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 little naked baby without delight, 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 v 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 earlier 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 still 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 enumerated
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 slight, 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 rhythm of breathing play a leading part in all emotions
whatsoever, is a matter too notorious for proof. And what is
really 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
tetision 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 belligerent 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 slight, should be without a bodily reverbera-
tion as unique, when taken in its totality, as is the mental mood
itself.

The im.Tn.ense 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/eZ, 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 himself 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 alive; and each morsel of it con-
tributes its pulsations of feeling, dim or sharp, pleasant, painful,
or dubious, to that sense of personality that everyone of us un-
failingly 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 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

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 O. E. Miiller'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 all 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 all 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 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
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
impossibility, 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
feeling 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 feelings neither of quickened heart-beats nor of
shallow breathing, neither of trembling lips nor of weakened limbs,
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 ebullition 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-
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 like 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 f eelingless 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 lives; but
I say that for ws, emotion dissociated from all 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 life of the affections,
harsh and tender alike, 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 feeling of the reflex bodily
effects of what we call 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 civilised
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
b'odily changes follow 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
aere suffice. We will say nothing of the argument's failure to
iistinguish between the idea of an emotion and the emotion it-
jelf . We will only recall the well-known evolutionary principle
;hat 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 excitement. "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. 2
This being so, it is not surprising 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,

2 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 listening 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 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 "all-overishness/ 7 and we shrink
back, although we positively know htm 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 feeling 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 little 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 feelings, 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" 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 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 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.

If our theory be true, a necessary corollary of it ought to be
that any voluntary arousal of the so-called manifestations of a
special emotion ought to give us the emotion itself. Of course
in the majority of emotions, this test is inapplicable; for many of
the manifestations are in organs over which we have no volitional
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 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

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 will infallibly 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 your
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 mobility of certain persons often
lead us to say " They would feel more if they talked 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 sentimentalist 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 bilious
"slumbering volcano," let him repress the expression of his pas-
sions as he will, will find them expire if they get no vent at all;
whilst if the rare occasions multiply which he deems worthjr 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 calming 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 calm 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
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. 3

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 feelings of which the psychic
body of the emotion consists. Thus, to take one special instance,
-* inability 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 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

8 This is the opposite of what 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, pad that the moment he attains to breathing deeply and to
holding himself erect, the dread, ipso facto, seems to depart. 4

The account given to Brachet 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 wantingboth 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
wantingto wit, the feeling which is proper to them, and the pleasure

which follows them Each of my senses, each part 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

sJcin but I no longer experience the internal feeling of the air when I breathe.

4 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, <fec. I say it is possible, for I am ignorant of
observations which might test the fact. Trance, ecstasy, &c., offer analo-
gous examplesnot 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

.... AH 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. 5

Other victims describe themselves as closed in walls 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 realize more deeply than
ever how much our mental life is knit up with our corporeal frame,
in the strictest sense of the term. Bapture, love, ambition, indig-
nation, and pride, considered as feelings, 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 affirmed only of what
we then agreed to call the "standard" emotions; and that those
inward sensibilities 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 feelings.

They are, the reader will 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,

5 Quoted by Semal: De la SensibilitS g&n&rale dans Us Affections m&an-
coliques, Paris, 1876, pp. 130-135.

26 WILLIAM JAMBS

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-called " 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 feeling, 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 feeling 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 susceptibility they might be endowed, all I overheard was the
woman's voice murmuring: "What a deprecatory expression her
face wears! What self-abne^afe'on/ 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 religious 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 critins 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 will 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 like 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 feeling 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 itself 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, 6 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

6 "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-
sachlich" 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 Striimpell in Ziemssen's Deutsches
Archiv fiir klinische Meditin xxii., 321, of which I had nevertheless read
.reports at the time of its publication. (C/. first report of the case in
Mind X., 263, translated from Pfltiger'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. Striimpell 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. Striimpell 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 fear 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 affirm 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. Strtimpell,
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. StriimpelPs 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. StrumpeH'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 IANGE, M.D.

THE EMOTIONS

A PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGICAL STUDY

GAEL GEORG LANGE, M.D.
Professor of Medicine in Copenhagen

TBANSLATED BY ISTAR A. EATTPT
From the Authorized German Translation of H. Kurella, M.D.

Kant, in a passage in his Anthropologiej 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 humility, 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 ne
would rob man of all that goes to make him a sympathetic crea-

34 CARL GEORG LANGE

ture; that enables him to share the pleasure and pain of those of
his kind; and to admire his like 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 life
of the individual human being, but they are also the most power-
fid 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 lives 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 all, 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 light 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 will 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 analogous. In
this regard, it is not possible to start from any one point that will
satisfy all 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 1
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 GAEL GEOBG LANGE

Yet the line of demarcation between the two has never been
clearly defined (I), 1 although it is difficult to explain why scientific
psychology, at least, has not felt the necessity for a more rigorous
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. Feelings 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
.we 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.

1 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
qualities are discovered and these are taken as points of departure.

It is now sufficiently 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 unnoticed. 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 almost entirely wanting. Even now, as we
shall see later, they are all too meager, partly because until recently
physiognomy, in its narrower sense, has been too closely adhered

38 CARL GEORG LANGB

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

a 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
carrying it out in full detail, and that in the case of most
of the other emotions, the bodily manifestations are so slight 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 little, 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 "clinical' 7 observation, to use the medical term, where all ob-
servation of the symptoms which appear casually are included,
as opposed to experimental investigation, where the symptoms
are controlled. Especially instructive are the cases where the
affections appear with such powerful 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 GEOEG LANGB

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 "do'ctores huius scientiae
praetipui"* 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.,**^^ 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 lid, as happens when the levator
palpebrae 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 peculiarities 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 GEOKG LANGE

possibly be attributed to either a change in metabolism 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. 4 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 relief," 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

4 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 relieve them-
selves by deep, slow breathing sighs a method which anyone
who experiences difficulty 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. 5
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
insufficient 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 difficult 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
senility 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: GAEL 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? 6

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 lightness
of joy, such as everyone experiences whose muscles are strong and
unfatigued. 7 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,

6 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.)

7 To explain this feeling of lightness a positive decrease in b9dy weight
was formerly assumed. Cf. de Mar6es, De animi perturbatione 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
(vrbicularis oculi pcdpebrarum and levator palpebrae), to be seen
in connection with the pupilary change. 8 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
common 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, 9 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 all parts of the body share it in a joyful mood, leads us
to make the supposition that mental functions take place rapidly;

8 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 CABL 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.

*Jx*

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 dumb" 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, 10 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). u
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 salivary 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. 12
At first, fear acts upon the heart in such a way as to cause an

10 "Go prick thy face and over-red thy fear, thou lily-liver'd boy."
Macbeth, Act V., Sc. 3.

11 Older pathologists have assumed that the blood actually coagulated
under the influence of fear. Sanguis in toto coagulatur. (Willis, De
anima brutorum, Cap. 9.)

12 Cf. The Danish "Buxefeber;" fever-terror, the cold hand of fear, etc.

48 CAEL GEOBG 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, applies 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 undoubtably 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.

ANGEK BAGE

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 GEOEG LANGE

physiological conditions characteristic of these two affections are
analyzed rather more carefully, such striking agreement of funda-
mental relations will be found that it is not at all easy to specify
the difference.

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/ 7 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" 13 (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
swellings. 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 Or a 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 lightness, 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
becomes indignant "goes up in the air," clenches his fists, waves
his arms, marches with long strides (paxpaftipas), 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,
immediate expression of motor innervation; assumes a character
of power and vandalism by his indiscriminate attacks upon every-
thing that crosses his path. Unintentionally, and without dis-
crimination, he strikes at friend and foe alike, simply to use his
muscles. In some cases where there is a certain amount of self-
control, he merely strikes the table with his fist, bangs the door,
tears something to pieces or otherwise destroys it. He would like
to demolish 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 GAEL GEORG LANGE

that he " trembles with rage." He misses his aim strikes blindly
and consequently is little to be feared by a cold blooded opponent.

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 salivary 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 established
tradition that anger causes an increased gall secretion, "the gall
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 gall 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 sufficient 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 struggling with his hands and
feet would not satisfy his impulse; he must hear his movements
as well 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. 14 He might just as well exert his respira-
tory muscles by rapid and deep breathing, without exactly yelling
and howling, but he requires "noise." In his desire for strong
sense impressions, he does not spare himself bodily injury; he
beats his head against the wall, tears his hair, pulls his beard,
bites his lips. 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 feeling, 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 "blind with rage," "deafened
by passion" to bear witness to the agreement of popular observa-
tion. But for the sense of feeling, 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 unmSrci-
fully, and they will take no notice.

Anger, which can present in bodily manifestations such a de-
ceptive picture of maniacal conditions (ira furor brews), becomes

14 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 (irtpi din&v av^ro-
/zarcov, I. 5), and Willis (De anima brutor) 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 (cf. 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 shyness, 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 insijfl5l.cie.nt
contraction of others, resulting briefly in "uncoordinated"
movements. 15

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 line
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
lively innervation of the voluntary muscular system, which ex-
presses itself 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-

15 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 CABL GEOEG LANG-E

lessly in bed at night. We say therefore that it is "disturbing' 7
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 canmaketoday. 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 intelligence, 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. 16

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 variabilities 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 voluntary innervation -j- spasm of voluntary muscles =*
suspense.

Increase of voluntary innervation -f vascular dilation = joy.

Increase of voluntary innervation -1- 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, 17 and the division of the affections into active and passive,
sthenic or asthenic, or however this contrast is to be expressed, is
unjustified, both from the physiological and the psychological

18 Perhaps, however, the functional disturbance of the vascular and other
organic muscles is always the same.

17 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 astheriic
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, all 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 abnormalities, 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 head 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 GEOBG 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; 18 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 b^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

18 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 been made. The remowned 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, 19 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.

19 A. Mosso, The Blond 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 all; 20 in fact, they seem purposely to pass over it in
silence, perhaps in order not to be forced f or 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

20 TJie external motions are always due to internal emotions (Wundt,
Concerning the Expression of Emotions, Deutsche Rundschau, April,
1877).

64 GAEL GEOEG LANGE

following form: We have in every emotion as sure and tangible
factors: (1) a cause asensoryimpressionwhichusuaUyismodified
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 dos 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 trembling, 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, like 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, like 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 itself, 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 feelings. 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; 21 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 purely 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 sire considered psychical.

66 CARL GEOBG LA3STGE

Take away the bodily symptoms from a frightened individual;
let his pulse beat calmly, 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 22 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' 7 and the power of alcohol-
ic liquors 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." 23 He seeks to free
himself from his marital troubles and bis 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 Kurella).

THE EMOTIONS 67

he ./ishes once again to sing and recall the happy past when he was
still "with Maliz." Brandy makes him gay and brave, without
requiring even a single brightening or enlivening 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 himself over the road,
moaning and whirring. 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 feeling 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 CAUL GEORG LANGE

Certain sickening drugs, such as tartar emetic, ipecacuanha, ;tc.,
have a depressing effect, which is in some respects comparaHe 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 will 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 lively 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 will coincide exactly with the phenomena for which
, we usually reserve this denotation; the differences in cause will
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 "thrill" 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
slight 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 obtaip here, which I cannot quite pass
over, because it will throw gr,eat light upon the question, so vital
to us, of the necessity of the hypothesis of purely mental affec-
tions. If 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 %n 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 CABL 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-
cholia or mania. Every physician, who is interested in nervous
diseases, has plenty of opportunity to observe the still more in-
structive cases which lie 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
unmotivated and without cause is not sufficient proof for the lay-
man to consider it diseased, and still less to suggest medical
treatment .

It is usuaEy necessary for the joy to express itself 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 will agree in considering
them expressions of a pathological condition.

There is perhaps nothing that can be more enlightening 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-
called "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 24 on the subject) in condition of "wild paroxysms

24 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, yells,
howls and rolls 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 th^t happened.

The pathological affections discussed above are due to physical
abnormalities and may appear either as symptoms of other dis-
eases, or because of some disturbance in metabolism or digestion,
eta 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 like 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 little 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 printipii. The

72 CAUL GEOEG LANGB

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 (Gemuth) is involved.
But that is precisely the point of this investigation.

In reality, 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 ill 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
call it fright, and it presents all 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 follow
the shot immediately, without any trace of "mental" fright.
Many will 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. 25 And so, we must either exclude this fright from

26 It is not probable that this is a case of a pure, simple reflex of the motor
nerves, as Preyer, for example, seems to assume (Die Seele des Kindes,
2d ed v 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 difficulty 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 establishment of a
border line 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 qualification 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 complicated,
so-called psychic processes. It seems that for the formation of

74

GAEL 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 (tf.O.) to the central optic organ (C.O/), is diverted by a
simple nerve connection to the vasomotor center (C.F.) to lead off
the impulse first aroused in the eye and in this way to effect the
emotional changes in the vascular innervation (26).

FIG. 1

The matter becomes somewhat more complicated 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 possibilities which
are for the most part very complicated 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 will 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.QJ and C.O.' 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 C.O."). 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

(C.K from C.(?/) 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 will 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.j to stimulate his vasomotor center to
activity. This must now be capable of being aroused either from
the point C.O/ or from the point C.O.", which before had no
influence whatever.

From which of these points now does the impulse to C.V. start,
when the child sees the hated spoon? Surely from C.O.", 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 C.O/', 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 C.O." and C,G.", the conscious centers for the
appearance of the spoon and the taste of the medicine; so we must
add that whenever C.O." are activated by the sight of the spoon,
the impulse is conducted to C .(?.", from whence again, as is evi-
dent in view of the well known power of memory to arouse
emotions, it is easily conducted to C.V. 26 I fear that the assump-
tion of a new, so far untried, functional relation between C.O."
and C.O." must, at first sight, look like one of the many subter-
fuges which physiological psychology does not always scorn

36 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 C.O." and C.G." to be. The numerous phenomena of
irradiation, ordinary and pathological, demonstrate adequately
that the "blazing of the trail" 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 trail." 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 established in a number of dif-
ferent ways.

In the above case, we see that the point C.G." which originally
was not stimulated when an impulse reached C.O.", now is acti-
vated by an impression received at C.O/', 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 C.O/' spreads, irradiates by means of cell connections to
C.G/'; nothing would, in fact, be explained, for it would still
remain a mystery just what leads the irradiation to C.G/ 7 , as we
can assume beforehand that the phenomenon can take place in
any direction from C.O/', 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 C.O/' 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 CAEL GEORG LAJSTGE

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 C.O.",
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 C.O." as a reason for this
greater sensitivity. A change has hereby been produced in its
cells, 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 C.G." due to the existing
activity and the additional activity conducted to it from C.O. 27
The reason for the fact that C.G." is only stimulated by irradia-
tion coining from C.O/', 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 willingly, 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 complicated 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

27 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 C.O." 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 C.O." meets a similar one that has started earlier, but which is still
active and coming from C.G.", then the tract between may be set into
stronger motion by interference than any other ray from C.O."

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 lies 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 believed 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 will 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 literature, 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 GEOKG 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 reality
a multitude of unnoticeable transitions occur. That is a deliberate
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 all 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 life, our joys and
sorrows, our happy and unhappy hours, to our vasomotor system.
If the impressions ^hich fall 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

It is true of the vasomotor apparatus as well as of all 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 mobility
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 lives 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 GEOBG 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
life 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 relieves
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. 28

Education acts along the same lines. 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 established social conditions. Physiologically, we consider
education to consist in practice in the ability to control simple
elementary reflexes by higher ones. We are taught from earliest
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

28 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 "Gemtithsbewegung,"
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" "Gemuthsbewe-
gung," "Affect" and "Leidenschdft" 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 GEOKG

(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, book 3, 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 impressiones
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 , book 3, 79) . A definition like Spinoza's : "Laetitia
est hominis transitio a minore ad major em perfectionem" (Ethics
ps. Ill), is purely nominal.

(5) In Denmark, we find the brief and superficial presentation of Professor

Klingberg's in the "Skandinavisk I/iteraturselskabs Skrifter," 9 de
Aargang, 1813. More thorough and detailed is the work of
Sibbern in his book, "Om Forholdet mellem Sj&el og Legeme," 1849.
Also, the work of A. Sell ("Om Betydn. af. Sindsbevaegeh. Som
Sygdomsaarsager, 1884). This deals chiefly with the pathological
relations.

(6) I have (c/. 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 swelling 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
Laudois (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, gen&rales de medetine, June 1879, p.

WO

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 subtilitate, 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 GAEL 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. (Cf. Hospitals-Tidende 187$, No.
SO, J., and Forlaes over Rygm. Patologi, p. 175$.) Besides, De Marges
(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 eases 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 o 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 (TraiU des nerfs, T. II, ps. I, p. S58) 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

found 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
difficulty of a physiological nature in tracing the convulsive condi-
tion to changes in circulation.

88 CAEL GEOBG LANTGB

(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 la verite" (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 (liber 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 unexpected 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 the
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 S10.) 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 Muller'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 (cf. Neurolog. Centralblatt 1888, No. 4), in which he
believes to have proved that the occipital lobe "involves essentially

90 CARL GEOBG LANGE

tlie 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
idefis ." (Ethics p . HI . ) But he pursues the problem no further.

In an Italian book of the last century* which bears the curious
title "Delia, Fisiinomia, Principi derivati dall* Anatomia t dalla
Fisiologiaj e Dinamica del corpo umano par mezzo de' guali si di$-
tinguono Gli Aristocratici, ed i Realisti dai Democratic! 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 t 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. 1 '

"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 j un homo, dalla struttura
de' suoi nervi, de suoi vasi, e della tempra ed equilibrio de suoi umori
dee dipender la natura, la diver sita e I'energia maggiore o minor e delle
sue passioni. A parlar dunque propriamente le passioni sono negli
organi dell' uomo, e non nello spirito, e cosl le loro buone o rie
qualitd, 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 delV 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 1
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 still remain, and we read the
anger in the face, though the blow may not be struck, and the
fear betrays itself in vpice and color, though one may suppress all
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, howeve'r, fall 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 dealings. 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, commonly so called. Its stimuli are more numerous,
and its expressions are more internal and delicate, 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 liberate 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 eyeyjfii, 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.

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: 2

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, unsteadily, 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, sunk in himself and silent. The tonicity or
" la tent 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 muscJe-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*Gemuthsbewegungen, uebersetzt von H. 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 anssmic 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.

Larige 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 insuffi-
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. 3

The anaemia 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 anaemia 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 anaemia business. But such
as it is, his account may stand as a favorable specimen of the sort
of descriptive 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.

3 The bronchial tubes may be contracted as well as the ramifications of
the pulmonary artery. Professor J. Henle has, amongst his Anthropolo-
gische Vortrage, 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 smopths 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 than 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 large 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 see 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 comae, et vox faucibus hsesit." .... 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, ilid, 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 pererraL The pupils are said to be 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. 4

Finally take Hatred, and read the synopsis of its possible effects
as given by Sig. Mantegazza: 5

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 applied to the

^Origin of the Emotions, Darwin, pp. 290-2

6 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 different 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 all 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 literary
works of aphoristic philosophy also flash lights into our emotional
life, and give us a fitful delight. 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. Ifone of the criticisms which I have heard
of it have made me doubt its essential truth. I will therefore
devote the next few pages to explaining what it is* I shall 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
COABSEB 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 lodily 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 jeel 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, no reader of the last two chapters* will be inclined
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 slight, 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 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 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 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 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. [EcLl

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.

I now proceed to urge the vital point of my whole theory, which
is this: // 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 all 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 fc to the class "funny," they persist in replying that the
thing proposed is a physical impossibility, and that they always
must 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 all 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
trembling 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 like
manner of grief: what would it be without its tears, its sobs, its
suffocation of the heart, its pang in the breast-bone? A feeling-
less cognition that certain circumstances 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 affections, 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 immediately 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 caudal: "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 vary
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. 8

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 feeling in it which should be demon-
strdbly additional to all those which could possibly be derived
from the organs affected at the time. But to detect with cer-
tainty such purely spiritual qualities of feeling would obviously
be a task beyond human power. We have, as Professor Lange
says,|absolutely no immediate criterion by which to distinguish

6 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. 7

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 8 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 Strumpell (to which I must refer later in another connec-
tion) 9 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. Strum-
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

7 Professor Hoffding, in his excellent treatise on 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.

B Ein Fall von allgemeiner Anaesthesie (Heidelberg, 1882).

'Ziemssen's Deutsches Archiv fur klinische Medicin, xxii, 321.

THE EMOTIONS 107

cold heart. 10 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
assumption 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 listening to
poetry, drama, or lieroic 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

10 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
a taxia in spite of the anaesthesia . M . Janet writes me, a prop os 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. 214r-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 "all-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 feeling
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:

N"o 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 anyway 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.. 11

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

p. eft., 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. 12

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 stiff ering 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 tune
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. 13

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, 0. 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. 14

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

"R. M. Bucke: Man's Moral Nature (N. Y., 1879), p. 97.
14 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. 16

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 wound. 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 groundless 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

18 1 am inclined to think that in some hysterif orm 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. 16

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 symptoms 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 sullenness or
depression, and the advent of real cheerfulness and kindliness in

16 Op. tit., 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 all 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 db extra. . . . Thus it is that we are sometimes able to assume
a cheerful tone of mind by forcing a hilarious expression. 17

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 found 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. 18

17 Emotions and Will, pp. 361-2.

"Quoted by Dugald Stewart, Elements, 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. 19 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 pale 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." 20

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."

19 "The Anatomy of Acting," in Longman Magazine, vol. xi, pp. 266,
375, 498 (1888), since republished in book form.

20 Page 394.

116 WILLIAM JAMBS

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 Neurologischcs
Centralblatt for 1887. Having practised facial mimicry himself
a great deal, he says:

When I contract my facial muscles in any mimetic combination, I
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, 21

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 calm 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

"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
undoubtedly 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 Jess." 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 sentimentalist 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 will find them grow in intensity as life pro-
ceeds. On the whole, I cannot see that this third objection carries
any weight.

118 WILLIAM JAMBS

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.

STJBTLER 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 immediate, and the
bodily expression something that comes later and is added on?

In reply to this we must immediately insist that aesthetic
emotion, pure 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 feeling 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. 22 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 Even 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 plunged 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 insufficient
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 Problkmes de
I'JSsth&ique 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 form 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 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 high-
est limit of approving 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 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-notensss 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 quint essentially emotion Now there are

hundreds of other bits of music . . . which I judge to be right 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 dementi 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, all I overheard was
the woman's voice murmuring: "What a deprecatory expression
her face wears! What self-abne^a&'on! 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 religious 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
Philistines 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 himself 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 relief (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, until they
summon help from parts below.

NO SPECIAL BKAIN-CENTRES FOB 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 WILLIAH 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 falls 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
feelings 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 23
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

23 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 realized, 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 likely
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 believe 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 Progrds Medical, 21 juillet, 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 generality 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 feelings 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. 24 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-worn
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. 25 The trains of intellectual association, the

2 *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. Hoffding 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 Eoffding 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. JSTo later breath can feel just like that
first one." On this whole subject of emotional blunting, compare Hoff-
ding's Psychologic, 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 itself to be a source of pleasure, possibly even
apart from the euphoria which from time to time comes up from
respiratory organs. If there be such a thing as a purely spiritual
emotion, I should be inclined 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 all sorts of strange bodily feelings and changes in the
incoming sensibilities. 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 OF THE VARIOUS EMOTIONS

On a former page (pp. 453^i) 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 them?

uneasiness, 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, as M. P, rightly says, a multiplicity des phtno-
mknes) ; 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. 26

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; 27

6. 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

28 A list of the older writings on the subject is given in Mantegazza's
work, La Physionomie et I' Expression, chap, i; others in Darwin's first
chapter. Bell's Anatomy of Expression, Mosso's La Paura, Piderit's
WissenschaftUches System der Mimik und Physiognomik, Duchenne's
Me'canisme 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. n.

27 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." 28

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 applications. 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 listening, 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." 29

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. 30 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

29 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.

Physiologic u. Psychologic 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 aU 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. 31 "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 symbolically 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, 32 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. (Of. Physiol. Psych.,
n, 423.)

32 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 sympathetic
nerve?' happening under ordinary circumstances 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 prtifende 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. 33 This principle
(if it be one) would apply still 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
inefficacy. 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*

83 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 in 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 BelPs 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 utility
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 utility's sake, but which would never them-
selves have been evolved independently, for any utility they
might possess. Sea-sickness, the love of music, of the various
intoxicants, nay, the entire aesthetic life of man, shall have to
trace to this accidental origin. 34 It would be foolish to suppose
that none of the reactions called emotional could have arisen in
this grosi-accidental 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 feeling which other races
have left undiscriminated. If then we should seek to break

u 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. All 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. nc. 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.