ill-defined and shifting, but not that it is absent altogether. In tracing the genesis of mental processes, however, we must interpret the abnormal by the normal, not the normal by the abnormal.

James next follows up these accounts of cases in which certain visceral sensations seemed to suffice for emotion, in the absence of any 'reason' for it, with accounts of other cases in which emotional apathy seemed to keep pace with sensory anaesthesia1, arguing that, according to his theory, a subject absolutely anaesthetic should experience no emotion, although, if not paralytic, "emotion-inspiring objects might evoke the usual bodily expression from him?" We have here then the converse or complementary half which is supposed to clinch the whole argument. Some four or five of these apathetic cases are cited: two of them are regarded by the mental pathologists who describe them as adverse to Professor James's theory. Two were cases of 'anaesthesia artificially induced by hypnotic suggestion'; but as James himself says, "of course we must bear in mind the fallibility of experiments made by the method of 'suggestion,'" and certainly these cases seem to lack the simplicity of truth. And of the last case he also candidly observes: "We must remember that the patient's inemotivity may have been a co-ordinate result with the anaesthesia of his neural lesions, and not the anaesthesia's mere effect "-surely the most natural inference. In so far as there was visceral anaesthesia the corresponding element in emotional expression must necessarily have been lacking. But this patient testified to some emotion for all that, though his senses were so dull that he was sure of nothing, and his muscles so feeble that he could scarcely speak or walk. Still, when not asleep he knew that he was miserable and spoke of waking as 'anguish.' The sight of his wife at least momentarily affected him, and he is reported as being 'often afraid' that his daughter might be dead and as saying: "If she should die I believe I should not survive her."

1 Psych. Rev. i. pp. 526 ff.

2 Principles, ii. p. 455.

3 G. H. J. Berkeley, "Two Cases of General Cutaneous and Sensory Anaesthesia without marked Psychical Implications," Brain (1891), xiv. pp. 441 ff.

• P. Sollier, "Recherches sur les rapports de la Sensibilité et de l'Émotion," Revue philos. xxxvii. (1894), pp. 241 ff.— -an article written to support the James-Lange

theory-which theory, however, the writer afterwards abandoned.

His general apathy detracts nothing from all this but rather makes it more striking. Again in a second and more recent case of visceral anaesthesia1, emotion was so far from being absolutely abolished that the patient was continually distressed at the loss of its usual sensory accompaniments, and so—as the incompetent reporter naïvely remarks-"at the very time when she complained of not experiencing some emotion appropriate to the circumstances, she gave all the signs of [having] such emotion." In short, so far from being completely apathetic, she was so anxious to be cured of her partial apathy, that she left her home and her family in the hope of being cured of it in hospital. Finally, Professor Sherrington has shewn that even in a dog deprived of all consciousness of visceral sensations-anger, joy, disgust, and fear-still remained as evident as before2.

To sum up: The James-Lange theory is psychologically and biologically absurd, a flagrant ❝σтероv πрóтеpov: its appeal to pathology is futile in fact, and false in method. Emotion is always the expression of feeling, and feeling-for the subject that feels-has always some objective ground. Emotion is never the reception of impressions, but is always the response to them. This response consists normally in a twofold, more or less diffuse, excitation, which (a) alters respiration, circulation and other vegetal processes, and (b) braces or relaxes various voluntary muscles in ways characteristic of the so-called sthenic or asthenic emotions-anger or terror, for instance. The James-Lange theory after all has done nothing to shew (analytically) that the motor components are not as essential to emotional expression as the organic, or (genetically) that the organic components are not as truly subjectively determined as the motor are. From first to last it is but one of many instances of physiology misapplied3.

1 D'Allonnes, “" Rôle des sensations internes, etc." Rev. philos. lx.(1905), pp. 592 ff. Appeared after W. James's death.

24 Experiments on the Value of Vascular and Visceral Factors for the Genesis of Emotion," Proc. Roy. Soc. (1900), lxvi. pp. 390 ff.; and Nature, lxii. pp. 328 ff. Further confirmation of Sherrington's work has been recently obtained by an Italian physiologist, G. Pagano. Cf. L'Année psychologique, 1914, pp. 483 f.

3 A brief and effective summary of the psychophysical objections to this theory is given by Lehmann (Grundzüge der Psychophysiologie, 1912, pp. 725-728) who incidentally remarks that Lange (his fellow-countryman) has actually, though not explicitly, abandoned it.

Emotional Expression and Purposive Action.

§ 2. We may then safely continue to regard the diffused organic excitement of emotional expression as the effect of the feeling underlying the emotion and not as the cause of the motor excitation to which that feeling leads; in other words we may still look upon the expression of emotion as active not passive. So we may now at length proceed to inquire whether in these manifestations or effects of feeling there is any contrast corresponding to the opposing extremes of pleasure and pain. But first some distinction is called for among the various movements expressive of emotion; for in many of these there is more than the direct effect of feeling regarded as merely pleasure or displeasure. It has been usual with psychologists to confound emotions with feeling, because intense feeling is essential to emotion. Strictly speaking, however, a state of emotion is a complete state of mind, a psychosis, and not a psychical element, if we may so say. Thus in anger, over and above pain, we have a more or less definite object as its cause, and-added to the diffused 'wave of excitement'-we have a certain characteristic reactive display consisting of frowns, compressed lips, erect head, clenched fists, &c. in a word, the combative attitude, as its effect. And similarly of other emotions: the primary effects of feeling are overlaid by what Darwin called 'serviceable associated habits.' The purposive actions of an earlier stage of development, that is to say, become the emotive outlet of a later stage though doubtless somewhat 'atrophied.' In the circumstances in which our ancestors worried their enemies we only shew our teeth. We must, therefore, leave aside the more complex emotional manifestations and look only to the simplest effects of pleasure and of pain, to see if we can discover any fundamental contrast between these1.

1 Of the three principles that Darwin advanced in explanation of emotional expression the last seems both psychologically and physiologically more fundamental than the more striking 'principle of serviceable associated habits' which he placed first. His last principle he called 'the principle of the direct action of the nervous system —a psychologically inappropriate name for what Bain had previously called 'the law of diffusion'—which it is now proposed to call 'the dynamogenic law.' (Cf. James, Principles, ii. pp. 372, 379, 381.) But it is questionable if the more definite term is here an improvement. The expression of the asthenic emotions indicates not power but the loss of it, so far as voluntary movements go; and even the reflexes that occur are largely due to the withdrawal of the controlling inhibition of the higher

Joy finds expression in dancing, clapping the hands and meaningless laughter, and these actions are not only pleasurable in themselves but such as increase the existing pleasure. Attention is not drafted off or diverted; but rather the available resources seem reinforced, so that the old expenditure is supported as well as the new. To the pleasure on the receptive side is added pleasure on the active side. The violent contortions due to pain, on the other hand, are painful in themselves, though less intense than the pains from which they withdraw attention; they are but counter-irritants that arrest or inhibit still more painful thoughts or sensations. Thus, according to Darwin, "sailors who are to be flogged sometimes take a piece of lead in their mouths in order to bite it with their utmost force, and thus to bear the pain." When in this way we take account of the immediate effects as well as of the causes of feeling, we find it still more strikingly true that only in pleasurable states is there an efficient expenditure of attention. It is needless now to dwell upon this point, although any earlier mention of it would hardly have been in place.

Nevertheless we should fail to realise the contrast between the motor effects of pleasure and of pain if we merely regarded them as cases of diffusion. The intenser the feeling the intenser the reaction, no doubt, whether it be smiles or tears, jumping for joy, or writhing in agony. But in the movements consequent on pleasure the diffusion is the result of mere exuberance, an overflow of good spirits, as we sometimes say, and these movements, as already remarked, are always comparatively purposeless or playful. Hence Darwin's principle of serviceable habits is not exemplified in them. Even the earliest expressions of pain, on

centres.

As this is a point of some importance a brief quotation from what one might call a buried scientific classic may be allowed :-"The higher nervous arrangements, evolved out of the lower, keep down the lower, just as a government evolved out of a nation controls as well as directs that nation. If this be the process of evolution, then the reversive process of dissolution is not only a ‘taking off' of the higher, but is at the very same time a 'letting go' of the lower. If the governing body of this country were destroyed suddenly, we should have two causes of lamentation : (1) the loss of services of eminent men, and (2) the anarchy of the now uncontrolled people." (I. Hughlings Jackson, Croonian Lectures, 1884, Reprint, p. 16.) The immediate reference is to an epileptic seizure but its application here is obvious.

It was in illustration of the law of diffusion that Darwin described the movements expressive of joy and grief, emotions which in some form or other are surely the most primitive of any.

the contrary, seem but so many efforts to escape from the cause of it; in them there is at least the blind purpose to flee from a definite ill in pleasure there is only the enjoyment of present fortune. We may then fairly say that, though there is no conation without feeling, there may be feeling without conation. If so the analytical distinction between feeling and conation rests upon a real difference. But the inseparable connexion between feeling and attention or conscious activity is not thereby denied: what we recognise is that pain is functionally a draft on this activity, pleasure functionally an enhancement of it. The difference in the latter case betokens primarily reinforcement; in the former it betokens defence. Thus in the end we find the old law of self-conservation so far confirmed'.

From Plato downwards psychologists and moralists have been fond of discussing the relation of pleasure and pain. It has been maintained that pain is the first and more fundamental fact, and pleasure nothing but relief from pain; and, again, on the other side, that pleasure is prior and positive, and pain only the negation of pleasure. So far as the mere change goes, it is obviously true that the diminution of pain is pro tanto pleasant, while the diminution of pleasure is pro tanto painful; and if relativity had the unlimited range sometimes assigned to it this would be all we could say. But we must sooner or later recognise the existence of a comparatively fixed neutral state, deviations from which, of comparatively short duration and of sufficient intensity, constitute noticeable states of pleasure or pain. Such states, if not of liminal intensity, may then be further diminished without reversing their pleasurable or painful character. The turning-point here implied may, of course, gradually change too as a result, in fact, of the law of accommodation. Thus a long run of pleasure would raise 'the hedonistic zero,' while to the small extent to which accommodation to pain. is possible-a continuance of pain would lower it. Still such admission makes no material difference where the actual feeling of the moment is alone concerned and retrospect out of the question. On the whole it seems, therefore, most reasonable to regard pleasure and pain as emerging out of a neutral state, which is prior to and distinct from both-not a state of absolute 1 Cf. above, ch. x, § 2, p. 246.

2 Cf. above, ch. iv, § 5, p. 84.