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 descriptions had no absolute truth; that they only applied to the 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 occasions 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, abhorrence, 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 pretences to accuracy are a sham.But unfortunately there is little psychological writing about the emotions which is not merely descriptive.As emotions are described in novels, they interest us, for we are made to share them.We have grown acquainted with the concrete objects and emergencies which call them forth, and any knowing touch of introspection which may grace the page meets with a quick and feeling response.Confessedly literary works of aphoristic philosophy also flash lights into our emotional life, and give us a fitful delight.But as far as "scientific psychology" 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 Hampshire farm as toil through them again.They give one nowhere a central point of view, or a deductive or generative principle.They distinguish and refine and specify in 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.
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 products of more general causes (as 'species'
are now regarded as products of heredity and variation), the mere distinguishing and cataloguing becomes of subsidiary importance.Having the goose which lays the golden eggs, the description of each egg already laid is a minor matter.Now the general causes of the emotions are indubitably physiological.
Prof.C.Lange, of Copenhagen, in the pamphlet from which I have already quoted, published in 1885 a physiological theory of their constitution and conditioning, which I had already broached the previous year in an article in Mind.None of the criticisms which I have heard of it have made me doubt its essential truth.I 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 emotions, grief, fear, rage, love, in which every one recognizes a strong organic reverberation, and afterwards speak of the subtler emotions, or of those whose organic reverberation is less obvious and strong.EMOTION FOLLOWS UPON THE BODILY EXPRESSION IN THE COARSER EMOTIONS
AT LEAST.
Our natural way of thinking about these coarser emotions is that the mental perception of some fact excites the mental affection called the emotion, and that this latter state of mind gives rise to the bodily expression.