§ 2. General Theory. — The general theory of emotion which is most favoured at the present time is that to which we have just referred. It is at least as old as Descartes, but is now specially connected with the name of Professor James, who has advocated its claims with great force and eloquence. We cannot do better than quote his statement of the main argument in favour of the view that emotion is simply organic sensation and nothing else. "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 abstract from our consciousness of it all the feelings of its bodily symptoms, we find we have nothing left behind, no 'mindstuff' out of which the emotion can be constituted, and that a cold and neutral state of intellectual perception is all that remains. . . . What kind of an emotion of fear would be left if the feeling neither of quickened heartbeats nor of shallow breathing, neither of trembling lips nor of weakened limbs, neither of gooseflesh 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 completely evaporated as the sensation of its socalled manifestations, and the only thing that can possibly be supposed to take its place is some coldblooded and dispassionate judicial sentence, confined entirely to the intellectual realm, to the effect that a certain person or persons merit chastisement for their sins. . . . 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 which 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 cognitive or intellectual form."*

* Principles of Psychology, vol. ii., pp, 451453.

This passage is certainly eloquent, but it lacks logical stringency. It does not follow that because A is necessarily and essentially connected with B, that A and B are identical. A stone cannot fall into water without making ripples, but the ripples are not the stone. A line cannot have length without direction, but length and direction are not the same. There is no smoke without fire, but smoke is one thing and fire another. So it may be impossible for emotion to exist without expressing itself; but it does not therefore follow that the expression constitutes the whole emotion. Supposing Professor James's thesis to be true, it is evident that we cannot invert it. Certainly not all organic sensation is emotion; hunger and stomachache are not emotional experiences. To complete the theory therefore it is necessary to distinguish the kinds of organic reaction which produce emotion from those which do not. So far as we can gather Professor James's view on this point from his own statement, it would seem that he connects emotion with diffused disturbance affecting many organs. But all organic disturbances are diffused in this way. The experience of a cold douche, or of being shampooed after a Turkish bath, ought on this theory to be emotional.

It is evident that the organic sensations which enter into an emotional state must either occasion, be preceded by, or accompany, a special kind of disturbance in the nervous system, which is not present in the case of all organic sensations. Now no doubt to some extent organic sensations can produce such specific nervous excitations. They do so in so far as the emotional mood is traceable to such causes as the state of health or the use of drugs. But here we must allow for the direct effect of organic conditions on the nervous system itself and its nutrition, as well as for the sensory impulses which proceed to it from the internal organs; and even when the neural disturbance is due to sensory impulses, it cannot for that reason be directly identified with the organic sensations themselves. When we consider the emotions which arise in connexion with definite perceptions and ideas, the inadequacy of the theory becomes still more evident. In such instances the diffused organic disturbance has its primary origin in a disturbance of the nervous system, which is propagated over the body as a whole. It follows that the first stage of the process by which the emotion arises, cannot be, as James says it is, a "cold and neutral intellectual perception." I have at this moment a somewhat cold and neutral intellectual perception that I shall some day die: but this awakens in me no perturbation of visceral or motor consciousness. On the other hand, a madman presents a pistol at me: here too, I have an intellectual perception of the madman as presenting the pistol; but this time it is followed by general organic disturbance. Now what is the difference between the two intellectual perceptions which accounts for the difference in their result in the two cases? On the physiological side, the perception of the presented pistol must correspond to an intense and diffused disturbance of neural equilibrium; for otherwise there is nothing to account for the intense and diffused disturbance of organic equilibrium. On the other hand, the mere recognition that I shall die some day does not upset my nervous balance so as to cause an organic shock.