EMOTION, a complex mental state inti mately associated with our actions and with extensive and often sudden physiological changes. Among the more familiar emotions are fear, anger, hate, joy, love, pity, pride, shame, grief, awe, contempt and surprise. They almost invariably seem to involve all the fol lowing factors : (1) an experiencing subject; (2) an object toward which they are directed; (3) a set of coexisting actions and physiological changes on the part of the experiencing sub ject; (4) the mental representation of a future course of action, together with the intention to pursue or to avoid it; (5) a general pleasant ness or unpleasantness. The best-known theory of the emotions is that due to William James and C. Lange. These authorities regard an emotional state as entirely constituted by fac tor (3), the set of coexistent actions and more especially of physiological changes on the part of the experiencing subject. In their opinion, fear consists in a feeling . . of quickened heart-beats, . . . of shallow breathing . . . of trembling lips, . . . of weakened limbs, . . . of gooseflesh . . . [and] of visceral stirrings." Rage is constituted by °... ebullition in the chest, . . . flushing of the face, . . . dilatation of the nostrils, . . . clenching of the teeth, .. . [and an] impulse to vigorous action." Each of our emotions is subject to a similar analysis and nothing is found beyond our awareness of an active response to some excitant object.
The consciousness of our own reactions is indeed a factor of the utmost importance in the generation of an emotional state. Whether it is the sole factor is a disputable point. Cer tain recent experiments as to the nature of the vascular and organic changes characteristic of emotional states appear to tell very strongly against the James-Lange theory. As Prof. W. B. Cannon writes in his (Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear and Rage,' °In terror and rage and intense elation, for example, the responses in the viscera seem too uniform to offer a sat isfactory means of distinguishing states which, in man at least, are very different in sub jective quality. For this reason I am inclined to urge that the visceral changes merely con tribute to an emotional complex more or less indefinite, but still pertinent, feelings of dis turbance in organs of which we are not usually conscious.° The peculiar marks which separate emotion from emotion cannot always reside in the grosser concomitant actions, for these are by no means invariably present, while on the basis of what Professor Cannon has shown, the visceral aspect of the immediate emotional act is too generalized to serve as a principle of individuation. The main differentiae of the emotions are to be found in the courses of pur posive conduct intended by the subject and the shadings of pleasantness or unpleasantness with which the emotional states are tinged. It is not the involuntary organic preparation for flight which makes fear distinct from rage, but the conscious intent to flee; while no state of excitement can be called elation unless it is distinctly and intensely a state of pleasure.
The intimate association between emotion and hedonic tinge demands a more thorough analysis, for it is closely connected with one of the most interesting features of an emotion -- its directedness. Both pleasure and the most complex emotion may have an object. To be pleased or angry or afraid is usually to be pleased or angry at something, or in fear of something. The relation between the emotion and its object is not one of the simple coexist ence of an awareness of the object and the emotion; it is possible, for example, to be conscious of many things and to be annoyed at but one of them. The object need not be the efficient cause of the emotional state — one's annoyance may be caused by indigestion, but directed toward those whom one chances to meet. Furthermore, the object of an emotion
does not gain its rank as object by virtue of a place in the focus of attention. One may be annoyed at the buzzing of a mosquito of which he is but dimly aware, while his main atten tion is directed toward a book which he is reading. It is by no such extraneous means as these that the reference of mental states can be explained. The reference of one ex perience to another is due to the fact that the unity of the content of the mind • is the unity of a system and not the unity of a mere fortuitous aggregate; The defiaitt•direttions of pleasure or emotion can only be explained on the basis of the existence at each stage of psychological analysis of some unanalyzed state with a definite reference. However, pleasure and emotion are not themselves simple un analyzable directed states. From what had al ready been shown of emotion, it is clear that it involves many undirected expenences of the nature of organic and lunzsthetic sensations or irnag-es. Pleasure likewise appears to have the chial aspect of a mass of organic experiences, going to make up what may be called a sense of well-being and of an attribute of other mental states. Now, if we strip all sense of well being from our pleasure, say, at a dinner, all that remains is an act of bare approval. This approval does not appear to be qualitatively dis tinct from that involved in an wsthetic judg ment, an ethical judgment or a normative judg ment of any lcind. (See Nonni). Similarly, active displeasure is apparently composed of a sense of ill-being, accompanied by, and possibly forming a portion of the object of, an act of disapproval. The hedonic tone of an emotional experience thus generally seems to involve: (a) a diffuse organic experience of well-being or ill-being; and (b) an act of approval or dis approval directed toward some definite object. It is almost, if not quite, impossible to think of a case where an emotion involves an act of approval or disapproval of this sort, but where the objects of the emotion and those of the act are distinct. There seems to be no valid objection to identifying the objective reference of the emotion with the objective reference of the act. On the basis of this and of what has been said previously concerning the emotions, it is easy to account for the coexistence of different emotions in the same individual: the physiological excitement characteristic of all emotion is present; but it is accompanied by a background of organic sensations conforming in its entirety neither to that of well-being nor to those of definite ill-being though sensations of both sorts are present; by the approval of certain objects and the disapproval of others; or by the intention of pursuing different courses of conduct with regard to the different emo tional objects.
The emotions are clearly indispensable for the propagation of the species, the nurture of young, the protection of the individual in times of danger, and for many other essential needs of the race. They have undergone a strict process of natural selection. Among the emo tions showing the deepest and most recent effects of this natural selection are those that form the basis of the moral conduct. In many ways our emotions and their modes of expres sion show traces of the needs of a more pnmitive existence — thus a sneer is a rudi mentary unfleshing of the teeth for combat (See zEsnirrics; FEELING). Consult Cannon, W. B., (Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear and Rage) (New York 1915); Darwin, C., (Ex pression of the Emotions) (London 1873) ; James, W., (Principles of Psychology) (New York 1890); Mantegazza, (Phr.iognomy and Expression) (tr. London 1904) ; Ribot, (Psy cholog:e des sentiments' (Paris 1896) ; Stout, (Manual of Psychology) (London 1899).