§ 1. General Characteristics. — If we ask the question, What is an emotion? the first answer that occurs to common sense is a list of specific emotions, — fear, anger, hope, suspense, jealousy, and the like. When we push the inquiry further, and ask what character these states have in common which leads us to apply the same name, Emotion, to all of them, we find psychologists giving varying and inconsistent answers. According to some, emotion is essentially a kind of sensation, due to general organic disturbance. According to others, it is the massive revival by association of past pleasures and pains. According to others, it is a tendency to behave in a particular way, and must be regarded as a mode of cognitive consciousness. The best course for us to pursue in view of this disagreement, is to take certain typical emotions, and to attempt to fix characteristics distinctive of them and common to them in all their manifestations.

(1) There is one prominent fact about emotion which confronts us at the outset; — its wide range. The same specific kind of emotion may occur at very various levels of mental development. Sometimes it appears to be an affair of mere sensation. "The signs" of anger "may be readily provoked in the case of the average infant by firmly grasping and holding one of the movable members of his body, or by causing him any sudden, strong, and not overpoweringly painful sensation."* From the lower forms of perceptual consciousness up to the higher forms of ideational and conceptual activity, the same typical kinds of emotion are everywhere present. Anger may arise in connexion with the pain of a wound or the smart of a blow. The wounded lion bites at sticks and stones and at its own wounds. The cat will become angry if you interfere with its kittens. A child will become angry if you take away its toy. A man will become angry if you fail to understand his argument or if you unfavourably criticise his book. A saint may also be angry qua saint, as St. Paul was angry with the foolish Galatians. It follows from this wide distribution of emotion over different stages of mental development, that we must be very careful to avoid giving too limited a definition of its specific forms. Bain, for instance, seems to err in this direction when he says that anger "contains an impulse knowingly to inflict suffering upon another sentient being, and a positive gratification in the fact of suffering inflicted." + This would only apply to a somewhat developed stage of ideational consciousness; and even then it would not cover such cases as St. Paul's righteous anger with the foolish Galatians.

*Ladd, Psychology, Descriptive and Explanatory, p. 538. +Mental and Moral Science, p. 261.

(2) Closely connected with the wide distribution of emotion is the varied nature of the conditions that arouse it. Any kind of thwarting or opposition may excite anger. Any kind of danger may excite fear. You may produce anger in a dog by disturbing it while eating, or by interfering with its young, or by pulling its tail. It is a certain general kind of situation, not a specific class of objects, which excites a certain kind of emotion.

The behaviour in which emotion finds expression is correspondingly general in its character. It is not an adaptation to the specific nature of this or that specific object, but a general mode of action adapted to a certain kind of situation. The behaviour of the angry dog is generically the same, however the anger is excited. It adopts the same bodily attitude, shows its teeth, growls, attempts to bite, and the like.

(3) There are two sources of emotional states which it is important to distinguish. Emotions may arise in connexion with definite perceptions or ideas, as when good news excites joy; on the other hand, they may be primarily due to organic changes, such as those which follow the use of alcohol or other drugs. A man's temper varies with the state of his health. The organic changes may operate in one or both of two ways. They may directly change the condition of the nervous system by altering the nature or amount of nutrition with which it is supplied, or in other ways. They may also, by altering the general state of the body, alter the nature of the impulses received by the central nervous system from the internal organs. Owing to the diffusive nature of organic sensations, this occasions a general change in the state of the nervous system, which on the psychological side is experienced as an emotional mood. An emotional mood is not quite the same thing as an emotion properly so called. An emotion properly so called must be felt in relation to some definite object; to be angry we must be angry about something. But the general state of irritation due, let us say, to a sleepless night, has not, as such, any definite object. As we shall see under (4), it tends to find objects for itself, and it may pass from one object to another, giving rise to a series of emotions of the same kind. In general, the occurrence of a definite emotion tends to leave behind it an emotional mood of a corresponding nature.

(4) An emotional mood, whatever may be its primary origin, tends to persist when once it is aroused, and to fasten upon any object which presents itself. Illtemper or gloomy depression or hilarity may originate in the first instance in the use of drugs; but when these moods are once in existence they create objects for themselves. A man who gets up in the morning in a bad temper, due to want of sleep or similar causes, is apt to be irritated by almost everything that occurs; though in another mood the same incidents would be received with complacency. The cook angered by her mistress will box the ears of the scullion; a herd of cattle, enraged by the sight of a comrade in distress, will vent their fury on their unfortunate companion; the reason being simply that he is the only object on which their attention is fixed. Their excitement must find an outlet; and in the absence of any other definite channel for it, it discharges itself on the injured animal. "It is sometimes seen in dogs, when three or four or five are met together, that if one suddenly utters a howl or cry of pain, when no man is near it and no cause apparent, the others run to it, and seeing nothing turn round and attack each other."* So it is dangerous to approach the males of many species of animals in breeding time, when their angry passions are aroused by sexual rivalry. An emotion involves a certain general trend or direction of activity, which particularises itself in whatever way it can, according to circumstances.

(5)    The fifth feature of emotion is what we may call its parasitical character. So far as emotions are excited by general situations, and not merely by general organic changes, they are usually secondary phenomena, and presuppose the existence of more specific tendencies. This is true of all but the simplest and most primitive emotional states. The anger produced in a dog by taking away its bone presupposes the specific appetite for food. The anger produced in it by interfering with its young presupposes the specific tendency to guard and tend its offspring. So the presence of a rival who interferes with its wooing causes anger because of the preexistence of the sexual impulse.

(6)    In all the more intense phases of emotion, organic sensations form an important constituent of the total state of consciousness. This is true whether the emotion has been primarily introduced by organic changes, or whether it has in the first instance arisen in connexion with definite perceptions or ideas. This fact has been made the basis of a general theory, according to which the essential nature of the emotional consciousness consists in sensations arising from change in the internal organs of the body, including both viscera and muscles.

* Hudson, The Naturalist in La Plata, ch. xxii. (towards end).