Now on the psychical side, what corresponds to the original neural disturbance which preconditions the organic disturbance? If the correlated psychical state is not of the nature of emotion, what can it be? It is perfectly arbitrary to suppose that organic sensations have a mystic efficacy which can belong to no other sensations. After all, they only occur in the same way as other sensations: they arise like the rest only through stimulation of the brain by impulses passing along afferent nerves. If they contribute to produce or heighten emotion it can only be because they help to excite an intense and widespread nervous disturbance. But there is no reason in the world why impressions coming from external objects should not operate in the same way. In fact they must do so if we are to account for the organic disturbance at all, and this agrees with what we may call the normal, unsophisticated view, that emotion essentially precedes and preconditions its expression. There is nothing in the perception of a bear, as such, to produce symptoms of fear. The symptoms of fear arise only when the sight of a bear startles a man, either because it is a strange and big animal approaching, or because previous experience has taught him to apprehend it as dangerous. In any case, it is not the visual perception, as such, but its startling character, which is essential.

The only mode of attempting to escape this confusion is by saying that the organic disturbance arises in the first instance in a mechanical way. On this theory there are certain innate or acquired physiological prearrangements owing to which certain visual or other perceptions set up organic disturbances. Such a view is irreconcilable with the facts. Emotions accompanied by marked organic disturbance are not occasioned merely by the perception of certain objects. They are occasioned only by occurrences which powerfully thwart or further preexisting cognitive tendencies. A man does not feel fear merely because he sees a bear, but because his life is threatened, and "all that a man has will he give for his life." The theory of James simply ignores this relation of the circumstances which produce emotion to preexisting cognitive tendencies. According to this theory, it is the mere sight of a kitten being removed which excites anger in the mothercat. Parental affection has nothing to do with it. But obviously the interference with parental instinct is a most essential constituent of the emotional state. It is directly accompanied by a nervous disturbance which precedes and conditions the organic reaction. If the organic disturbances accompanying emotion were occasioned in the mechanical way assumed in James's theory they would arise from excitement of the lower nervous centres. But the organic shock of emotion arises only from impressions which excite the higher nervous centres in an especially intense way. The lower nervous centres are just those which are most stable, and which behave in a calm and equable manner. They discharge automatic functions which are matters of routine. We cannot ascribe to them widespread and irregular perturbations of the whole system. Indeed Professor Dewey, who advocates this theory, contradicts himself when he says that emotion arises from the interruption of normal and habitual, coordinations. Such interruptions are occurrences which essentially involve the higher centres, and are accompanied by intense consciousness, not by "cold and neutral perceptions."

We might go on discussing this question interminably. I shall only draw attention to one point more and then leave it. I refer to the variability of the organic symptoms in what is specifically the same emotion and their similarity in different emotions. This is already recognised as regards motor expressions. Thus Mr. Lloyd Morgan, who in general accepts James's theory without criticism, yet denies that what is specially characteristic of emotion as such, takes its origin in the motor elements. "Take the case of a young frightened moorhen. On land he runs away, and perhaps crouches in the rushes; in the water he dives, and comes up quietly under the bank and there stays still. The activities involved in running and diving are very different; must not the activityfeelings be very different too? And yet we must surely suppose them to have a common emotional element. Again, when a moorhen catches sight of a worm and runs hard to secure it, the activityfeelings must, as such, one would suppose, be very similar to those experienced when the moorhen runs vigorously away from a goose. And yet in the one case he is frightened and in the other case he is not. Here similar activityfeelings are associated with wholly different emotional states."* This contention appears to me to be perfectly justified. There is indeed an identity in the general trend or direction of the activity displayed in a certain kind of emotion. But this cannot be reduced to any kind of identity or similarity in the actual movements or the joint, tendon, and muscle-sensations arising from them. But Lloyd Morgan and others seem to suppose that visceral sensations at least are fairly constant in the same emotion on different occasions and in different circumstances. Now the problem is an obscure one; for visceral sensations are difficult to investigate. But so far as any distinct appeal to experience can be made, it seems that they also may be more or less similar in different emotions, and variable in the same emotion. The Maori women of New Zealand when they meet for festive purposes enjoy themselves by squealing and crying, so that a stranger would suppose them to be in a state of intense grief. One traveller tells how he was roused at night by the most doleful cries, and went out to see what human creature was in misery. He found that it was a woman rejoicing over a meeting with her longlost son. Here the respiratory changes and increased secretion in the lachrymal glands were the natural expression of joy. Consider, too, the different expressions for anger. There is "white" anger and "red" anger.

* Habit and Instinct, p. 201.