The circulation of the blood must be different in the two cases.

This criticism leaves untouched the thesis with which Professor James starts. It would seem that this thesis must be admitted. We cannot imagine what an emotion would be like apart from the organic sensations which it includes. Even in faint and transient emotional experiences, the organic element appears to be present. It accompanies a slight touch of irritation or a slight tinge of contempt, as it accompanies intense disdain or wild fury.* The difference seems to be only one of degree. But in admitting that organic sensation is an essential factor in the constitution of those states which we call emotional, we do not admit that it is the sole factor. Where the emotion arises in connexion with perceptions and ideas, it involves a primary disturbance of mental equilibrium, connected with the furtherance or hindrance in special ways of preexisting cognitive tendencies. This primary disturbance, being the precondition of the organic reaction, cannot be regarded as its effect. It is therefore an independent factor in the constitution of the emotion. In so far as the primary source of the emotion lies in organic conditions, the case for Professor James seems stronger. But there are two points to be considered. (1) The organic changes may directly involve the brain itself and its nutrition, so that the whole effect cannot be referred to sensory impulses coming from the internal organs. (2) We must allow for what Professor Ladd calls "surplus excitation." The sensory impulses, besides producing the special sensations corresponding to their specific character, also tend to produce a more or less diffused excitement of a vague kind, which may be similar for sensations differing in their special qualities. This surplus excitation may be analogous in its character to that which arises in connexion with perceptions or ideas, so that the emotional mood of irritation may have its primary source either in the annoying behaviour of a companion, or in a bad state of health.*

* Of course overt expressional movements, or other bodily changes visible to the external observer, may be absent in slight, and sometimes even in intense emotions. But what is important is not this overt expression, but internal organic changes, affecting for example the circulation and respiration.

* James's theory of emotion has recently been more or less modified both by himself and others. In the text, I deal with it in its most original and distinctive form. Some would correct James's statement by saying that the expression is not a precondition of the emotion, but one aspect of the occurrence of which the emotion is another. I do not dispute this, but I should like to know definitely what it means. Velocity and direction may be said to be two aspects of motion, but emotion and expression are not connected in this way. The brain is a locally separate part of the organism; and organic changes occasioned by brain excitement follow the neural process both logically and in time. It may be admitted that the neural process could not exist if it could not discharge itself; and in this sense expression and primary neural disturbances may be regarded as different aspects of the same occurrence. The real question is, whether the primary neural disturbance is itself correlated with consciousness of an emotional kind, or at any rate with consciousness which forms an essential constituent of the complete emotion. According to James, as I understand him, this is not so: according to him, the primary nervous disturbance must first produce changes in the other organs of the body; and these changes must by a backstroke react on the nervous system before the emotion can begin. Emotion is in his view the consciousness connected with the reimpression following expression. The initial nervous excitement is on this view excitement of the lower centres and has no appreciable concomitant in consciousness. James does indeed speak of the initial perception which gives rise to an emotion as being the perception of an exciting fact. But he does not refer to mental excitement. The fact is exciting because the perception of it sets up organic changes which in their turn by way of backstroke give rise to mental excitement. As he says, the feeling of these changes as they occur is the emotion. Thus his phrase, "the bodily changes follow directly the perception of the exciting fact," means that they follow the fact that excites them, not the fact that excites us. If he does not mean this there is nothing distinctive in his theory at all. Very few would dispute that organic resonance is an essential factor in fully formed emotion. Bain has said this as clearly as James; and the present writer would be the last to deny it. But if there is a mental excitement preceding the organic resonance, this also must he counted as belonging to the emotion. His whole theory seems to be a counterpart of his theory of motor consciousness. Just as motor consciousness is according to him wholly due to reimpressions from muscles, joints and tendons, while the primary nervous discharge has nothing to do with it, so emotion is wholly due to reimpressions following bodily changes which originate in a primary nervous discharge; and the primary nervous excitement itself is not directly a factor in it, but only an antecedent condition.