Sketch of an Organismal Theory of Consciousness 319 



"more rational." It is only relative, not absolute truth, he 

 is aiming at in these statements. Nevertheless, after due al- 

 lowance is made for an expressional miscue to some extent, 

 there is yet substantial defect in his presentation. Speaking 

 in general terms, the defectiveness is not so much in the 

 antithesis set up as in the restrictedness implied. Or, bring- 

 ing the criticism around toward our particular standpoint, 

 the statement falls short of being organismal. 



Cannon has, I believe, indicated the direction in which the 

 adequate statement lies. He writes : "We do not 'feel sorry 

 because we cry,' as James contended, . but we cry because 

 when we are sorry or overjoyed or violently angry or full of 

 tender affection when any one of these diverse emotional 

 states is present there are nervous discharges by sympathe- 

 tic channels to various viscera, including the lachrymal 

 glands. In terror and rage and intense elation, for example, 

 the responses in the viscera seem too uniform to offer a satis- 

 factory means of distinguishing states which, in man at least, 

 are very different in subjective quality. For this reason I 

 am inclined to urge that the visceral changes merely contri- 

 bute to an emotional complex more or less indefinite, but 

 still pertinent, feelings of disturbance in organs of which 

 we are not usually conscious." 10 What Cannon's criticism 

 amounts to, expressed in other language is: while freely 

 granting that organs and functions in the usual physiologi- 

 cal sense play an essential part in emotion, neither the vis- 

 ceral nor any other single set of organs is sufficient to account 

 for the whole of any emotion. Visceral changes contribute 

 to the "emotional complex," but the real source of the feel- 

 ings involved is embedded elsewhere and more broadly in the 

 organization. Cannon suggests : "the natural response is a 

 pattern reaction, like inborn reflexes of low order." 'The 

 typical facial and bodily expressions," he writes, "automati- 

 cally assumed in different emotions, indicate discharge of pe- 

 culiar groupings of neurones in the several effective states." 



