EMOTION 105 



know the meaning of fear, one must blanch and cower. 

 These ideas are not readily accepted by the student who 

 considers them for the first time; they have not proved 

 convincing to all psychologists. But for our present pur- 

 pose it does not much matter whether the bodily accom- 

 paniments of emotional states precede or follow the feeling. 

 What concerns us is the plain fact that they attend it 

 closely. They are, moreover, in proportion to its intensity, 

 and it is important to realize that all emotion is exercise 

 and often of a strenuous and far-reaching kind. 



People who criticize athletic sports often argue some- 

 what in this wise: Here are 20,000 people idly viewing a 

 contest in which 18 baseball players are taking part. The 

 proportion of the idle to the active is more than 1000 to 1. 

 Such a statement does but scant justice to the facts. There 

 is an unsuspected quantity of muscular activity among the 

 spectators as they watch the game, and they often find 

 that they have earned a wholesome fatigue when it is 

 ended. As they bend forward or rise in their seats, per- 

 haps giving vent to cheers or imprecations, as they flush 

 and tremble, now holding the breath and now gasping or 

 sighing in the stress of their feeling, we cannot question 

 that both the skeletal muscles and the autonomic system 

 are being strongly played upon. It is only when the game 

 is very one sided or the looker-on is very blase that the 

 hours passed in the grandstand can be classed as idle. 



A previous reference has been made to the fact that in 

 times of marked excitement the adrenal bodies are aroused 

 to unusual activity and discharge their powerful product, 

 adrenalin, into the circulation at a more rapid rate than 

 normal. The demonstration and the interpretation of 

 this fact we owe to Cannon. He was able to show by a 

 delicate test that adrenalin makes its appearance in the 

 blood of a cat when the animal has been agitated by the 

 sight of a dog. Additional experiments by workers in 

 the same laboratory have shown that adrenalin is capable 

 of delaying the onset of muscular fatigue. This is accom- 

 plished partly, though not wholly, by its acting as an anti- 



