EMOTION 107 



defensive reaction tending to check hemorrhage and, in 

 case of wounds, to increase the chance of survival. Cannon 

 suggests that emotion is experienced when wounds are 

 imminent, and so a purposive character can be discerned 

 in this physical change as in the others. 



If emotion is exercise, it may be asserted that a life 

 poor in emotion is a life which lacks wholesome stirrings 

 in both the neuromuscular and the autonomic realms. 

 It is probably true that people who have had a humdrum 

 existence are apt to be wanting in endurance. The 

 country cousin on a visit to the city is utterly wearied by 

 days of sight-seeing and evenings of entertainment in 

 spite of keen enjoyment of it all. It has often been ob- 

 served that volunteers from the city are more readily 

 made into seasoned and hardy soldiers than are the more 

 formidable looking farmers. A measure of training is 

 inseparable from irregular hours, various associates, 

 changes of boarding-place, and the more harmless dissi- 

 pations of the city. The hurry, the noise, and the glare, 

 the very things which are held to injure the nervous sys- 

 tem, harden it and adapt it to endure new forms of stimu- 

 lation if it is intrinsically strong enough to withstand 

 them. 



At the same time it is easy to see that excess in emotion 

 is exhausting to all the physical resources. Most people 

 know how profound is the weariness which succeeds a 

 severe paroxysm of anger. It is not much less marked 

 after sudden joy or a thrilling spectacle. There seems to 

 be much that is common to all the major emotions, though 

 they seem well differentiated in retrospect. Cannon 

 thinks it probable that the adrenal body is similarly in- 

 volved in all of them. The feeling of weakness that comes 

 in their wake may be due in part to a subnormal produc- 

 tion of adrenalin on the part of the exhausted cells. 



Long ago James wrote in his always illuminating way of 

 the use and abuse of the emotions. He made much of the 

 idea that every emotion experienced should become a 

 motive for conduct. If it cannot be so applied, its repeti- 



