818 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



gin of the emotions in the intelligence, and have sought to explain 

 them hy a simple play of ideas. Ilerbart has made the mistake of 

 havinsr seen only the intellectual effect in passion. 



M. Wundt rather sees the force of the will under that of the ideas, 

 but he places this force solely in the attention, in what he calls the 

 apperception^ or the grasp of objects by the intelligence. Emotion is, 

 then, according to him, in its origin, only the effect produced by the 

 feeling on the attention. He concludes that the elementary emotion 

 is surprise, " which behaves, in regard to the more complex movements 

 of the soul, merely as the aesthetic feeling awakened by a simple 

 geometric form as opposed to the effect produced by a work of art." 

 M. Wundt might have added that surprise is the intellectual analogue 

 of the mechanical shock with its well-known elastic effects. 



Whatever part of truth this psychological analysis may include, it 

 does not yet seem to us to reach to the real and primordial elements 

 of the emotion. M. Wundt has not asked whether, instead of leading 

 fright up to a sort of surprise, we can not trace surprise back to a sort 

 of fright. In fact, with the inferior animals, astonishment is hardly 

 anything else than fright that is, aversion. Every novelty not yet 

 looked into is regarded, until further orders, as a danger ; animals 

 have not begun to be curious observers of new things, or innovators, 

 but are still conservatives trembling before the unknown. We can 

 not, therefore, consider astonishment the really primitive emotion. 



The study of the physical effects will also help to enlighten us as 

 to the nature of the causes. Surprise is manifested by open eyes, ele- 

 vated eyebrows, open mouth, and raised hands. The eyes are opened 

 to gain a clearer view of the strange object, and the lifting of the eye- 

 brows is an accompaniment to that movement. The opening of the 

 mouth is a consequence of the relaxation of the muscles caused by the 

 flight of nervous force to the brain, and is also a movement promoting 

 the deeper inspiration which is a requisite to energetic effort, and 

 which accompanies the accelerated beatings of the heart. The raising 

 and throwing back of the hands may be regarded as a cautionary 

 movement. 



According to the preceding observations, we should seek the real 

 origin of the movements of expression in the effect of the emotions, 

 not on the intelligence, but on the primary activity and the desire. 

 Now, we know that pleasure is essentially an augmentation of vital 

 activity, while pain is a diminution of it ; here, therefore, is the prin- 

 ciple from which we should start to look for the motions by which 

 pleasures and pains are translated. 



The most rudimentary animals, allied to the vegetable kingdom, 

 without nervous and muscular systems, probably did not have the 

 faculty of moving from one point to another in their abode ; but there 

 must have existed, even in these primitive species, some tendencies to 

 a superexcitation or a depression of the general activity depending on 



