I9II] IN RELATION TO THE EMOTIONS. * 81 



organs, and the same organs are stimulated and the same organs are 

 inhibited as if instead of its being a battle of credit, of position or 

 of honor, it were a physical battle with teeth and claws. Whether 

 the cause of acute fear is moral, financial, social, or stage fright, the 

 heart beats wildly, the respirations are accelerated, perspiration is 

 increased, there is a pallor, trembling, indigestion, dry mouth, etc. 

 The phenomena are those of physical exertion in self defense or 

 escape. There is not one group of phenomena for the acute fear 

 of the president of a bank in a financial crash and another for the 

 hitherto trusted official who suddenly and unexpectedly faces the 

 naked probability of the penitentiary ; or one for a patient who 

 unexpectedly finds he has a cancer and another. for the hunter when 

 he shoots his first big game. Nature has but one means of response 

 and whatever the cause the phenomena are always the same — always 

 physical. 



The stimulus of fear if repeated from day to day, whether it be a 

 mother anxious on account of the illness of a child; a business man 

 struggling against failure ; a politician under contest for appoint- 

 ment ; a broker in the daily hazard of his fortune; litigants in legal 

 battle, or a jealous lover who fears a rival, — the countless real as 

 well as baseless fears in daily life — all forms of fear as it seems to 

 me, express themselves in similar terms of ancestral physical contest 

 and on this law dominate the various organs and parts of the body. 

 Anger and fear express opposite states. Fear expresses the evi- 

 dence of a strong desire to escape from danger; anger, a strong 

 desire to attack physically and vanquish opposition. This hypoth- 

 esis is strongly supported by the outward expression of fear and 

 anger. When the business man is conducting a struggle for exist- 

 ence against his rivals and when the contest is at its height, he may 

 clench his fists, pound the table, perhaps show his teeth and he may 

 exhibit every expression of physical combat. Fixing the jaw and 

 showing the teeth in anger merely emphasizes the remarkable 

 tenacity of phylogeny. xAlthough the development of the wonder- 

 ful efficiency of the hands has led to a modification of the once pow- 

 erful canines of our progenitors, the ancestral use of the teeth for 

 attack and defense is attested in the display of anger. In all sta- 



