Her RICK, Psychophysical Basis of Feelings. 113 



tute in my own case one of the most vivid recollections of 

 childhood which is even yet occasionally reproduced in less 

 degree. That this is not a personal idiosyncracy is proven by 

 the testimony of others. I was told but yesterday by a close 

 observer that his son habitually expressed pleasurable emotion 

 by compression of the jaws. Everyone has observed and ex- 

 perienced the intense desire to press, squeeze, or hug objects of 

 interest, particularly small animals or children to which diminu- 

 tive terms are instinctively applied by all people. The grand- 

 mother who with difficulty restrains herself from pinching 

 painfully her grand-daughter's cheek and the child herself as she 

 hugs to death a favorite kitten illustrate a law which finds its 

 morbid expression in gynophagia and the like. Here we have 

 apparently a set of important exceptions to the law formulated 

 by Professor Miinsterberg, but particularly important evidence 

 that the essential psychophysical substrate of the emotions is not 

 formed of muscular reflexes of the two categories indicated.. 

 The early localization of the affections in the bowels is founded 

 on good physiological observation and we need much study of 

 the sympathic system and its relations to emotional phenomena 

 before the problem here indicated can be profitably discussed. 

 It may be noticed in passing that the suggestion of Professor 

 Munsterberg is not entirely new; Tuke, for example, says "By 

 acting chiefly on the flexor muscles, fear causes the general 

 bending or curvmg of the frame — analogous to the action ot the 

 hedgehog, etc. — while courage contracts the extensors, and 

 produces expansion and height." "The opposite muscular states 

 of contraction or tension and relaxation alike find illustration in 

 the emotion of terror, for with the signs of the former already 

 mentioned, and the stare of the eye, are combined the relaxation 

 of the masseters, the sphincters and the processes of organic 

 life." "Calmness — a placid condition of the feelings generally — 

 is marked by a gentle contraction of the muscles, indicative of 

 repose, but at the same time of latent power — by the counten- 

 ance free from furrows, but not relaxed into weakness. ^Anger 

 or rage contracts the masseters, inflates the nostrils, furrows the 

 forehead, and exposes and rolls the eyeballs, clenches the fist, 

 and induces a violent action and more or less rigidity of the 

 muscles generally." 



