14 Journal of Comparative Neurology. 



itself into feeling or affects, as the subjective valuation of that 

 which is objectively expressed by the idea or purpose." 



Dewey's article is valuable in making clear a difference of 

 usage which has given rise to constant misapprehension. Some, 

 like James, appear to mean by emotion only the " feel," let us 

 say of being angry, while others mean the whole affect or state 

 of anger of which the " feel " is, according to Dewey, a quale. 



To us it is self-obvious that as psychologists we have only 

 to deal with the conscious elements and however true it may 

 be that the " feel " has no existence by itself as a full-fledged 

 emotion-experience it is yet our obligation to treat it as dis- 

 tinct because we do instinctively abstract it from the impulses 

 following, as from the physiological causes or concomitants 

 though the latter may reflect themselves upon the feeling ele- 

 ment never so potently or complexly. 



A little careful analysis of James' theory shows that it 

 amounts to this : our feeling of emotion is the psychical appre- 

 hension of states of our own body. Well, so are all psychical 

 processes ! What are the differentia which separate feelings 

 from other such states ? James says the reflected results of re- 

 flexes somatic or muscular. But we ask again what are the 

 peculiarities of tJiese rather than other stimuli that adapt them 

 to produce emotions ? Surely there is nothing self-evident in 

 the suggestion that such reflexes are specially adapted to be 

 causes of emotion. We reply that these and any other stimuli 

 primary or secondary which tend to overflow the ordinary affer- 

 ent channels and pass through concatenated cellular series 

 acquire thereby a special character or summation power which 

 is precisely the physiological quale sought. As thus stated we 

 escape from many of the difficulties involved in an attempt to 

 limit feeling to a product of motor or somatic responses to a 

 stimulus. The shock which modifies the efferent apparatus is 

 at the same time affecting the afferent. 



We are then ready to foUov/ Professor Dewey for whom 

 the connotation of emotion is primarily ethical and only second- 

 arily psychical though we may think he is greatly enlarging its 

 rational extension in making it include a disposition and a way 



