24 Journal of Comparative Neurology. 



Everyone of the bodily changes is felt acutely or obscurely the 

 moment it occurs. 



James says : "If v/e fancy some strong emotion, and then 

 try to abstract from our consciousness of it the feelings of bodily 

 symptoms, we find we have nothing left, " . . . " a cold 

 and neural state of intellectual perception is all that remains." 

 "The more closely I scrutinize my states, the more persuaded 

 I become that whatever moods, affections, and passions I have 

 are in very truth constituted by, and made up of, those bodily 

 changes which we ordinarily call their expression or conse- 

 quence." These quotations serve at least to emphasize the 

 importance of the corporeal element, however much they ignore 

 the cognitive element. The natural and logical criticism is that 

 the effect on consciousness, which is all we get out of feeling, is 

 wellnigh overlooked. 



Emotion consists (i) of general sensations of total, organic, 

 or irradiating varieties which have in common a lack of localiza- 

 tion and, as a result of associational laws, are amalgamated more 

 or less closely with the empirical ego ; (2) of more or less ex- 

 plicate or implicate cognitions (perceptions, intuitions) of the 

 relation between the cause of the sensation and our well-being ; 

 (3) the emotion is more or less closely attached to various impul- 

 sive expressions which tend in various ways to intensify the two 

 preceding. More in detail : The sensations are produced in most 

 cases by vaso-motor changes which, in turn, produce "total sen- 

 sations," usually entirely unlocalized and not necessarily distin- 

 guished apart from the feeling. Such sensations may be recogniz- 

 ed, and to some extent analyzed, by practice. They precede the 

 emotion proper and compose its sensational element. When one 

 lies half asleep in the morning and a loud report startles him, 

 the sudden surging of the blood to the periphery produces a 

 familiar but indescrible sensation, which may include tingling at 

 the finger-tips, a curious twinge in the axials, a suffocating sen- 

 sation in the chest, as more specific accompaniments. Then a 

 flash of fancy depicts the burglar in the kitchen and a scene of 

 bloodshed, danger to self, and the like ; now perhaps a strange 

 " gone " feeling in the abdomen, and a helpless atonic condition 



