190 Habit and Instinct. 



right to strike, but we should not actually feel afraid or 

 angry." 



No doubt Prof. James has here stated his case with 

 almost paradoxical emphasis, so as to bring out the anti- 

 thesis between his own view and that which is commonly 

 held. As a slyly humorous critic observed at a scientific 

 meeting when Prof. James's view was under discussion, 

 '* One might as well say that a man was ill because he 

 took the doctor's medicine instead of taking the stuff 

 because he was ill." And, indeed, there is one important 

 qualification which should be introduced,* and which serves 

 to make the conception somewhat less repugnant to common 

 sense. Tony has had some practical experience of the 

 ways and behaviour of the butcher's cur and other dogs of 

 that type. Let us grant that the primary genesis of the 

 emotion they evoke was by backstroke ; let us grant that 

 it was due to a secondary brain-commotion produced by 

 motor and visceral action ; let us grant, in a word, that 

 Prof. James's theory holds good for the first experience of 

 the emotion in question. What, however, about the second 

 and all subsequent experiences ? Association will have 

 stepped in and exercised its modifying influence. We 

 have seen that a chick which seizes a juicy worm gains 

 thereby a bit of experience in the light of which worms 

 become the more alluring, since the sight of them at once 

 calls up through association a re-presentation of this juici- 

 ness, a sort of anticipatory savour soon to be reinforced by 

 the actual taste of the worm. In the case of an emotion, 

 on the backstroke hypothesis, the same kind of effect will 

 be produced by association. After the first experience 

 through which the secondary brain-commotion had its 



* In the Psychological Review for September, 1894 — in which references 

 to some of the leading criticisms of his theory are given — Prof. James him- 

 self insists on the effects of association (see p. 518). 



