Emotion 45 



of environment proved advantageous. The 

 new animal might be larger than the old, and 

 yet the initial effect of the emotion forcing the 

 change might be dwarfing. 



Struggle thus breeds emotion, not strength. 

 Wherever it has long prevailed, emotion is 

 the dominant force in fixing social or animal 

 relations. In an old, established environment, 

 people are not strong, rational, and inventive. 

 The hard-pressed races are emotional. They 

 believe in chance and luck, and their acts are 

 detrimental to their adjustment. The test 

 of the presence of emotion is the irrationality 

 of action. Of acts that are nearly alike in 

 their effects, the one will be done and the 

 other avoided. There is thus a narrowing 

 of voluntary deeds, and marked limits are put 

 on choice and consumption. If these are 

 tests of emotion, all hard-pressed animals 

 show by their acts that they are highly emo- 

 tional. They narrow their choices, limit the 

 range of their food, and act on arbitrary signs 

 of the presence of enemies or dangers. In- 

 stead of being forced down to the limit of 

 population by starvation or disease, they nar- 



