246 THE FEELINGS AND EMOTIONS 
feels that the interest has somehow shifted. Still more dimly 
does the animal feel that, apart from external interests which 
prompt nine-tenths of its behaviour, chiefly through the senses 
of sight, hearing, and smell, there are also matters in which 
the interest has somehow shifted to his own body. For the 
germ of self is essentially an embodied self. And perhaps 
the emotions, which ring through the system for some time 
after the external cause has been removed, serve in some degree 
to aid in this dimly felt shifting of interest. 
Whatever may be the exact psychological nature of the 
emotions—and there has been much discussion of the question 
—it may be regarded as certain that they introduce into the 
conscious situation elements which contribute not a little to 
the energy of behaviour. They are important conditions to 
vigorous and sustained conation. And so closely interwoven 
are these elements with the whole situation in its impulsive 
aspect, that their disentanglement, in psychological analysis, 
is a matter of extreme difficulty. I have elsewhere * devoted 
some space to the consideration of the matter. I there follow 
Professor William James in regarding organic effects, other 
than motor sensations, as specially characteristic of the emotions 
in their primary genesis. The cold sweat, the dry mouth, the 
catch of the breath, the grip of the heart, the abdominal 
sinking, the blood-tingle or blood-stagnation—these and their 
like, in varied modes and degrees, characterize the emotions 
of fear, dread, anger, and so forth, when they rise to any pitch 
of intensity, and contribute largely to their sharpness and 
piquancy. These organic effects may be regarded as part of 
the private and individual business of the body ; but in ex- 
perience they closely coalesce with the motor effects through 
which the animal has to deal in practical behaviour with 
that which evokes the emotion. 
On this view these organic states which contribute cha- 
racteristic elements in the emotional consciousness are due to 
afferent data from the vascular system and visceral organs, 
just as motor consciousness is due to afferent data from the 
* “ Habit and Instinct,” ch. ix., p. 186. ; 
