410 MENTAL FUNCTION 



moral, esthetic, is only to erect wholly artificial barriers between a multi- 

 tude of feelings many of which have the characteristics of two or even of 

 all of these. The student of ethnology will realize how closely allied at 

 their bases are some of the feelings, for example, of religion and of sex, 

 and the dividing line between the esthetic and the sensuous feelings is like- 

 wise quite indefinite. The feelings have not yet been described because 

 so numerous, so complex, and in some cases so indefinite. A few of the 

 stronger and more elaborate of the emotions, such as joy, anger, grief, 

 hate, shame, surprise, contempt, have very well-defined phenomena, and 

 descriptions of some of these are to be found in the technical literature 

 and monographs. The majority of the lesser emotions and the feelings 

 into which they merge have no such marked characters, bodily and mental, 

 and remain for physiology something like a chaos of ill-defined activities. 

 One principle, however, seems common to them all : each tends to involve 

 actions which either by the nerves or the circulation or both often im- 

 plicates every portion of the body. The bodily aspect of a feeling or an 

 emotion, then, is not a matter of activity in a few muscles or a few nerves. 

 Changes in blood-pressure, diffusion in the central nervous system, 

 local vaso-motions, affections of the alimentary, respiratory, muscular, or 

 glandular systems, involve practically the whole unified body more or less 

 in every feeling or emotion of fair intensity. The recent work with the 

 reflecting galvanometer (Morton Prince) shows how intimately related 

 are the electrical resistance of the organism and affective excitement 

 even of the lowest degrees. Such physical facts open up wide regions for 

 the study of the relations of mind and body. (See also below, p. 418.) 



Willing. The second or willing aspect of the mental function is 

 denoted often by the synonymous terms volition, conation, or action. 

 From the purely biological point of view the will of any animal is basally 

 its vital principle. Its will to live is the sum of its exceedingly complex 

 vital processes, until by evolution this somatic phase of the living animal 

 merges into the psychological aspects of the will. We can no more draw 

 a sharply dividing line between the psychological will and the physiologi- 

 cal life-movements than we can between a subconscious sensation and 

 the nervous impulses, etc., related to it. Inasmuch, however, as the will 

 of an animal, man for example, is describable only through some sort of 

 movement, it is customary in modern times to discuss the will, as also 

 the emotions, in terms of the actions of the individual. 



From this point of view we speak of four aspects of volition. The first 

 of these is the reflex movement. Underlying this kind of activity there is 

 a mass of nervous influences for each one of the countless different reflex 

 actions, while directing this mass of sensori-motor influences is the 

 inevitable motor idea of the movement. This has already been described 

 under the head of kinesthesia in the two preceding chapters, and consists 

 of the traces left in the motor portions of the brain by the numberless 

 active and passive movements already made by the animal. In the case 

 of this reflex kind of willing the motor idea is subconscious: either 

 practically unconscious or of such a nature as to occupy some portion 



