THE EMOTIONS. 463 



eluded from the life of the affections, harsh and tender 

 alike, and drag out an existence of merely cognitive or in- 

 tellectual form. Such an existence, although it seems to 

 have been the ideal of ancient sages, is too apathetic to ba 

 keenly sought after by those born after the revival of the 

 worship of sensibility, a few generations ago. 



Let not this view be called materialistic. It is neither 

 more nor less materialistic than any other view which says 

 that our emotions are conditioned by nervous processes. 

 No reader of this book is likely to rebel against such a 

 saying so long as it is expressed in general terms ; and 

 if any one still finds materialism in the thesis now de- 

 fended, that must be because of the special processes in- 

 voked. They are sensational processes, processes due to 

 inward currents set up by physical happenings. Such 

 processes have, it is true, alwaj^s been regarded by the 

 platonizers in psychology as having something peculiarly 

 base about them. But our emotions must always be in- 

 wardly what they are, whatever be the j)liysiological ground 

 of their apparition. If they are deep, pure, worthy, spirit- 

 ual facts on any conceivable theory of their physiological 

 source, they remain no less deep, pure, spiritual, and 

 worthy of regard on this present sensational theory. They 

 carry their own inner measure of worth with them ; and it 

 is just as logical to use the present theory of the emotions 

 for proving that sensational processes need not be vile and 

 material, as to use their vileness and materiality as a proof 

 that such a theory cannot be true. 



If such a theory is true, then each emotion is the result- 

 ant of a sum of elements, and each element is caused by a 

 physiological process of a sort already well known. The 

 elements are all organic changes, and each of them is the 

 reflex efi'ect of the exciting object. Definite questions now 

 immediately arise — questions very difi'erent from those 

 which were the only possible ones without this view. - "Jtiose 

 were questions of classification : " Which are the proper gen- 

 era of emotion, and which the species under each ?" or of 

 description : " By what expression is each emotion char- 

 acterized?" The questions now are caiisal: Just what 

 changes does this object and what changes does that object 



