462 PSYCHOLOO T. 



wound. In sufferers from heart-disease there is developed a psychic 

 excitability, which is often incomprehensible to the patients themselves, 

 but which comes from the heart's liability to palpitate. I said that the 

 very quality of the emotion is determined by the organs disposed to 

 participate in it. Just as surely as a dark foreboding, rightly grounded 

 on inference from the constellations, will be accompanied by a feeling 

 of oppression in the chest, so surely will a similar feeling of oppression, 

 when due to disease of the thoracic organs, be accompanied by ground- 

 less forebodings. So small a thing as a bubble of air rising from the 

 stomach through the oesophagus, and loitering on its way a few minutes 

 and exerting pressure on the heart, is able during sleep to occasion a 

 nightmare, and during waking to produce a vague anxiety. On the 

 other hand, we see that joyous thoughts dilate our blood-vessels, and 

 that a suitable quantity of wine, because it dilates the vessels, also dis- 

 poses us to joyous thoughts. If both the jest and the wine work to- 

 gether, they supplement each other in producing the emotional effect, 

 and our demands on the jest are the more modest in proportion as the 

 wine takes upon itself a larger part of the task." * 



Second Objection. If our theory be true, a necessary 

 corollary of it ought to be this : that any voluntary and 

 cold-blooded arousal of the so-called manifestations of a 

 special emotion ought to give us the emotion itself. Now 

 this (the objection says) is not found to be the case. An 

 actor can perfectly simulate an emotion and yet be inwardly 

 cold ; and we can all pretend to cry and not feel grief ; 

 and feign laughter without being amused. 



Beply. In the majority of emotions this test is inappli- 

 cable ; for many of the manifestations are in organs over 

 which we have no voluntary control. Few people in pre- 

 tending to cry can shed real tears, for example. But, 

 within the limits in which it can be verified, experience 

 corroborates rather than disproves the corollary from our 

 theory, upon which the present objection rests. Every 

 one knows how panic is increased by flight, and how the 

 giving way to the symptoms of grief or anger increases 

 those passions themselves. Each fit of sobbing makes the 

 sorrow more acute, and calls forth another fit stronger still, 

 until at last repose only ensues with lassitude and with the 



* Op. cit. p. 72. — Lange lays great stress on the neurotic drugs, as parts 

 of his proof that influences of a physical nature upon the body are the 

 first thing in order in the production of emotions. 



