The Emotions in their Relation to Instinct. 205 



■with the certain knowledge that it was there, failed, to 

 enable me to detect it. Proceeding cautiously forwards, I 

 soon became convinced that I had already overshot the 

 mark ; and on turning round, it was only to see the bird 

 rise like an apparition from the stones, and dashing past 

 the stranded boat regain the lake — where, having recovered 

 its wind, it instantly dived and disappeared." 



Now, here there are no less than four different activities, 

 swimming, diving, crouching, running, and yet, accom.- 

 panying them all, as we can scarcely doubt, a common 

 emotional state. To which, in an older bird, will be added 

 a fifth, escape by flight. Again I venture to suggest that 

 the little duckling had all the while a terrible sinking in its 

 little gizzard, and that in such cases similarity of visceral 

 elements may give community of emotional character to 

 conscious backgrounds of diverse nature so far as activity- 

 feelings by themselves are concerned. The fact that the 

 same activity-feelings may accompany very different 

 emotional states, when a bird runs, flies, or swims with 

 eagerness towards food or a mate, and when he uses 

 the same motor-activities in escaping from a dangerous 

 enemy; and the fact that the same or closely allied 

 emotional states may be accompanied by very different 

 activities, when a bird in fear runs, swims, dives, flies, 

 utters its alarm note, or crouches in silence ; these two 

 facts, taken in conjunction, lead me to go even farther than 

 Prof. James, and to suggest that the visceral back-stroke 

 is, genetically, not only by far the most essential feature 

 in the emotional state, but that it is what differentiates 

 the emotional state, as such, from the pleasure or pain 

 which may accompany the performance of bodily activities. 



One may well believe, however, that these visceral 

 elements have, in the course of evolution, become closely 

 associated with the performance of definite instinctive 



