340 ZOOLOGICAL PHILOSOPHY 



sudden and pressing needs, and cause him to carry out actions quite 

 independently of his will. 



I may add that, since the inner feeling may produce the agitations 

 in question, it follows that if the individual governs the emotions of 

 that inner feeUng, he may repress or moderate them and even prevent 

 their effects. This is how the inner feeUng of any individual is a 

 power, which leads him to act according to his needs and customary 

 inchnations. 



But when the emotions in question are so powerful as to cause an 

 agitation in the nervous fluid sufficient to affect the movements of 

 the portion contained in the cerebral hemispheres and also that which 

 controls the involuntary muscles, the individual then loses conscious- 

 ness, and suffers from syncope ; and the functions of his vital organs 

 are more or less deranged. 



Here then we seem to have reached great truths, which the philo- 

 sophers could never discover because they have not sufficiently 

 observed nature, and which the zoologists did not perceive because 

 they were too much occupied with matters of detail. We may at all 

 events affirm that the physical causes, indicated above, would be 

 capable of accounting for the phenomena of organisation into which 

 we are enquiring. 



In compliance with the ordinary rules for the exposition of ideas, 

 I now have to establish a fundamental distinction of the first im- 

 portance : I have already said that the inner feehng derives its 

 emotions from two quite different causes : 



1. From some intellectual operation culminating in an act of 

 will; 



2. From some sensation or impression, which causes a need to be 

 felt or a propensity to be followed, independently of the will. 



These two kinds of causes, which stir the inner feehng of the in- 

 dividual, show that there is really a distinction to be drawn among 

 the factors which control the movements of the nervous fluid in the 

 production of actions. 



In the first case, the emotion arises from an act of intelligence, 

 that is to say, from a judgment, which determines the will to act; 

 and the emotion then directs the movements of the available nervous 

 fluid in the direction impressed on it by the will. 



In the second case, on the contrary, the intelligence has no share 

 in the emotion of the inner feeling ; and this emotion directs the move- 

 ments of the nervous fluid in the direction demanded by the needs, 

 to which the sensations have given rise, and in the direction of the 

 acquired propensities. 



There is another fact to be named no less important than the fore- 



