MARSH WARBLER 



specially characteristic of emotion, as such, does not take its 

 origin in the motor elements ; and it becomes probable that 

 it is the visceral elements which afford the differentiae of 

 emotion. If so, it is not the instinct-feeling in its motor 

 aspect — what we may term the activity-feeling— that is con- 

 cerned in the primary genesis of an emotion, but rather the 

 concurrent and associated set of visceral actions. Let us see, 

 therefore, whether observations on the active and emotional 

 life of young birds throw any light upon this problem. Take 

 the case of a young frightened moorhen. On land he runs 

 away, and perhaps crouches in the rushes ; in the water he 

 dives, and comes up quietly under the bank and there stays 

 still. The activities involved in running and diving are very 

 different ; must not the activity feelings be very different too ? 

 And yet we must surely suppose them to have a common 

 emotional element. Again, when a moorhen catches sight of 

 a worm and runs hard to secure it, the activity-feelings must, 

 as such, one would suppose, be very similar to those experi- 

 enced when the moorhen runs vigorously away from a goose. 

 And yet in the one case he is frightened, and in the other case 

 he is not. Here similar activity-feelings are associated with 

 wholly different emotional states." Dr. Stout comments thus 

 on the above passage : * " But Lloyd Morgan and others seem 

 to suppose that visceral sensations at least are fairly constant 

 in the same emotion on different occasions and in different 

 circumstances. Now the problem is an obscure one; for 

 visceral sensations are difficult to investigate. But so far as 

 any distinct appeal to experience can be made, it seems that 

 they also may be more or less similar in different emotions, 

 and variable in the same emotion. The Maori women of New 

 Zealand when they meet for festive purposes enjoy themselves 

 by squealing and crying, so that a stranger would suppose 

 them to be in a state of intense grief. One traveller tells how 

 he was roused at night by the most doleful cries, and went 



1 " Manual of Psychology," p. 307. 

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