I. As for the fact of Dynamogenesis: what bearing has this principle upon the theory of emotion.? Much every way. We must bear in mind that this principle has always been acting, and always is acting, in every reaction we make; that our reactions have grown to be what they are in all cases by direct reflection of what we have received or experienced; that just as certain as it is that we are experiencing new things every instant of our lives, just so certain is it that we are expressing these new experiences in every reaction that we make. Every one is familiar with Professor James's view that our minds never have just the same contents twice over. Of course they do not. But the correlative fact has not had the same recognition. If we never experience the same twice, so we never act the same twice. The new x of content, added to the old c of content, must call out a new x of action, added to the old a of action. If then our reaction is always a -{-x, just as the content which it follows upon is c -^ x, then no reaction is ever that and that only which is guaranteed by habit, inheritance, and what not, in the past.
For it is easy to see that in every action of every organ- ism at every stage of development there are two elements of discharge; an element due to habit solely, the dis- The Theory of 'Enwfioual Expressiou! 227 charges which are let loose by the old quantity of content into the pathways fixed by association, and then, second, an element of new discharge due to the new quantity of content.
With this distinction in mind, we come to ask whether emotion is present in this state of things. Suppose we are taking a particular instance of fear when we know that it is present, and then ask what factor in this whole state of central process the emotion really corresponds to. We find several possible answers.
The emotion may be said, in the terms of one possible answer, to be due to the presence of the new elements of content; to the commotion made by new presentations, images, play of thoughts, etc., and the expression to be due to the passing off of this commotion to the muscles. The reply to this view seems easy when we remember that with the instinctive emotions, our case of the child's fear, it is a very old familiar thing, not a new thing at all, which excites the emotion; yet granted this, we still may say that the discharge due to the new elements of content in other cases of emotion, not so clearly instinctive, must on our view of excess discharge, give some feeling of either pleasure or pain, and it is possible that the pleasure or pain tone of all but the instinctive emotions arises in this way. It is an element in consciousness brought about by new accommodation conditions.
Yet this again may be disputed. One may admit the new element of discharge due to dynamogenesis, but then add a pertinent view. He may distinguish content + its expression, from content -\- feeling oi its expression; say- ing that there is no consciousness or feeling of the new element of motor process until it is itself reported as a 228 Motor Attitudes and Expressions.
new element of sensory content. Quite possible; it may be so, if the nervous system has developed that way. But we are convinced that it has not developed that way. We have found it necessary to hold that the pleasure repre- sents the heightened organic process from which the excess discharge which issues in dynamogeny is itself released. Of course, as has been said above, the effect of the dis- charge in movement is reported back in a new element of pleasure or pain, but that is only claiming for it in turn an influence upon the vital processes whose condition is the sole direct ground of pleasure-pain consciousness.
So we may safely say as the result of the action of dyna- mogenesis that there is in all emotion — as in every state f consciousness in which there are new elements of content — a tingeing of pleasure or pain due to the presence of these new elements of content; and that there are in all actions, under the same conditions, new elements of dis- charge which give part of the movements involved in the so-called expression of that state of consciousness.
II. With this result well in mind, let us inquire more fully into the influence of the second of our principles, Habit.
It is now evident that a motor reaction of any kind has always two stimulating antecedents: one the influence fixed by habit, and the other the influence of the new ele- ments of content presented by the environment. But we know that habit tends to make reactions automatic and reflex; and that consciousness tends to evaporate from such reactions. As I put it long ago, "psychologically, it [Habit] means loss of oversight, diffusion of attention, subsiding consciousness." ^ Hence we must admit that the The Theory of 'Emotional Expression' 229 reactions most dominated by habit — the smoothest, most inherited, most instinctive reactions — have least conscious- ness. And, on the other hand, where habit is least influ- ential, where the content is largely new, where the pleasure or pain of its assimilation is great, where attention and effort are strained, where excitement runs high — in all these cases tlie stimulating influence is new, one which has not yet been brought under the influence of habit, and so one which adds a new dynamogenic influence to the reaction.
It turns out, however, that just those 'expressive' reac- tions which are most instinctive and reflex (fear, anger, joy, etc.) really do carry with them most of the conscious- ness which we call emotion — certainly vivid and disturbed enough. What then shall we say } Either that there are really present other new elements of content additional to the regular antecedents of the reflex; or that the emotion is not the antecedent of the expression at all, but that the reverse is true — the emotion is consequent upon the expression. We cannot hold to the former alternative. Where are the adequate stimulants in conscious content, new or old, to the newly hatched chick's wild fear of the hawk } So we must take the other alternative, and Jiand over all this class of reactions to the theory which holds that the emotion, as far as it has fixed instinctive forms of ex- pression, follows upon the expression. I have no hesita- tion, therefore, in adopting the ' effect ' theory of emotion recently announced by Lange and James as regards in- herited emotional expression excited by constant definite objects of presentation.
Emotion is, on this view, therefore, no exception to our law of ontogenetic growth: the law that that which is 230 Motor Attitudes and Expressions.
habitual is accompanied by least consciousness. The high consciousness in emotion is a reflex effect. But we would expect, on the other hand, that in all the ideal states of mind, in all the new complications of content to which the attention has to get adjusted, in all emotional states which do not attach immediately and unreflectively to conscious objects of presentation, — that in all these cases the excit- ing influence should have the dynamogenic effect already noted, and so give elements of expression over and above the reactions due to habit.
Reverting, now, to our fancied situation, a state of emotion in actual operation, we find that we have made certain simplifications. The pleasure or pain of it is, at least in part, due to the presence of new elements in the object which causes the emotion; the expression of it is due, at least in part, to the new discharges let loose by the central process corresponding to this pleasure or pain; the expression is further due, certainly in part, to old reactions or habits of movement which have become com- mon in the presence of this object or others of its class; and the quality of the emotion, the character it has as making it different from other emotions, is due, certainly in part, to the feeling of these factors of the expression actually taking place. So far, then, we have accounted for something of the pleasure or pain of an emotion, some- thing of its expression, and something of its peculiar quality or character. Can we do more } Let us see what we can get out of our third principle, ' Accommodation.'
III. The law of Accommodation has appeared to us to be operative in two ways: first, as expressing the mode of each new adaptation under the action of dynamogene- sis, — the organism adapts itself by the selection, from The Theory of 'Emotional Expression'. 231 excess discharges, of movements fittest to aid vitality, — this is one aspect of accommodation; and it also secures by the action of association, the repetition and permanent fixing of these fittest movements in great habits whicli are the regular utility reactions, reflexes, instincts, fixed expressions, etc., of the organism, — this is the other aspect of accommodation. Now, the bearing of the second of these aspects of accommodation on the theory of emo- tion gives us great expectations at once, for it enables us to bring into its complex conditions all of the organic and mental elements which are regularly associated with those factors already pointed out. Let us look a little at details.
We found that a new object served to bring new vitality conditions, new pleasure or pain, new movements by dynamogenesis. But these new elements only get fixed for recurrence as they fit into old adjustments, caus- ing differentiations of them. But this means that the new gets associated with the old; so that when it comes again, all the old which its presence touched on the former occasion now clusters to the front in company with it. I tremble and fly at the sight of a lion, because he reminds me of a lion's power and disposition; and my attitudes in the presence of such formidable creatures are those of trembling and flight. So, in brief, we have a great mass of associated elements, both of content and of movement, rushing into consciousness in consequence of every new adjustment, and in addition to its present intrinsic motor and emotional value. This gives more quality and more pleasure or pain to the state of emotion.
This principle applies directly, also, to all the organic, visceral, conaesthetic, sensations so vividly present and 232 Motor Altitudes and Expressions.
soul-filling in many emotions. All habitual reactions in states of emotion, as they become more reflex, and hence less conscious in their actual carrying out, yet come to give, nevertheless, by their return wave upon conscious- ness, overpowering floods of organic sensation. I think it is due to the fact that it is by muscular movements of ex- cess with accommodation, by violent, often long-continued, protective or offensive reactions, that violent pleasure and pain conditions of vitality were originally reflected in action, in the history of animal life. This exhaustive muscular process taxed for its maintenance all the organic processes, — heart, lungs, etc., — so that a great mass of organic sensations were thrown into consciousness, and by unbroken association came to stand themselves, in union with muscular sensations, for the damaging or beneficial kinds of stimulation that at first excited pleasure or pain, even when the object actually present has no intrinsic emotional value. And as far as they were themselves vitahzing and devitalizing, they are directly hedonic, and so go on to increase their own good or bad effect. It is thus probable that in our more violent organic reactions in emotion, the organism is recapitulating in amount the wear and tear of the long processes of offence or defence that animal forms were accustomed to go through when they met the objects which now tend to excite these emotions and sensations in us.
This element explains most of what is usually called 'emotional expression,' and we now see that it explains most of the quality and much of the pleasure and pain of all those emotions which have instinctive expression. So far, then, the body of emotion is largely filled up with consciousness of habitual actions actually shooting off, The Theory of 'Emotional Expression' 233 these habits being, in their origin and gradual formation in race experience, selections, all the way through, from excess reactions springing from different vital conditions. Certain laws of their development have been formulated by Darwin and others; laws which answer the great ques- tion why a particular emotion is present when particular bodily attitudes, vaso-motor changes, visceral sensations, are also present. This I speak of further below.
And the other aspect of the principle of accommodation lets in more light on emotion. In this aspect of accom- modation— named first in order above — we find the sphere of new adjustments secured by the constant modi- fication and differentiation of old ones. There is a great field of such accommodation in the fact and function of attention, a thing of such clear mental value and such wide bearings that special sections are devoted below ^ to its rise and development. Here and now I can only assume what is there argued for, and note the relation of the attention, considered as mental function of accommo- dation, to emotion.
Consciousness, we have seen, is the new thing in nature — the thing by which organisms show in all cases their latest and finest adjustments. And the central fact of consciousness, its prime instrument, its selective agent, its seizing, grasping, relating, assimilating, apperceiving — in short, its accommodating element and process — is attention. This all current psychology admits. And all psychology which is aware of its genetic problems will also admit a further point; this — that in the life of the higher organisms, such as pre-eminently human life, the mind has superseded all other agencies and processes 1 Below, Chap. X., § 3, and Chap. XV.
2 34 Motor Attitudes and Expressio7is, in aiding and securing adjustments to environment. If these two things be admitted, — the points, to repeat, that mind is nature's great accommodating agent, and that at- tention is mind's great accommodating agent, — then it follows that the law of accommodation must get its appli- cation almost exclusively, in higher organisms, in connec- tion with acts of attention.
Now in the later chapter referred to, it is shown beyond a peradventure, in my opinion, that attention is simply the form which the 'excess' process, found in our earlier discussions to be the means of all organic accommodation, has taken on in habitual connection with memory, imagina- tion, and thought. The attention process is a motor reac- tion, involving all the elements of such reactions to a mental content, as these reactions have become, by habit, crystallized in certain relatively fixed forms of reverbera- tion, muscular contraction, etc. Just what elements are involved in it — that comes up later. Here we assume this doctrine of attention, and go on to ask its relation to our present topic, emotion.
We see at the outset that if attention is the habitual form of mental accommodation, that what we have said about the factors found in lower emotion — the factors all of which are genetic elements present together, height- ened dynamogenesis, reflex feelings of discharge, asso- ciated organic disturbances flooding consciousness — must be true also of attention. That is, every act of attention must give all these factors in kind, but on a higher level — a level at which the stimulus which claims attention is now a mental image, memory, an idea.
We should have heightened dynamogenesis, looking at the matter in some detail, first felt as pleasure and pain TJie Theory of 'Emotional Expression! 235 in the activity of attention itself in receiving, holding, using new ideas. This is just what psychology does find and calls ' ideal ' pleasure and pain; and it is the basis of the doctrine of Ward and the Herbartians that the play of ideas is the locus of all hedonic consciousness. Ideal pleasure, simply as such, abstracted — as of course in fact it cannot be — from all qualities in the content is, on the physical side, heightened nervous process in the organic seat of the higher content attended to. It is just the same, for ideas, that lower pleasure is for sensation contents.
Second, we ought to have certain qualitative elements brought into consciousness from the habitual contractions, etc., of attention itself; the attention is, in large part, certain constant reflex contractions — of brow, and glottis, movements of skin of skull, etc., together with the organic sensations of the vital processes associated with these. This is again so evidently the case, that we find certain qualities of feeling, called 'emotions of function,' con- nected with movements of the attention: the sense of contraction or expansion, of fatigue, of effort, of freshness, of curiosity, of interest, etc.
Then, third, a true analysis of attention shows that there are certain refinements of attention, whereby the ele- ments which go to make it up vary very markedly accord- ing to the character of the idea or object attended to. There is visual attention to visual ideas, and auditory attention to auditory ideas, motor attention to ideas of movement, etc., each made up of its own refined system of contractions and organic effects, inside of the wider circle of contractions and effects which make them all acts of attention in the generic sense. Now, in as far as these smaller refinements of effect get themselves 236 Motor Attitudes and Expressions, grouped into relatively independent habits, just so far they contribute new quality to the whole psychosis which the given object or idea, claiming the attention at the moment, wraps about itself. And these qualities consti- tute the higher emotional states which we call sentiments, higher feelings, the aesthetic, the ethical, the religious, etc.i The theory of development, in short, requires that we distinguish the hedonic from the qualitative element in higher emotion. Intellect could not have developed in the first place, nor have become the magnificent engine of organic accommodation, through volition, which it is, if in- tellectual, aesthetic, and ^X\\\q.2\ pleasures were only the reso- nance of instinct reflexes. Yet even here the qualitative marks, the kind of excitement, the main psychosis apart from the pleasures and pains of new apprehensions, knowl- edges, curiosities, are just as surely, and for the same genetic reasons, the resonance of instinct reflexes as are the gross fixed expressions of anger, fear, etc., in animals.
So, taking stock of our net outcome, we find that our principles of development have, assuming the develop- ment itself, told us to expect a group of elements in consciousness at certain stages of evolution. And when we come to examine and analyze consciousness at these stages, we find that these elements so grouped are just what we ordinarily lump together and call emotion. And the predominance of one or other element in a marked degree in a particular case is entirely the ground of differ- ence between this case and others, and is entirely a phe- nomenon of relative development. The infant, and the ^ The reader may consult the classification and treatment of the emotions given in my Handbook of Psychology, Vol. II., Chaps. VIII. ff.
Hcdonic Expression and its Law. 237 animal which has not that highest engine of accommoda- tion,— attention, — have the reflex, habit-born, organic thing called, it is true, emotion; but its quality is 'rank,' unreasonable, urgent, a matter of nerves and instinct. And that is all the infant has, except the pleasures and pains which are also sensations, or qitales of sensation.
But the man — the child plus mind — has the higher agent of accommodation, attention, and that supreme form of attention called volition; his emotion has added ele- ments, not different in kind, but only in level, and in relative freedom from the grosser implications of organic habit. He has refined emotions about his thoughts, his ideas, his ideals, his duties, his gods.
My conclusion then is that emotion is, in all cases, this: pleasure and pain of accommodation, plus pleasure and pain of habit, plus a certain lot of qualities contributed to consciousness by more or less habitual processes of muscle, organ, and gland, going on at the time.
And the expression of emotion is, in all cases, this: certain more or less habitual processes going on in the organism, plus elements of muscular and bodily contraction due to present pleasure and pain. That is all.^ § 3. Hedonic Expression and its Law.
In the preceding section of this chapter we found two questions implicated in this matter of expression: one of them we have now attempted to answer, that which con- ^ A partial development of this general view, with special reference to cur- rent theories of emotion, is to be found in my article, ' The Origin of Emotional Expression,' in The Psychological Review, I., November, 1894, P- 610. I am glad to say that my conclusions are very near to those reached, by analysis, by William James in his latest formulation (see the same Review, I., Septem- 238 Motor Attitudes and Expressions, cerns itself with the psycho-physics of emotion as a phenomenon of consciousness taken generally. We now come to the second question. It brings up for our con- sideration the fact of particular expressions as attaching to particular emotional states, and asks how it is that each such particular instance of organic and muscular expres- sion could have arisen and come to be what it is.
I. It has become evident that the general principles of development apply to all expressions, and that in explain- ing any particular case we have only to ask what aspect of development is predominantly concerned. At the same time it must be equally true that all such aspects, how- ever we may find it necessary to consider them as sep- arate principles to explain different classes of phenomena, must nevertheless have their common basis in the one original fact of contractility, with the modifications and adjustments which it undergoes in phylogenetic evolution.
Now it has become plain that all motor-discharge, as far as it is differentiated at all, gets to be so as an index of waxing and waning life processes of nutrition, etc. And we have seen that the waxing and the waning must have been equally original wherever life was present at all. This waxing and waning life process must reflect itself in the movements of the organism, giving two great types of movement in all life, however low in the biological scale. And we have found it possible in the examination of higher forms of life in which consciousness with pleas- ure and pain are clearly present, to classify the organic ber, 1894, p. 516); conclusions which, I think, are not just the same as those of the chapter on * Emotion,' in his Principles of Psychology. The psychologi- cal doctrine of the rise and progress of emotion in the child — its ontogenesis — I am treating in detail, in addition to what is said in Chap. XL § 2, below, in my early volume of ' Interpretations.'
Ilabitual Hlotor Attitudes. 239 manifestations correlative to pleasure and pain under a similar twofold effect on organic and muscular movement. So it has been simply the logic of fact which has led us to say that this twofold type of movement, showing rela- tive vitality in lower organisms and relative pleasure in the higher, is one and the same phenomenon; and that even in the lowest forms of life, waxing and waning vital processes are to be considered as the physiological ana- logue of the pleasure-pain consciousness.
In this fundamental division of movements, therefore, expansions, heightened motor energy, and excess discharge, on the one hand, and contractions, lowered energy, inhib- ited discharge, on the other hand, we have what I venture to call 'hedonic expression,' with the law of its twofold manifestation. Inside of this all further differentiations of movement must arise as special adaptations. It remains to examine them further with a view to the understanding of their rise; and in connection with them further light may be expected upon this general condition of them.
§ 4. Habit iLal Motor Attitudes.
The teleology of all special adaptations of movement — the reason for their existence, the end which they would have in view provided they could think and speak — now becomes plainer than it was before. This end is not in any sense expression. The organism has no special ten- dency to show itself off, no means of acquiring systems of ' signs ' to show what is in consciousness beforehand. The only such signs are these very differences of move- ment in type, which correspond to waxing and waning vitality — to pleasure and pain. These are expressive 240 Motor Attitudes and Expressions.
because, and only because, they are different, and so reflect differences in the processes which issue in them. The subsequent modifications of movement of any and of every kind, have quite a different origin. They have in view the adaptation of the organism in further detail to the conditions under which the life process exists. Their end, each of them, is to keep up the stimulations which secure the waxing, and to avoid those which bring about the waning of life. How can they be expressions of what is not yet secured or avoided } Of course, all movements which do secure one of these ends, and so become fixed as habits in the organism, may and do then become signs of the effects on the organism which it is their office to secure, and we may then reverse the order of rise of the two factors and consider, for convenience, the life process cause and the movements which are really means to it, effect. This is what the phrase 'emotional expression' does. But the 'expressions' of emotion, as we have already seen, are — apart from the dynamogenic issue of pleasure and pain — not caused by the emotion at all. The emotion is the outcome of them.
As far, therefore, as there is any true expression, as far as there are any movements which are really in their origin the characteristic outcome of what is beforehand in the mind, it is all summed up in the one antithesis with which life begins: that between organic and vital expansion as expressing pleasure, and organic and vital depression as expressing pain.
This may be put in the general statement already made, that all expression, properly so-called, is Jiedonic expression, which is the reflection, in the organic and muscular func- tions, of the relative influence of experience of any kind Habitual Motor Attitudes, 241 upon the vitality of the organism. It comes vividly before us in detail in the later chapter on ' Organic Imitation,' a phrase which simply serves to indicate the general method by which, through this one form of expression, the organ- ism works its new adaptations.
The particular organic and muscular states which are associated with the emotions, such as fear, anger, etc., and called popularly their expression, must have arisen not, as we now see, as expressions of anything, but as co-ordina- tions and associations of reactions which proved useful to the organism in maintaining and improving its vitality. All of them, then, were originally utility reactions, and arose each in its place, and the system of them as a whole, as special adaptations. They fall under the theory of adapta- tion and exhibit particular instances of it.
So the question of the rise of these groups of movement takes a new form, and its answer comes to require that each such so-called expression shall be shown in its origin to have been useful to the organism in certain conditions of its environment.
This detailed inquiry evidently belongs to the general theory of organic evolution. Darwin has himself examined the various instinctive 'expressions' in detail,^ and proved, beyond a question, that most of them were originally use- ful ways of reacting in the storm and stress of maintaining, defending, and extending life. Further aid in this tracing of the evolution of expression has been afforded by those investigators who have analyzed the anatomical and physi- ological conditions of each such group of effects.^ The results of their work have not been entirely success- 1 Expression of the Emotions.
2 Bell, The Anatomy of Expression; Mantagazza, in several monographs.
R 242 Motor Attitudes and Express i< ons.
fill, however, as concerns details; since there has always remained over a residue of well-marked effects, accompany- ing equally well-marked emotional states, which could not be shown to have been useful to man or animal. Darwin himself formulated the principle which states the one real organic requirement, namely, the utility of a group of move- ments in the life-history of the organism. But he did not stop here. He found it necessary to place beside this prin- ciple certain others, which served to explain the cases to which the utility formula could not be made to apply.
Darwin's principle of 'serviceable associated habits,' how- ever, is all that the case really demands when we come to get an adequate view of the process of development. It is now my aim to show that the theory of development stated in earlier pages of this book enables us to restate the results of Darwin's work, so as to include all cases under the one great principle of * serviceable associated habit,' taken to- gether with that of ' hedonic expression ' already explained.
II. The series of facts which gave Darwin greatest trouble are those which he gathered together under his * law of antithesis ': cases of animal attitudes in certain emotional situations, which seemed to be capable of serving no useful purpose of any kind to the animal, but which were very clearly just the reverse of other attitudes, which went with the opposite emotions and were evidently useful in connection with those emotions. For example, — to cite one of the cases so powerfully illustrated in the photographic copies reproduced in Darwin's book, — a dog in anger strikes certain attitudes of defence, such as general rigidity of muscle, high back, bristling of hair, retracted lip, forward ears, etc., — all of direct use in a fight with his enemy. But the dog's attitudes when he feels friendly and wel- Habittcal Motor AttiUidcs. 243 comes his master are just the reverse — general Umber- ing of muscles, flexible turnings of body, lowering of back, fawning, backing of ears, close-lying hair, etc. The emo- tion is antithetic, so the expression is also; that is the only reason, practically, which Darwin could give for the animal's attitude in the second case.