Organic States That Are Not Usually Classed as Emotions

Something was said before about "organic states", under the general head of tendencies to reaction. Fatigue was an example. Now we could include fatigue under the term, "stirred-up state of the organism"; at least, if not precisely "stirred-up", it is uneasy. It is a deviation from the normal or neutral state. Also, it is often a conscious state, as when we speak of the "tired feeling"; not a purely cognitive state, either--not simply a recognition of the fact that we are fatigued--but a state of disinclination to work any longer. Though fatigue is thus so much like an emotion that it fits under our definition, it is not called an emotion, but a sensation or complex of sensations. After hard muscular work, the state of the muscles makes itself felt by "fatigue sensations", and the sum total of these, coming from many different muscles, makes up the complex sensation of fatigue. After prolonged mental work, there may be fatigue sensations from the eyes and perhaps from the neck, which is often fixed rigidly during strenuous mental activity; and there are perhaps other obscure fatigue sensations originating in other organs and contributing to the total sensation which we know as mental fatigue, or as general fatigue.

Many other organic states are akin to emotion in the same way. The opposite of fatigue, the "warmed-up" condition, brought on by a certain amount of activity after [{120}] rest, is a case in point. It is a deviation from the average or neutral condition, in the direction of greater readiness for activity. The warmed-up person feels ready for business, full of "ginger" or "pep"--in short, full of life. The name "euphoria" which means about the same as "feeling good", is given to this condition. Drowsiness is another of these emotion-like states; but hunger and thirst are as typical examples as any.