VARIOUS ORGANIC STATES, AND THE CONSCIOUS STATES THAT GO WITH THEM
Joy, sorrow, fear, anger, amusement, disgust and curiosity illustrate the meaning of the term "emotion". An emotion is a "moved" or stirred-up state of mind. Or, since almost any such state of mind includes also elements that are cognitive, like recognition of present objects or memories of the past, we might better speak of emotion as the stirred-up-ness present in a state of mind. The emotional part of the total state may be so strong as to overshadow all other components, or it may have less intensity down to zero.
Such is emotion from the introspective point of view; but it can also be observed objectively, and in fact there is more to say about it objectively than introspectively. What appears to introspection as the scarcely analyzable state of anger appears to the external observer as clenched fists, flushed face, labored breathing, tense muscles, loud voice, and many other describable details. Anger is a state of the organism, or state of the individual, rather than simply a state of mind.
We shall have a more comprehensive definition, then, if we substitute "state of the individual" for "state of mind", and say that emotion is a stirred-up state of the individual. It is a conscious state, however; an "unconscious emotion" would be practically a contradiction in terms. Not but that a person may be angry without knowing it. He may be [{119}] "unconscious of the fact" that he is angry; which simply means that he is not introspectively observing himself and analyzing his mental state. But it is impossible that his organic state shall be all stirred up and his mental state meanwhile perfectly calm and intellectual. In short, an emotion is a conscious stirred-up state of the organism.