Feeling and Will.—Although, as pointed out in the last paragraph, there is a certain antagonism between knowing and feeling, it has also been seen that every experience has its knowing as well as its feeling side. Because of this co-ordination, the qualities of our feeling states become known to us, or are able to be distinguished by the mind. As a result of this recognition of a difference in our feeling states, we learn to seek states of pleasure and to avoid states of pain or, in other words, our mere states of feeling become desires. This means that we become able to contrast a present feeling with other remembered states, and seek either to continue the present desired state or to substitute another for the present undesirable feeling. In the form of desire, therefore, our feelings become strong motives, which may influence the will to certain lines of action.
SENSUOUS FEELINGS
While the sensations of the special senses, namely, sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell, have each their affective, or feeling, side, a minute study of these feelings is not necessary for our present purpose. It may be noted, however, that in the more intellectual senses, namely, sight, hearing, and touch, feeling tone is less marked, although strong feeling may accompany certain tactile sensations. In the lower senses of taste and smell, the feeling tone is more pronounced. Under muscular sensation we meet such marked feeling tones as fatigue, exertion, and strain, while associated with the organic sensations are such feelings as hunger and thirst, and the various pains which usually accompany derangement and disease of the bodily organs. Some of these feelings are important, because they are likely to influence the will by developing into desires in the form of appetites. Many sensuous feelings are important also because they especially warn the mind regarding the condition of the organism.
EMOTION
Nature of Emotion.—An emotion differs from sensuous feeling, not in its content, but in its higher intensity, its greater complexity, and its more elaborate motor response. It may be defined as a succession of interconnected feelings with a more complex physical expression than a simple feeling. On reading an account of a battle, one may feel sad and express this sadness only in a gloomy appearance of the face. But if one finds that in this battle a friend has been killed, the feeling is much intensified and may become an emotion of grief, expressing itself in some complex way, perhaps in tears, in sobbing, in wringing the hands. Similarly, a feeling of slight irritation expressed in a frowning face, if intensified, becomes the emotion of anger, expressed in tense muscles, rapidly beating heart, laboured breathing, perhaps a torrent of words or a hasty blow.
Emotion and Instinct.—Feeling and instinct are closely related. Every instinct has its affective phase, that is, its satisfaction always involves an element of pleasure or pain. The satisfaction of the instincts of curiosity or physical activity illustrates this fact. On the other hand, every emotion has its characteristic instinctive response. Fear expresses itself in all persons alike in certain characteristic ways inherited from a remote ancestry; anger expresses itself in other instinctive reactions; grief in still others.
CONDITIONS OF EMOTION
An analysis of a typical emotion will serve to show the conditions under which it makes its appearance. Let us take first the emotion of fear. Suppose a person is walking alone on a dark night along a deserted street. His nervous currents are discharging themselves uninterruptedly over their wonted channels, his current of thought is unimpeded. Suddenly there appears a strange and frightful object in his pathway. His train of thought is violently checked. His nervous currents, which a moment ago were passing out smoothly and without undue resistance into muscles of legs, arms, body, and face, are now suddenly obstructed, or in other words encounter violent resistance. He stands still. His heart momentarily stops beating. A temporary paralysis seizes him. As the nervous currents thus encounter resistance, the feeling tone known as fear is experienced. At the same time the currents burst their barriers and overflow into new channels that are easy of access, the motor centres being especially of this character. Some of the currents, therefore, run to the involuntary muscles, and in consequence the heart beats faster, the breathing becomes heavier, the face grows pale, a cold sweat breaks forth, the hair "stands on end." Other currents, through hereditary influences, pass to the voluntary muscles, and the person shrieks, and turns and flees.
Or take the emotion of anger. Some fine morning in school everything is in good order, everybody is industriously at work, the lessons are proceeding satisfactorily. The current of the teacher's experience is flowing smoothly and unobstructedly. Presently a troublesome boy, who has been repeatedly reproved for misconduct, again shows symptoms of idleness and misbehaviour. The smooth current of experience being checked, here also both a new feeling tone is experienced and the wonted nerve currents flow out into other brain centres. The teacher stops his work and gazes fixedly at the offending pupil. His heart beats rapidly, the blood surges to his face, his breathing becomes heavy, his muscles grow tense. In these reactions we have the nervous currents passing out over involuntary channels. Then, perhaps, the teacher unfortunately breaks forth into a torrent of words or lays violent hands upon the offender. Here the nervous currents are passing outward over the voluntary system.
These illustrations indicate that three important conditions are present at the appearance of the emotion, namely, (1) the presence of an unusual object in consciousness, (2) the consequent disturbance of the smooth flow of experience or, in physiological terms, the temporary obstruction of the ordinary pathways of nervous discharge through the great resistance encountered, and (3) the new feeling state with its concomitant overflow of the impulses into new motor channels, some of which lead to the involuntary muscles and others to the voluntary. The emotion proper consists in the feeling state which arises as a result of the resistance encountered by the nervous impulses as the smooth flow of experience is checked. The idea that I shall die some day arouses no emotion in me, because it in no way affects my ordinary thought processes, and therefore it in no way disturbs my nervous equilibrium. The perception of a wild animal about to kill me, because it suddenly thwarts and impedes the smooth flow of my experience through a suggestion of danger, produces an intense feeling and a diffused and intense derangement of the nervous equilibrium.