It is obvious that extended action of the sympathetic division, abolishing those influences of the cranial division which are favorable to proper digestion and nutrition, might defeat its own ends. Interruption of the nutritional process for the sake of self-preservation through defense or attack can be only temporary; if the interruption were prolonged, there might be serious danger to the vigor of the organism from failure to replenish the exhausted stores. The body does not have to depend on the return of a banished appetite, however, before its need for restoration is attended to. There is a secondary and very insistent manner in which the requirement of food is expressed, and that is through the repeated demands of hunger.
Unlike many other rhythmically repeated sensations, hunger is not one that anybody becomes accustomed to and neglects because of its monotony. During the period of his confinement in the citadel of Magdeburg, the celebrated political adventurer Baron von Trenck[4] was allowed only a pound and a half of ammunition bread and a jug of water as his daily ration. “It is impossible for me to describe to my reader,” he wrote in his memoirs, “the excess of tortures that during eleven months I endured from ravenous hunger. I could easily have devoured six pounds of bread every day; and every twenty-four hours, after having received and swallowed my small portion, I continued as hungry as before I began, yet I was obliged to wait another twenty-four hours for a new morsel.... My tortures prevented sleep, and looking into futurity, the cruelty of my fate seemed to me, if possible, to increase, for I imagined that the prolongation of pangs like these was insupportable. God preserve every honest man from sufferings like mine! They were not to be endured by the most obdurate villain. Many have fasted three days, many have suffered want for a week or more, but certainly no one besides myself ever endured it in the same excess for eleven months; some have supposed that to eat little might become habitual, but I have experienced the contrary. My hunger increased every day, and of all the trials of fortitude my whole life has afforded, this eleven months was the most bitter.”[*]
[*] In all probability the continued experience of hunger pangs reported by Baron von Trenck was due to the repeated eating of amounts of food too small to satisfy the bodily demand. The reader will recall that persons who for some time take no food whatever report that the disagreeable feelings are less intense or disappear after the third or fourth day (see [p. 238]).
Thus, although the taking of food may be set in abeyance at times of great excitement, and the bodily reserves fully mobilized, that phase of the organism’s self-protecting adjustment is limited, and then hunger asserts itself as an agency imperiously demanding restoration of the depleted stores.
The Similarity of Visceral Effects in Different Strong Emotions and Suggestions as to its Psychological Significance
The dominant emotions which we have been considering as characteristically expressed in the sympathetic division of the autonomic system are fear and rage. These two emotions are not unlike. As James[5] has indicated, “Fear is a reaction aroused by the same objects that arouse ferocity.... We both fear and wish to kill anything that may kill us; and the question which of the two impulses we shall follow is usually decided by some one of those collateral circumstances of the particular case, to be moved by which is the mark of superior mental natures.” The cornering of an animal when in the headlong flight of fear may suddenly turn the fear to fury and the flight to a fighting in which all the strength of desperation is displayed.
Furthermore, these dominant emotions are states into which many other commonly milder affective states may be suddenly transformed. As McDougall[6] has pointed out, all instinctive impulses when met with opposition or obstruction give place to, or are complicated by, the pugnacious or combative impulse directed against the source of the obstruction. A dog will bristle at any attempt to take away his food, males will fight furiously when provoked by interference with the satisfaction of the sexual impulse, a man will forget the conventions and turn hot for combat when there is imputation against his honor, and a mother all gentle with maternal devotion is stung to quick resentment and will make a fierce display of her combative resources, if anyone intentionally injures her child. In these instances of thwarted or disturbed instinctive acts the emotional accompaniments—such as the satisfaction of food and of sexual affection, the feeling of self-pride, and the tender love of a parent—are whirled suddenly into anger. And anger in one is likely to provoke anger or fear in the other who for the moment is the object of the strong feeling of antagonism. Anger is the emotion preëminently serviceable for the display of power, and fear is often its counterpart.
The visceral changes which accompany fear and rage are the result of discharges by way of sympathetic neurones. It will be recalled that these neurones are arranged for diffuse rather than for narrowly directed effects. So far as these two quite different emotions are concerned, present physiological evidence indicates that differences in visceral accompaniments[*] are not noteworthy—for example, either fear or rage stops gastric secretion (see [pp. 10], 11). There is, indeed, obvious reason why the visceral changes in fear and rage should not be different, but rather, why they should be alike. As already pointed out, these emotions accompany organic preparations for action, and just because the conditions which evoke them are likely to result in flight or conflict (either one requiring perhaps the utmost struggle), the bodily needs in either response are precisely the same.
[*] Obvious vascular differences, as pallor or flushing of the face, are of little significance. With increase of blood pressure from vasoconstriction, pallor might result from action of the constrictors in the face, or flushing might result because constrictors elsewhere, as, for example, in the abdomen, raised the pressure so high that facial constrictors are overcome. Such, apparently, is the effect of adrenin already described (see [p. 107]). Or the flushing might occur from local vasodilation. That very different emotional states may have the same vascular accompaniments was noted by Darwin (The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals, New York, 1905), who mentioned the pallor of rage (p. 74) and also of terror (p. 77).
In discussing the functioning of the sympathetic division I pointed out that it was roused to activity not only in fear and rage, but also in pain. The machinery of this division likewise is operated wholly or partially in emotions which are usually mild—such as joy and sorrow and disgust—when they become sufficiently intense. Thus, for instance, the normal course of digestion may be stopped or quite reversed in a variety of these emotional states.