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In the year 1884 Prof. Lange of Copenhagen and the present writer published, independently of each other, the same theory of emotional consciousness. They affirmed it to be the effect of the organic changes, muscular and visceral, of which the so-called 'expression' of the emotion consists. It is thus not a primary feeling, directly aroused by the exciting object or thought, but a secondary feeling indirectly aroused; the primary effect being the organic changes in question, which are immediate reflexes following upon the presence of the object. This idea has a paradoxical sound when first apprehended, and it has not awakened on the whole the confidence of psychologists. It may interest some readers if I give a sketch of a few of the more recent comments on it. Professor Wundt's criticism may be mentioned first* He unqualifiedly condemns it, addressing himself exclusively to Lange's version. He accuses the latter of being one of those psychologischen Scfuimrkldrungen which assume that science is satisfied when a psychic fact is once for all referred to a physiological ground. His own account of the matter is that the immediate and primary result of ' the reaction of Apperception f on any conscious-content' or object is a Geftihl (364). Gefiikl is an unanalyzable and simple process corresponding in the sphere of Gemiith to sensation in the • Philosophiscbe Studien, vi. 349, (1801). f la this article, as in the 4th edition of his Psychology, Wundt vaguely completes his volte-face concerning ' Apperception ' and dimly describes the latter in assoctationist terms. " Apperception is nothing really separable from the effects which it produces in the content of representation. In fact it consists of nothing but these concomitants and effects. [A thing that 'consists' of its concomitants !]. .. In each single apperceptive act the entire previous content of the conscious life operates as a sort of integral total force " (364, 365), etc. The whole account seems indistinguishable from pure Herbartism, in which Apperception is only a name for the interaction of the old and the new in consciousness, of which interaction feeling may be one result. 516 DISCUSSION. 517 sphere of intellection (359). But Gefuhle have the power of altering the course of ideas-inhibiting some and attracting others, according to their nature; and these ideas in turn produce both secondary Gefuhle and organic changes. The organic changes in turn set up additional sinnliche Gefuhle which fuse with the preceding ones and strengthen the volume of feeling aroused. This whole complex process is what Wundt calls an Affect or Emotion-a state of mind which, as he rightly says, 'has thus the power of intensifying itself (358-363). I shall speak later of what may be meant by the primary Gefuhl thus described. Wundt in any case would seem to be certain both that it is the essential part of the emotion, and that currents from the periphery cannot be its organic correlate. I should say, granting its existence, that it falls short of the emotion proper, since it in...

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WHAT IS EMOTION? * 1884 E physiologists who, during the past few years, have been so in-JL dustriously exploring the functions of the brain, have limited their attempts at explanation to its cognitive and volitional performances. Dividing the brain into sensorial and motor centres, they have found their division to be exactly paralleled by the analysis made by empirical psychology, of the perceptive and volitional parts of the mind into their simplest elements. But the aesthetic sphere of the mind, its longings, its pleasures and pains, and its emotions, have been.so ignored in all these researches that one is tempted to suppose that if either Dr. Ferrier or Dr. Munk were asked for a theory in brain-terms of the latter mental facts, they might both reply, either that they had as yet bestowed no thought upon the subject, or that they had found it so difficult to make distinct hypotheses, that the matter lay for them among the problems of the future, only to be taken up after the simpler ones of the present should have been definitively solved.And yet it is even now certain that of two things concerning the emotions, one must be true. Either separate and special centres, affected to them alone, are their brain-seat, or else they correspond to processes occurring in the motor and sensory centres, already assigned, or in others like them, not yet mapped out. If the former be the case we must deny the current view, and hold the cortex to be something more than the surface of projection for every sensitive spot and every muscle in the body. If the latter be the case, we must ask whether the emotional process in the sensory or motor centre be an altogether peculiar one, or whether it resembles the ordinary perceptive processes of which those centres are already recognised to be the seat. The purpose of the following pages is to show that the last alternative comes nearest to the truth, and that the emotional brain-processes not only resemble the ordinary sensorial brain-processes, but in very truth, are nothing but such processes variously combined. The main result of this will be to simplify our notions of the possible complications of brain-physiology, and to make *This essay, published in Mind, IX (1884), 188-204, constitutes James' first publication on the James-Lange theory of the emotions. Lange, a Dane, published quite independently the following year.

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