Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/434

 422 EDMUND GUENEY : actual representation of a fall ; our repulsion to snakes is closely allied to our instinct of anger at the attack of an insidious foe. In the sense of shame, again, the physical factor, if less com- pletely explicable, is not less prominent, and clearly stands in specific relation to the feature of the environment on which Prof. James has done well to insist namely, other human beings and their attitude towards us. Even in melancholy of the helpless and moping sort, one may fully admit the sense of the limp and flexed position as a real factor in the emotion ; and one may account for this bodily factor in the same way as in the more definite cases of fear and rage, regarding the posture as the natural bodily response, not now to some single or sudden feature of the environment, but to any hard and overmastering condi- tions against which it seems vain to contend. But as soon as we advance to cases where the close and as- signable relation to the environment ceases, the difficulties of the theory begin. To take one of Prof. James's own instances " When worried by any slight trouble, one may find that the focus of one's bodily consciousness is the contraction, often quite inconsiderable, of the eyes and brows ". Now Prof. James treats such an item merely as " giving accent " to a large " complex of sensibility," diffused through " our whole cubic capacity ". This is, of course, a convenient description for his purpose ; but it is surely not too much to say that any feature of the bodily state which one can thus localise and bring into prominence must be the preponderating factor of the state, must characterise it so far as it has any individual character at any rate in cases where the deviation from the normal state in the way of diffused comfort or discomfort is too slight for one to be certain even of its existence. In such a case, if our whole bodily sounding-board is reverberating in any way different from that in which it was reverberating before the worry arose, its modulations have been too much muffled to be properly audible while in the sense of contraction of the brow we do at least catch the sound of a dis- tinct new note. But if this be so, then this sense of contraction must be that wherein this psychic condition differs emotionally from the previous one i.e., must be, according to Prof. James, the emotion of the worry ; which at that rate ought to be pro- ducible by a good rub with an astringent lotion. But perhaps the clearer limit, beyond which (as it seems to me) Prof. James's theory cannot be pressed, is at the point where all local and definable "expression" or "manifestation" vanishes, and where, if a wave of bodily disturbance passes, it is as such below the level of definite consciousness. Prof. James of course admits the existence of this point ; and below it he has to make up his several emotions from hypothetical permutations and com- binations of extremely obscure bodily symptoms, such as slight variations in the circulating and secreting organs, and slight alterations of muscular tension. Now for emotions which are on