Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/435

 " WHAT IS AN EMOTION ? " 42o the same side of the neutral region that divides the pleasant from the unpleasant, and which are not connected with definable peculiarities of the general bodily state, (this remaining at the same level of slight exhilaration or slight depression for a con- siderable variety of them), it is surely hard to attribute distinct qualitative differences to varieties of combination of factors that remain in the dimmest background of consciousness.- In trying to imagine such a result, I seem to be trying to coin gold by shuffling counters in the dark, or to produce red, blue, and green from different combinations of white, light buff, and light grey. I am quite prepared to admit that emotions do truly differ in quality much less than is often supposed, and very much less than their conditions. For aught I know, the " sudden glory " of a good joke may be, emotionally, very like indeed to the sudden glory of appointment to some lucrative office ; and I think that this view, of the essential similarity of emotions which would be popularly accounted very different, derives valuable support from Prof. James's demonstrations of the large sensory element in emotion. The view seems specially applicable to cases where there is a marked tendency to bodily expression such as slapping of the thigh or sudden extension of the limbs or trunk and where therefore the sense of this expression, simi- larly evoked by various conditions, really is (as I should willingly concede) an important factor of the whole psychical state. But in quieter cases where the emotions have no distinct common factor of this sort, their identity is far more disputable. I cannot get rid of my conviction that, e.g., the emotion of quiet amusement is qualitatively different from the emotion produced by bright and cheerful music. The former of these emotions, by the way, is one which Prof. James has not noticed. He seems to identify amusement with a tendency to laugh ; and he asks what the sense of amusement amounts to when the impulse to laugh is abstracted representing this abstraction as a purely speculative process, which in no way implies that the laugh, or the impulse to laugh, can be practically absent. I think I catch his meaning ; but my experience is that the impulse to laugh is practically absent, even in presence of the most amusing things. I have never been more profoundly amused than by Jefferson in the second act of " Eip Van Winkle " ; but except at one or two points it never occurred to me to laugh. Nor do I think that I was exceptional : I never saw anything like a display of mirth at that act ; yet of a large portion of the audience it would surely be true that a " screaming farce " would have amused them less. There are passages in " Happy Thoughts " of which the physical effect on most readers is to make them hot all over ; but will any one deny that these passages are amusing, and to that extent delightful ? But to return to my point the emotion produced in me by Eip's interview with the goblins is, as far as I can dis- cover, qualitatively different from that produced by the overture