Page:Outlines of Psychology (Wundt) 1907.djvu/225

 § 13. Emotions. 195 ascendency over volition. Kant modified these definitions of emotions and passions, in that he regarded the essential attribute of emotions to be their sudden rise, while the essential attribute of passions consisted for him in the fact that the tendencies of feeling have settled into fixed habits. These modes of classi- fication are all either of merely practical significance and belong accordingly in the domain of characterology or ethics, or else they are based upon characteristics which are essential only in discussions of the intensity and course of emotions, and will, accordingly, be dealt with under these heads in a later para- graph (12). From the psychological point of view, the passions are in no essential respect different in nature from the emotions. In contrast with this practical mode of treating the emotions, there has arisen a tendency in recent times to give more and more attention to the expressive movements, and to the other physiological accompaniments of the emotions which show them- selves in the pulse and respiration and in the vaso-motor changes. There begins to show itself thus, a recognition of the value of these phenomena as aids to the study of the emotions, just as there is a recognition of the innervation symptoms of feelings. To be sure, the study of these outer phenomena can never take the place of immediate observation of the psychical processes themselves; it can serve at most to call attention to certain of the attributes and relations of the psychical processes which might perhaps be otherwise overlooked. Thus, for example, the objective observation suggests very easily the fact that emotions are intensified through the sensory feelings which are connected with the expressive movements. But when Lange and James make these concomitant phenomena the exclusive causes of the emotions, when they describe the emotions as psychical processes which can be aroused only through expressive movements, we must reject their paradoxical view for the following three reasons. First, the definite outer symptoms of emotions do not appear until such time as the psychical nature of the emotion is al- ready clearly established. The emotion, accordingly, precedes the innervation effects which are looked upon by these investi- gators as causes of the emotion. Second, it is absolutely impossible to classify the rich variety of psychical emotional states in the comparatively simple scheme of innervation changes. The psychical processes are much more varied than are their accompanying forms of expression. Third, and finally, the 13*