Page:Outlines of Psychology (Wundt) 1907.djvu/234

 204 II. Psychical Compounds.

chiefly at the end of the process and generally hasten its completion; this is especially true of anger, but to some ex- tent also of joy, care, etc. Still, in these mere emotions there is an entire absence of changes in the train of ideas, which changes are the immediate causes of the momentary transformation of the emotion into volitions, and are also accompanied by characteristic feelings. This close interconnection of volitional acts with panto- mimetic expressive movements necessarily leads us to con- sider as the earliest stages of volitional development those volitions which end in certain bodily movements, which are in turn due to the preceding train of ideas and feelings. In other words, we come to look upon volition ending in external volitional acts, as the earliest stages in the devel- opment of volitions. The so-called internal volitional acts, on the other hand, or those which close simply with effects on ideas and feelings, appear in every case to be products of later development. 2. A volitional process which passes into an external act may be defined as an emotion which closes with a panto- mimetic movement and has, in addition to the characteristics belonging to all such movements, the special property of producing an external effect which removes the emotion itself. Such an effect is not possible for all emotions, but only for those in which the very succession of component feelings produces feelings and ideas which are able to remove the preceding emotion. This is, of course, most commonly the case when the final result of the emotion is the direct op- posite of the preceding feelings. The fundamental psycho- logical condition for volitional acts is, therefore, the ''contrast between feelings'', and the origin of the first volitions is most probably in all cases to be traced back to unpleasurable feel- ings which arouse external movements, which in turn produce contrasted pleasurable feelings. The seizing of food to re-