Page:The British Warblers A History with Problems of Their Lives - 7 of 9.djvu/23

 specially characteristic of emotion, as such, does not take its origin in the motor elements; and it becomes probable that it is the visceral elements which afford the differentiae of emotion. If so, it is not the instinct-feeling in its motor aspect—what we may term the activity-feeling— that is concerned in the primary genesis of an emotion, but rather the concurrent and associated set of visceral actions. Let us see, therefore, whether observations on the active and emotional life of young birds throw any light upon this problem. Take the case of a young frightened moorhen. On land he runs away, and perhaps crouches in the rushes; in the water he dives, and comes up quietly under the bank and there stays still. The activities involved in running and diving are very different; must not the activity feelings be very different too? And yet we must surely suppose them to have a common emotional element. Again, when a moorhen catches sight of a worm and runs hard to secure it, the activity-feelings must, as such, one would suppose, be very similar to those experienced when the moorhen runs vigorously away from a goose. And yet in the one case he is frightened, and in the other case he is not. Here similar activity-feelings are associated with wholly different emotional states." Dr. Stout comments thus on the above passage: "But Lloyd Morgan and others seem to suppose that visceral sensations at least are fairly constant in the same emotion on different occasions and in different circumstances. Now the problem is an obscure one; for visceral sensations are difficult to investigate. But so far as any distinct appeal to experience can be made, it seems that they also may be more or less similar in different emotions, and variable in the same emotion. The Maori women of New Zealand when they meet for festive purposes enjoy themselves by squealing and crying, so that a stranger would suppose them to be in a state of intense grief. One traveller tells how he was roused at night by the most doleful cries, and went