Page:The Harveian Oration,1902.djvu/50

 times and in all languages they have been expressed in terms of the heart. The very obvious display of emotional states in this manner has led James and Lange, particularly the latter, to regard the vaso-motor reactions and the conditions thus secondarily induced in the viscera as the essential basis of the vivid or so-called "courser" emotions, such as joy, sorrow, fear, and anger. There is much to be said in favour of the view that the organic sensations, primary or secondary to vascular changes, constitute an important factor of emotional states, but there are serious objections to regarding them as their essence. The sensations and emotions have their affective tone as such independently of the vascular concomitants, and it has been contended that the vascular reactions occur in point of time subsequently to the actual manifestation of the feeling in consciousness. Sherrington's experiments have also an important bearing in this relation. When in dogs the spinal cord had been severed headward of all the sym-