Page:The Harveian Oration,1902.djvu/52

 cerated and disembowelled emotions can only have been a mere simulacrum of those which would otherwise have thrilled throughout the whole frame of the animal. But even if we thoroughly recognise the immense importance of the visceral factor in emotion, it would be rash, if not altogether erroneous, to regard this, with Lange, as secondary only to vasomotor changes. For there are many facts—notably the novel and luminous experiments of Pawlow on secretion—which prove that psychical states influence the processes of secretion not mediately through the circulation but directly through the secretory nerves of the glands. The most manifest organic expressions of emotion, however, are those in the domain of the circulation with which, for the present, we are more immediately concerned.

The observations of Binet and Courtier show that every feeling, whether agreeable or painful, acts primarily as an excitant. The passage from the state of repose into the state of activity, intellectual or emotional, causes