The hypothesis of James and Lange—considered, at first, as a paradox—has suggested so many remarks, criticisms, objections, answers, and arguments for and against, that I find it impossible to give a summary of them.[77] Yet it is not without precedent. Lange, in his _Addenda_, mentions as his precursors, Malebranche, Spinoza, and some other less celebrated authors. The legitimate claims of Descartes, in his treatise _Sur les Passions de l’Âme_, have also since been vindicated.[78] The physiologists, too, ought not to be forgotten: Maudsley indicated the same view, without insisting on it.[79] The superiority of James and Lange consists in having put it clearly and endeavoured to support it by experimental proofs. I have already said that it seems to me the most probable explanation for those who do not represent the emotions to themselves as psychological entities. The only point in which I differ from these authors relates to their way of putting the proposition, not to its substance.
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Footnote 77:
I may indicate, somewhat at random, the principal documents for this controversy: Wundt, _Philosophische Studien_, vi. 3, p. 349 (he criticises Lange only); Gurney, _Mind_, July 1884; Marshall, _ib._, October 1884; Stanley, _ib._, January 1886; Worcester, _Monist_, January 1893; _Psychological Review_, September and November 1894, January 1895, etc.
Footnote 78:
“Though written in the earliest days of modern science, this work will bear comparison with anything that has been produced in recent years. It will be difficult, indeed, to find any treatment of the emotions much superior to it in originality, thoroughness, and suggestiveness. The position maintained is similar to that now held by Professor James, but Descartes does not content himself with defending in a general way the assertion that emotion is caused by physical change. After coming to the conclusion that there are six passions from which all the others are derived, he attempts to show that a special set of organic effects is concerned in the production of each of these primary states.”—D. Irons in _Philosophical Review_, May 1895, p. 291.
Footnote 79:
“When any great passion causes all the physical and moral troubles which it will cause, what I conceive to happen is that a physical impression made on the sense of sight or of hearing is propagated along a physical path to the brain, and arouses a physical commotion in its molecules; that from this centre of commotion the liberated energy is propagated by physical paths to other parts of the brain; and that it is finally discharged outwardly through proper physical paths, either in movements or in modifications of secretion and nutrition. The passion that is felt is the subjective side of the cerebral commotion—its _motion_ out from the physical basis, as it were (_e-motion_), into consciousness.”—_Pathology of Mind_, 1879, p. 222.
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It is evident that our two authors, whether consciously or not, share the dualist point of view with the common opinion which they are combating; the only difference being in the interversion of cause and effect. Emotion is a cause of which the physical manifestations are the effect, says one party; the physical manifestations are the cause of which emotion is the effect, says the other. In my view, there would be a great advantage in eliminating from the question every notion of cause and effect, every relation of causality, and in substituting for the dualistic position a unitary or monistic one. The Aristotelian formula of matter and form seems to me to meet the case better, if we understand by “matter” the corporeal facts, and by “form” the corresponding psychical state: the two terms, by-the-bye, only existing in connection with each other and being inseparable except as abstract conceptions. It was traditional in ancient psychology to study the relations of “the soul and the body”—the new psychology does not speak of them. In fact, if the question takes a metaphysical form, it is no longer psychology; if it takes an experimental form, there is no reason to treat it separately, because it is treated in connection with everything. No state of consciousness can be dissociated from its physical conditions: they constitute a natural whole, which must be studied as such. Every kind of emotion ought to be considered in this way: all that is objectively expressed by movements of the face and body, by vaso-motor, respiratory, and secretory disturbances, is expressed subjectively by correlative states of consciousness, classed by external observation according to their qualities. It is a single occurrence expressed in two languages. We have previously assimilated the emotions to psycho-physiological organisms; this unitary point of view, being more conformable to the nature of things and to the present tendencies of psychology, seems to me, in practice, to eliminate many objections and difficulties.
Whether we adopt this theory or not, we have in any case acquired the certainty that the organic and motor manifestations are not accessories, that the study of them is part of the study of emotion. We shall therefore have to speak of them in some detail.
