§ 50. =The James-Lange Theory of Emotion.=—We saw that emotion, at any rate in its intenser phases, is insistently organic; the organic sensations readily blend both with one another and with feeling; and the resultant massive fusion is as characteristic of emotion as the organic surge (p. 211) is characteristic of instinct. Everyone can distinguish, even in imagination, the rushing, swelling ‘feel’ of anger from the sinking, shrinking ‘feel’ of fear. Psychology has always had an open eye for the organic constituent of emotion; Aristotle and many later writers refer to it; and in France emphasis upon the organic stir in emotion became almost a matter of psychological orthodoxy. The whole subject was, however, set in a new light when the late Professor James propounded in 1884 his famous ‘theory of emotion.’ “My thesis is,” James wrote, “that the bodily changes follow directly the _perception_ of the exciting fact, and that our feeling of the same changes as they occur _is_ the emotion;” “The more rational statement is that we feel sorry because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble, and not that we cry, strike or tremble, because we are sorry, angry, or fearful, as the case may be.” The view thus paradoxically stated aroused much discussion; and it gained further impetus by the publication in 1885 of an essay on emotion by Carl Lange, professor of medicine in Copenhagen; Lange independently comes to a conclusion which, in principle, is the same as that of James. James’ position is, evidently, twofold. He affirms, in the first place, that _emotions have an instinctive basis_. A situation is presented; the organism perceives it; and immediately, directly, because the situation appeals to instinctive tendencies in the nervous system, the emotive response is evoked. With that statement we have no quarrel. James also affirms, however, that _the ‘feel’ of what we have called the emotive response is itself the experience of emotion_; having the organic sensations, you have the emotion; if you had not the organic sensations, there would be no emotion. In a later essay he modified or amplified his position: he grants the presence in emotion of ideas and of pleasant and unpleasant feelings, but still maintains that the one thing characteristic of the emotions is a general seizure of excitement, a churning-up of the interior of the organism; and this rank excitement is a matter of the organic sensations. So there arise two questions of fact: _is emotion possible if the organic sensations are lacking?_ and _is the organic fusion sufficiently differentiated, in the various emotions, to give them their distinctive ‘feels’ in experience?_