There are two methods which can be applied to the study of the
psychology of feelings. They are called the method of impression and
the method of expression. The first is a purely psychological method,
while the latter is confined by its definition to the study of the
physiological changes which are the accompaniments of feelings. The
method of expression is never used as a pure method in investigations
which are carried on for psychological purposes, because the
introspections of the subject must be compared with the physiological
results. It therefore has the character of a mixed method. The first
experimental investigations into the psychology of feelings were
started by Fechner, who employed the pure method of impression. At
this time, however, the apparatus for studying the circulation had
been greatly improved and sooner or later these instruments were sure
to be used for a more exact study of the influence of feelings on
circulation. It was to be hoped that the crude observations on the
changes of the heart-beats and of the circulation under the influence
of feelings might be followed up in detail.
Darwin laid stress on the importance of certain bodily accompaniments
of feelings, and he inaugurated the genetic explanation in this
field. But even if the genetic explanation is successfully carried
through, human psychology remains unexplained, and, furthermore, those
emotional expressions which Darwin described form only a part of the
physiological accompaniments which may be observed with the instruments
now in use. The invention or at least the great improvement of these
instruments is due to the investigators in the middle of the last
century, and a more thorough understanding of the delicate changes of
respiration, circulation, and of temperature was not possible before
the construction of these sensitive recorders. It seems that Mosso was
the first to observe these small changes under the influence of mental
activity in general, and feelings in special; in this sense it may
be said that Mosso started the experimental physiology of feelings.
The discovery of the influence of feelings on circulation is very
important, and it is to be appreciated that Mosso saw these slight
changes which escaped an observer like Marey. In the Mémoire offered
to the Academy[29] on March 26, 1860, Marey gives a great number of
circumstances which influence the sphygmographic curve, but feelings
or mental phenomena are not mentioned in this list. It is true that he
speaks in a later publication[30] of the influence of "moral ideas" on
the circulation and makes the hypothesis that these ideas influence the
circulation in the same way as other disturbing influences, _i. e._, by
changing the peripheral resistance. At this time Marey was already in
possession of his sphygmograph, but nothing in this passage indicates
that he saw the influence of feelings on the tracings. On the contrary,
the words "Sans rien livrer à l'hypothèse" seem to indicate that Marey
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