The earliest emotions arise, of course, with reference to the bodily functions which have the most direct vital significance, as nutritive, reproductive, and motor activity. Very simple organisms seem to apprehend that a certain object is food before actually consuming, to have sense of the experience, and some emotive disturbance. The pleasure of feeding and incorporating into the bodily tissue is sensational, but any feeling previous or subsequent to this and with reference to this is emotional. A very young child feeds, and does not know food. Gradually it associates the visual sensation of whiteness of the milk with the immediate taste sensation and pleasure feeling. But the sense of whiteness at first arises only with and after the actual taste and pleasure experiences; it only gradually notices what gives it satisfaction or pain, thus repeating the evolution of mind, which is from feeling to sense, and not _vice versâ_. Only slowly does it attain power of appreciating whiteness previous to actual experience and as _indicative of such_, that is, a power of representation. Then emotions, as expectancy, and desire, become possible, and will can be stirred to active appropriation of food, a fact of the greatest importance in the struggle for existence. Once attaining the sense of the representative value of its cognitions, the child is enabled to consciously accomplish anticipatory actions. An element which complicates emotion at a late stage is representation of representation in indefinite _regressus_. In advanced human consciousness, where mind is very reflective and introspective, this phase is prominent. The _nuances_ of modern emotion are largely due to this mode of complication. Montaigne remarks that what he most fears is fear. As fear implies representation, fear of fear implies representation of representation, which in its turn may be feared, and so on _ad infinitum_. Spencer terms love of property a re-representative feeling; but this psychosis does not imply representation of representation, but merely representation of desirable realities. Desire of possession is an emotion, but not emotion at emotion. It is not an experience in view of representative experience, but with reference to a direct experience, that of ownership. Since we make representation the basis of emotion, it would be natural to make classes of emotion representative, re-representative, etc.; but this is quite too subtle a distinction to be fruitful or practical.