The discussion of complex emotional states on which we enter in the present chapter will be subject to the same reservation as was our previous discussion of simple sensation-feeling. It is not proposed to attempt a definitive explanation of the _nature_ of emotion, nor even to criticise the various emotion-theories which have been advanced in psychological literature. For the purposes of an æsthetic investigation we are only concerned with the external aspects, the outward manifestations, of mental states. We need not therefore dilate upon the controversies as to the exact relation between simple feeling and emotion. It is enough for us that all authors—those who consider pain and pleasure as elements _sui generis_ as well as those who count them among sensations or emotions—agree in emphasising the prominent hedonic element which enters into all our emotions. Starting from this universally recognised fact, we shall try to explain the impulse to expression, as it appears in complex emotions, by the same laws which we deduced from an examination of simple hedonic states. The legitimacy of such a course will scarcely be contested by any one who admits the vital and necessary connection between emotional states and movement-sensations. And in point of fact, this connection does not seem to be denied by many modern psychologists. There is indeed much controversy as to the best mode of formulating the well-known theory due to James and Lange, and there is also much to discuss in its general theoretic aspect. But the observation on which this theory was based by James, viz. that it is impossible for us to imagine any emotion which is not connected with feelings of bodily symptoms, seems nowadays to be pretty safe against attack. Before and after James, the fundamental importance of bodily changes has been acknowledged by almost all authors who have specially studied the emotional states. We need only refer to Bain, Ribot, Féré, Paulhan, and Godfernaux.[59] Even Professor Stout, who on general grounds takes exception to the views of James, leaves unassailed the thesis from which the latter starts in his chapter on the emotions.[60] And it is even somewhat superfluous to adduce all these authorities in support of a fact which must have been noted by every one who pays any attention to his own mental states. We never experience any intense emotion, such as fear, anger, or sorrow, without at the same time experiencing some distinct sensation of change in our functions of respiration and circulation, as well as in the activities of our voluntary muscles. In the case of emotions of slight intensity, where no changes of this character are perceptible, we are justified in assuming that they do nevertheless occur, only on a much smaller scale, and possibly in different organs. The clinical and experimental researches of medical science, as well as experiments undertaken in psychological laboratories, tend to prove that all ideas,