the superfluous nervous energy, unable to find escape through ordinary efferent channels, will overflow into the sympathetic system and cause general turmoil and upheaval in the viscera, and intense emotional excitement will be felt. These startling emotional phenomena, being the most conspicuous, were the first to be studied and described—by Darwin, Mosso, Mantegazza, et al.—and inspired the James-Lange theory, which is applicable only to them. Professor Dewey was perhaps the first to work out an explanation of these upheavals as due to conflicts between impulses to different reactions evoked by the stimulus.[1] To Shand belongs the credit of making it evident that these extreme emotional phenomena are not the fundamental feature of all emotion, and that really to understand emotions we must interpret them in the light of the part that they play in the economy of the organism as a whole, which means, in the light of innate and other dispositions that determine the course of mental activity, and only develop these startling organic manifestations under special conditions.[2]
If action follows stimulation, with only slight or even intense consciousness of impulse and emotion, shall we say that there is value present? Or shall we say that value is present wherever there is tendency in a given direction without the presence of consciousness at all? Some recent writers would reply even
- ↑ Psychological Review, Vols. I and II. A brief popular account is given in Angell's Psychology, Chap. XIX.
- ↑ Foundations of Character, pp. 1-6, 28-34, 177-180, 192-196, and passim. The writer owes much to the pragmatistic interpretations of valuation given by Professor H. W. Stuart in Dewey's Studies in Logical Theory, and Professor Irving King, Development of Religion. Both of these writers have made large use of Dewey's theory of the emotions. While this theory should now be corrected in details and assimilated to Shand's more comprehensive view, it seems to me that it remains valid in principle so far as it goes. Conscious emotion appears only when impulses are impeded, and extreme emotion with a large variety of organic sensations only when there is a conflict between impulses. This seems to me about all in Dewey's theory that is important for a theory of values, and that it is quite in harmony with Shand. It also follows that Stuart's and King's use of the Dewey theory in their interpretations of value may remain undisturbed by the acceptance of Shand's general doctrine of emotions. It is not necessary to agree with Shand in tracing values to Joy (op. cit., 356, f.).
