But if this is not adopted, we are left with the tripartite division and with either the general import of 'emotion' or its limitation to one of the two subordinate classes of phenomena mentioned, that is, either to pleasure and pain or to passion. Usage constantly fluctuates between these three possible conceptions.
Let us take a concrete illustration of the confusion incident to imperfect analysis and the habit of appropriating current associations while in the act of trying to depart from them. We select a passage from Professor Dewey's recent article. "When we say John Smith is very resentful at the treatment he has received, or is hopeful of success in business and regrets that he accepted a nomination for office, we do not simply, or even chiefly, mean that he has a certain 'feel' occupying consciousness. We mean that he is in a certain practical attitude, has assumed a readiness to act in certain ways. I should not fear a man who had simply the 'feel' of anger, nor should I sympathize with one having simply the 'feel' of grief."[1] Now in spite of Professor Dewey's limitation of "emotion" to mental states at least apparently impulsive and expressed in certain physical attitudes and movements, he here falls into the traditional and Hamiltonian view by classifying anger and regret together, using "grief" for regret in the second instance. He should see that the two phenomena are not to be explained in the same way. They are not both of them "practical attitudes," unless this phrase is to mean something more than impulsive excitement. To me there is a radical difference between anger and grief or regret which will not permit of their classification together, except in that comprehensive meaning of the term 'emotion' which makes it too abstract for practical purposes, and which excludes teleological and motor implications from its denotation, a meaning that adheres, as a differentia, to one of its subordinate species. Anger is an "emotion" that antecedes, and possibly initiates, motor expression or functional action; regret is something which follows deprivation and is a pain. Anger may be anteceded or accompanied by pleasure or pain, but it is neither of them. Their chronological relation often leads to the assertion of their identity. This confusion is often further heightened by the use of a term now in a reflexive and now in an impulsive sense. For example, grief may be violent and border on passion or be so interwoven with it as to take on that meaning, or it may denote merely passive pain, a consequent or reflex of the sense of loss. The whole phraseology of "emotion" and desire is replete
- ↑ Psychological Review, vol. II, p. 16.
