Our people, especially in academic
circles, are turning towards psychology nowadays with great
expectations; and, if psychology is to justify them, it must be by
showing fruits in the pedagogic and therapeutic lines.
The reader may possibly have heard of a peculiar theory of the emotions,
commonly referred to in psychological literature as the Lange-James
theory. According to this theory, our emotions are mainly due to those
organic stirrings that are aroused in us in a reflex way by the stimulus
of the exciting object or situation. An emotion of fear, for example, or
surprise, is not a direct effect of the object's presence on the mind,
but an effect of that still earlier effect, the bodily commotion which
the object suddenly excites; so that, were this bodily commotion
suppressed, we should not so much _feel_ fear as call the situation
fearful; we should not feel surprise, but coldly recognize that the
object was indeed astonishing. One enthusiast has even gone so far as to
say that when we feel sorry it is because we weep, when we feel afraid
it is because we run away, and not conversely.
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