LECTURE  XXVI

§ I. Expression of the Emotions. § II. Impulsive and Voli¬
tional Action. § III. Instinctive Action. § IV. Theories of
Instinct.

§  I

WE have seen that the movement among ideas which is
characteristic of emotion in general is always attended
by physiological movements, which exhibit specific differences
according to the intensity and quality of the particular emotion.
These expressions of the emotions have more than a symptomatic
interest: they are genetically important. It is through them
that we are able to understand the relation of emotion to the
development of external voluntary action. Emotion bears the
same relation to this as feeling does to the internal will-process.
The transition from volition to external voluntary action runs
parallel with that from feeling to emotion. But just as not
every feeling develops into a volition, so emotion need not
necessarily or invariably lead to a voluntary act. To take a
special instance, the control of emotion which is natural to the
morally and intellectually mature consciousness consists for the
most part in its inhibition at the boundary line which separates
it from external voluntary action. In the savage and the animal
any emotion that is at all intensive passes over irresistibly into
action. And even where the inhibition is effective, the internal
tension always finds relief in movements whose only differentia
is that they are not intended to bring about any determinate
result. In this way arise the 'pure', expressions of emotion,
which are simply symptomatic of a particular internal affective
state.    They are rudiments of true voluntary actions.

Among the regular expressions of emotion are the mimetic
movements. They are the most characteristic of any for the
nature of the particular emotion.     Physiologically  considered.