The sum total of all the feeling accompanying the various sensory and thought processes at any given time results in what we may call our feeling tone, or mood.

How Mood is Produced.—During most of our waking hours, and, indeed, during our sleeping hours as well, a multitude of sensory currents are pouring into the cortical centers. At the present moment we can hear the rumble of a wagon, the chirp of a cricket, the chatter of distant voices, and a hundred other sounds besides. At the same time the eye is appealed to by an infinite variety of stimuli in light, color, and objects; the skin responds to many contacts and temperatures; and every other type of end-organ of the body is acting as a "sender" to telegraph a message in to the brain. Add to these the powerful currents which are constantly being sent to the cortex from the visceral organs—those of respiration, of circulation, of digestion and assimilation. And then finally add the central processes which accompany the flight of images through our minds—our meditations, memories, and imaginations, our cogitations and volitions.

Thus we see what a complex our feelings must be, and how impossible to have any moment in which some feeling is not present as a part of our mental stream. It is this complex, now made up chiefly on the basis of the sensory currents coming in from the end-organs or the visceral organs, and now on the basis of those in the cortex connected with our thought life, which constitutes the entire feeling tone, or mood.

Mood Colors All Our Thinking.—Mood depends on the character of the aggregate of nerve currents entering the cortex, and changes as the character of the current varies. If the currents run on much the same from hour to hour, then our mood is correspondingly constant; if the currents are variable, our mood also will be variable. Not only is mood dependent on our sensations and thoughts for its quality, but it in turn colors our entire mental life. It serves as a background or setting whose hue is reflected over all our thinking. Let the mood be somber and dark, and all the world looks gloomy; on the other hand, let the mood be bright and cheerful, and the world puts on a smile.

It is told of one of the early circuit riders among the New England ministry, that he made the following entries in his diary, thus well illustrating the point: "Wed. Eve. Arrived at the home of Bro. Brown late this evening, hungry and tired after a long day in the saddle. Had a bountiful supper of cold pork and beans, warm bread, bacon and eggs, coffee, and rich pastry. I go to rest feeling that my witness is clear; the future is bright; I feel called to a great and glorious work in this place. Bro. Brown's family are godly people." The next entry was as follows: "Thur. Morn. Awakened late this morning after a troubled night. I am very much depressed in soul; the way looks dark; far from feeling called to work among this people, I am beginning to doubt the safety of my own soul. I am afraid the desires of Bro. Brown and his family are set too much on carnal things." A dyspeptic is usually a pessimist, and an optimist always keeps a bright mood.

Mood Influences Our Judgments and Decisions.—The prattle of children may be grateful music to our ears when we are in one mood, and excruciatingly discordant noise when we are in another. What appeals to us as a good practical joke one day, may seem a piece of unwarranted impertinence on another. A proposition which looks entirely plausible under the sanguine mood induced by a persuasive orator, may appear wholly untenable a few hours later. Decisions which seemed warranted when we were in an angry mood, often appear unwise or unjust when we have become more calm. Motives which easily impel us to action when the world looks bright, fail to move us when the mood is somber. The feelings of impending peril and calamity which are an inevitable accompaniment of the "blues," are speedily dissipated when the sun breaks through the clouds and we are ourselves again.

Mood Influences Effort.—A bright and hopeful mood quickens every power and enhances every effort, while a hopeless mood limits power and cripples effort. The football team which goes into the game discouraged never plays to the limit. The student who attacks his lesson under the conviction of defeat can hardly hope to succeed, while the one who enters upon his work confident of his power to master it has the battle already half won. The world's best work is done not by those who live in the shadow of discouragement and doubt, but by those in whose breast hope springs eternal. The optimist is a benefactor of the race if for no other reason than the sheer contagion of his hopeful spirit; the pessimist contributes neither to the world's welfare nor its happiness. Youth's proverbial enthusiasm and dauntless energy rest upon the supreme hopefulness which characterizes the mood of the young. For these reasons, if for no other, the mood of the schoolroom should be one of happiness and good cheer.

Disposition a Resultant of Moods.—The sum total of our moods gives us our disposition. Whether these are pleasant or unpleasant, cheerful or gloomy, will depend on the predominating character of the moods which enter into them. As well expect to gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles, as to secure a desirable disposition out of undesirable moods. A sunny disposition never comes from gloomy moods, nor a hopeful one out of the "blues." And it is our disposition, more than the power of our reason, which, after all, determines our desirability as friends and companions.

The person of surly disposition can hardly make a desirable companion, no matter what his intellectual qualities may be. We may live very happily with one who cannot follow the reasoning of a Newton, but it is hard to live with a person chronically subject to "black moods." Nor can we put the responsibility for our disposition off on our ancestors. It is not an inheritance, but a growth. Slowly, day by day, and mood by mood, we build up our disposition until finally it comes to characterize us.

Temperament.—Some are, however, more predisposed to certain types of mood than are others. The organization of our nervous system which we get through heredity undoubtedly has much to do with the feeling tone into which we most easily fall. We call this predisposition temperament. On the effects of temperament, our ancestors must divide the responsibility with us. I say divide the responsibility, for even if we find ourselves predisposed toward a certain undesirable type of moods, there is no reason why we should give up to them. Even in spite of hereditary predispositions, we can still largely determine for ourselves what our moods are to be.

If we have a tendency toward cheerful, quiet, and optimistic moods, the psychologist names our temperament the sanguine; if we are tense, easily excited and irritable, with a tendency toward sullen or angry moods, the choleric; if we are given to frequent fits of the "blues," if we usually look on the dark side of things and have a tendency toward moods of discouragement and the "dumps," the melancholic; if hard to rouse, and given to indolent and indifferent moods, the phlegmatic. Whatever be our temperament, it is one of the most important factors in our character.

3. PERMANENT FEELING ATTITUDES, OR SENTIMENTS

Besides the more or less transitory feeling states which we have called moods, there exists also a class of feeling attitudes, which contain more of the complex intellectual element, are withal of rather a higher nature, and much more permanent than our moods. We may call these our sentiments, or attitudes. Our sentiments comprise the somewhat constant level of feeling combined with cognition, which we name sympathy, friendship, love, patriotism, religious faith, selfishness, pride, vanity, etc. Like our dispositions, our sentiments are a growth of months and years. Unlike our dispositions, however, our sentiments are relatively independent of the physiological undertone, and depend more largely upon long-continued experience and intellectual elements as a basis. A sluggish liver might throw us into an irritable mood and, if the condition were long continued, might result in a surly disposition; but it would hardly permanently destroy one's patriotism and make him turn traitor to his country. One's feeling attitude on such matters is too deep seated to be modified by changing whims.

How Sentiments Develop.—Sentiments have their beginning in concrete experiences in which feeling is a predominant element, and grow through the multiplication of these experiences much as the concept is developed through many percepts. There is a residual element left behind each separate experience in both cases. In the case of the concept the residual element is intellectual, and in the case of the sentiment it is a complex in which the feeling element is predominant.

How this comes about is easily seen by means of an illustration or two. The mother feeds her child when he is hungry, and an agreeable feeling is produced; she puts him into the bath and snuggles him in her arms, and the experiences are pleasant. The child comes to look upon the mother as one whose especial function is to make things pleasant for him, so he comes to be happy in her presence, and long for her in her absence. He finally grows to love his mother not alone for the countless times she has given him pleasure, but for what she herself is. The feelings connected at first wholly with pleasant experiences coming through the ministrations of the mother, strengthened no doubt by instinctive tendencies toward affection, and later enhanced by a fuller realization of what a mother's care and sacrifice mean, grow at last into a deep, forceful, abiding sentiment of love for the mother.

The Effect of Experience.—Likewise with the sentiment of patriotism. In so far as our patriotism is a true patriotism and not a noisy clamor, it had its rise in feelings of gratitude and love when we contemplated the deeds of heroism and sacrifice for the flag, and the blessings which come to us from our relations as citizens to our country. If we have had concrete cases brought to our experience, as, for example, our property saved from destruction at the hands of a mob or our lives saved from a hostile foreign foe, the patriotic sentiment will be all the stronger.

So we may carry the illustration into all the sentiments. Our religious sentiments of adoration, love, and faith have their origin in our belief in the care, love, and support from a higher Being typified to us as children by the care, love, and support of our parents. Pride arises from the appreciation or over-appreciation of oneself, his attainments, or his belongings. Selfishness has its genesis in the many instances in which pleasure results from ministering to self. In all these cases it is seen that our sentiments develop out of our experiences: they are the permanent but ever-growing results which we have to show for experiences which are somewhat long continued, and in which a certain feeling quality is a strong accompaniment of the cognitive part of the experience.

The Influence of Sentiment.—Our sentiments, like our dispositions, are not only a natural growth from the experiences upon which they are fed, but they in turn have large influence in determining the direction of our further development. Our sentiments furnish the soil which is either favorable or hostile to the growth of new experiences. One in whom the sentiment of true patriotism is deep-rooted will find it much harder to respond to a suggestion to betray his country's honor on battlefield, in legislative hall, or in private life, than one lacking in this sentiment. The boy who has a strong sentiment of love for his mother will find this a restraining influence in the face of temptation to commit deeds which would wound her feelings. A deep and abiding faith in God is fatal to the growth of pessimism, distrust, and a self-centered life. One's sentiments are a safe gauge of his character. Let us know a man's attitude or sentiments on religion, morality, friendship, honesty, and the other great questions of life, and little remains to be known. If he is right on these, he may well be trusted in other things; if he is wrong on these, there is little to build upon.

Literature has drawn its best inspiration and choicest themes from the field of our sentiments. The sentiment of friendship has given us our David and Jonathan, our Damon and Pythias, and our Tennyson and Hallam. The sentiment of love has inspired countless masterpieces; without its aid most of our fiction would lose its plot, and most of our poetry its charm. Religious sentiment inspired Milton to write the world's greatest epic, "Paradise Lost." The sentiment of patriotism has furnished an inexhaustible theme for the writer and the orator. Likewise if we go into the field of music and art, we find that the best efforts of the masters are clustered around some human sentiment which has appealed to them, and which they have immortalized by expressing it on canvas or in marble, that it may appeal to others and cause the sentiment to grow in us.

Sentiments as Motives.—The sentiments furnish the deepest, the most constant, and the most powerful motives which control our lives. Such sentiments as patriotism, liberty, and religion have called a thousand armies to struggle and die on ten thousand battlefields, and have given martyrs courage to suffer in the fires of persecution. Sentiments of friendship and love have prompted countless deeds of self-sacrifice and loving devotion. Sentiments of envy, pride, and jealousy have changed the boundary lines of nations, and have prompted the committing of ten thousand unnamable crimes. Slowly day by day from the cradle to the grave we are weaving into our lives the threads of sentiment, which at last become so many cables to bind us to good or evil.

4. PROBLEMS IN OBSERVATION AND INTROSPECTION

1. Are you subject to the "blues," or other forms of depressed feeling? Are your moods very changeable, or rather constant? What kind of a disposition do you think you have? How did you come by it; that is, in how far is it due to hereditary temperament, and in how far to your daily moods?

2. Can you recall an instance in which some undesirable mood was caused by your physical condition? By some disturbing mental condition? What is your characteristic mood in the morning after sleeping in an ill-ventilated room? After sitting for half a day in an ill-ventilated schoolroom? After eating indigestible food before going to bed?

3. Observe a number of children or your classmates closely and see whether you can determine the characteristic mood of each. Observe several different schools and see whether you can note a characteristic mood for each room. Try to determine the causes producing the differences noted. (Physical conditions in the room, personality of the teacher, methods of governing, teaching, etc.)

4. When can you do your best work, when you are happy, or unhappy? Cheerful, or "blue"? Confident and hopeful, or discouraged? In a spirit of harmony and coöperation with your teacher, or antagonistic? Now relate your conclusions to the type of atmosphere that should prevail in the schoolroom or the home. Formulate a statement as to why the "spirit" of the school is all-important. (Effect on effort, growth, disposition, sentiments, character, etc.)

5. Can you measure more or less accurately the extent to which your feelings serve as motives in your life? Are feelings alone a safe guide to action? Make a list of the important sentiments that should be cultivated in youth. Now show how the work of the school may be used to strengthen worthy sentiments.

CHAPTER XV

THE EMOTIONS

Feeling and emotion are not to be looked upon as two different kinds of mental processes. In fact, emotion is but a feeling state of a high degree of intensity and complexity. Emotion transcends the simpler feeling states whenever the exciting cause is sufficient to throw us out of our regular routine of affective experience. The distinction between emotion and feeling is a purely arbitrary one, since the difference is only one of complexity and degree, and many feelings may rise to the intensity of emotions. A feeling of sadness on hearing of a number of fatalities in a railway accident may suddenly become an emotion of grief if we learn that a member of our family is among those killed. A feeling of gladness may develop into an emotion of joy, or a feeling of resentment be kindled into an emotion of rage.

1. THE PRODUCING AND EXPRESSING OF EMOTION

Nowhere more than in connection with our emotions are the close inter-relations of mind and body seen. All are familiar with the fact that the emotion of anger tends to find expression in the blow, love in the caress, fear in flight, and so on. But just how our organism acts in producing an emotion is less generally understood. Professor James and Professor Lange have shown us that emotion not only tends to produce some characteristic form of response, but that the emotion is itself caused by certain deep-seated physiological reactions. Let us seek to understand this statement a little more fully.

Physiological Explanation of Emotion.—We must remember first of all that all changes in mental states are accompanied by corresponding physiological changes. Hard, concentrated thinking quickens the heart beat; keen attention is accompanied by muscular tension; certain sights or sounds increase the rate of breathing; offensive odors produce nausea, and so on. So complete and perfect is the response of our physical organism to mental changes that one psychologist declares it possible, had we sufficiently delicate apparatus, to measure the reactions caused throughout the body of a sleeping child by the shadow from a passing cloud falling upon the closed eyelids.

The order of the entire event resulting in an emotion is as follows: (1) Something is known; some object enters consciousness coming either from immediate perception or through memory or imagination. This fact, or thing known, must be of such nature that it will, (2) set up deep-seated and characteristic organic response; (3) the feeling accompanying and caused by these physiological reactions constitutes the emotion. For example, we may be passing along the street in a perfectly calm and equable state of mind, when we come upon a teamster who is brutally beating an exhausted horse because it is unable to draw an overloaded wagon up a slippery incline. The facts grasped as we take in the situation constitute the first element in an emotional response developing in our consciousness. But instantly our muscles begin to grow tense, the heart beat and breath quicken, the face takes on a different expression, the hands clench—the entire organism is reacting to the disturbing situation; the second factor in the rising emotion, the physiological response, thus appears. Along with our apprehension of the cruelty and the organic disturbances which result we feel waves of indignation and anger surging through us. This is the third factor in the emotional event, or the emotion itself. In some such way as this are all of our emotions aroused.

Origin of Characteristic Emotional Reactions.—Why do certain facts or objects of consciousness always cause certain characteristic organic responses?

In order to solve this problem we shall have first to go beyond the individual and appeal to the history of the race. What the race has found serviceable, the individual repeats. But even then it is hard to see why the particular type of physical response such as shrinking, pallor, and trembling, which naturally follow stimuli threatening harm, should be the best. It is easy to see, however, that the feeling which prompts to flight or serves to deter from harm's way might be useful. It is plain that there is an advantage in the tense muscle, the set teeth, the held breath, and the quickened pulse which accompany the emotion of anger, and also in the feeling of anger itself, which prompts to the conflict. But even if we are not able in every case to determine at this day why all the instinctive responses and their correlate of feeling were the best for the life of the race, we may be sure that such was the case; for Nature is inexorable in her dictates that only that shall persist which has proved serviceable in the largest number of cases.

An interesting question arises at this point as to why we feel emotion accompanying some of our motor responses, and not others. Perceptions are crowding in upon us hour after hour; memory, thought, and imagination are in constant play; and a continuous motor discharge results each moment in physical expressions great or small. Yet, in spite of these facts, feeling which is strong enough to rise to an emotion is only an occasional thing. If emotion accompanies any form of physical expression, why not all? Let us see whether we can discover any reason. One day I saw a boy leading a dog along the street. All at once the dog slipped the string over its head and ran away. The boy stood looking after the dog for a moment, and then burst into a fit of rage. What all had happened? The moment before the dog broke away everything was running smoothly in the experience of the boy. There was no obstruction to his thought or his plans. Then in an instant the situation changes. The smooth flow of experience is checked and baffled. The discharge of nerve currents which meant thought, plans, action, is blocked. A crisis has arisen which requires readjustment. The nerve currents must flow in new directions, giving new thought, new plans, new activities—the dog must be recaptured. It is in connection with this damming up of nerve currents from following their wonted channels that the emotion emerges. Or, putting it into mental terms, the emotion occurs when the ordinary current of our thought is violently disturbed—when we meet with some crisis which necessitates a readjustment of our thought relations and plans, either temporarily or permanently.

The Duration of an Emotion.—If the required readjustment is but temporary, then the emotion is short-lived, while if the readjustment is necessarily of longer duration, the emotion also will live longer. The fear which follows the thunder is relatively brief; for the shock is gone in a moment, and our thought is but temporarily disturbed. If the impending danger is one that persists, however, as of some secret assassin threatening our life, the fear also will persist. The grief of a child over the loss of someone dear to him is comparatively short, because the current of the child's life has not been so closely bound up in a complexity of experiences with the lost object as in the case of an older person, and hence the readjustment is easier. The grief of an adult over the loss of a very dear friend lasts long, for the object grieved over has so become a part of the bereaved one's experience that the loss requires a very complete readjustment of the whole life. In either case, however, as this readjustment is accomplished the emotion gradually fades away.

Emotions Accompanying Crises in Experience.—If our description of the feelings has been correct, it will be seen that the simpler and milder feelings are for the common run of our everyday experience; they are the common valuers of our thought and acts from hour to hour. The emotions, or more intense feeling states, are, however, the occasional high tide of feeling which occurs in crises or emergencies. We are angry on some particular provocation, we fear some extraordinary factor in our environment, we are joyful over some unusual good fortune.