De grondbeginselen van de primaire gevoelens

DENIAL of the existence of motor consciousness has., brought psychology to an impasse in the field of theory of feeling tone, just as it has hampered the adequate development of theory of emotion. Wundt 's 1 tridimensional theory of feeling tone, propounded in 1896, constitutes the only radical departure from general agreement that pleasantness and unpleasantness are the only two primary feelings. Wundt supposed that there were six primary feelings : pleasantness and unpleasantness, excitement and depression, tension and relaxation. Wundt's theory was based almost altogether upon introspection, probably accurate enough as far as it went, but not linking up the four extra feeling tone elements with definite psycho-neural mechanisms proving them to be primary feelings.

Titchener, also highly versed in introspection, maintained that " excitement and depression, tension and relaxation are general names for a very large number of different affections." 1 That is, Titchener's own introspection led him to believe that the extra feelings named by Wundt, did, in fact, exist, but that they should be treated as complex affective experiences rather than primary feeling tones. The only type of objective data advanced by Wundt in support of this suggestion consisted of studies (including measurements of

physiological changes supposedly symptomatic of six affective primaries) designed to show that all six alleged primary feelings, as introspectively reported, occurred independently of one another, and especially independently of any connection with pleasantness and unpleasantness. S. Hayes, 8 and others,

1 W. Wundt, Grundzuge der Physiohgischen Psychologie, ii, 1902, p. 263.

8 E.B. Titchener, A Text-book of Psychology, New York, 1912, p. 251.

S. P. Hayes, "A Study of Affective Qualities." Ph.D. Thesis Cornell. Am. Jour. Psy. t 1906, XVII, pp. 358-393. '

published studies precisely refuting the results of Wundt in this particular, tending to show that the four additional feeling tone experiences were either intimately associated with pleasantness and unpleasantness, or else were still more complex experiences not independently correlated with any objective criterion which could be set by experimental conditions. The whole controversy gradually petered out; and with the decline of introspection is ts' supremacy very little has been heard of any list of primary feelings containing other elements than pleasantness and unpleasantness. We may,

therefore 1, confine our attention for tiie present to a discussion of the original pair of feeling tone primaries for the existence of which there seems to be ample evidence of an objective nature.

Primary Feelings are Pleasantness and Unpleasantness Originating in Motor Alliances and Conflicts

Theories of the physiologists and neurologists seem to be fairly well in agreement that unpleasantness is associated with conflicts or mutual interferences between nerve impulses, while pleasantness is characterized either by an absence of conflict or by a free unimpeded flow of impulses in the central nervous system. C. J. Herrick 1, whose opinion may be taken as fairly representative of the physiologists, says, " The normal discharge then, of definitely elaborated nervous circuits resulting in free unrestrained activity is pleasurable, in so far as the reaction comes into consciousness at all (of course, a large proportion of such reactions are strictly reflex and have no conscious significance). Conversely, the impediment to such discharge, no matter what the occasion, results in a stasis in the nerve centres, the summation of stimuli and the development of a situation of unrelieved nervous tension which is unpleasant until the tension is relieved by the appropriate adaptive reaction. " And again, " The unrelieved summation of stimuli in the nerve centres, involving stasis, tension, and interference with free discharge of nervous energy, gives a feeling of unpleasantness which in turn (in the higher types of conscious reaction at least) serves as a stimulus to other associative nerve centres to participate in the reaction until

1 C. J. Harrick, Introduction to Neurologf, 1920, Phila. and London,

pp.*286-287.

finally the appropriate avenue for an adaptive response is opened and the situation is relieved. With the release of the tension and free discharge, the feeling tone changes to a distinctly pleasurable quality." It may be noted that Herrick does not specify in which type of nerve centres, sensory or motor, the unrelieved summation of stimuli or the normal discharge of impulses is presumed to occur in order to evoke unpleasantness or pleasantness. Herrick says, however, in a neighbouring passage-, that such a stasis may be brought about by the conflict of two impulses for the same final common path. Such mutual facilitation and interference of nerve impulses must be presumed to occur in some appropriate connector or motor centre of the central nervous system.

The work of Head and Holmes 1 clearly indicates that whatever changes in nerve impulse behaviour are to be associated with increases of pleasantness and unpleasantness are to be found chiefly upon the motor side of the various reflex arcs involved. These authors studied human subjects suffering from thalamic lesion. The most important effect of the lesion in these cases was to remove a considerable proportion of the normal inhibitory influence exercised by the cerebral hemispheres over the motor discharge. The behaviour changes as noted by Head and Holmes consisted of exaggerated physical reactions to sensory stimuli with parallel increase in* the pleasantness or unpleasantness which was felt in connection with the sensation experienced. There seemed to be

no change in the sensory threshold nor any significant alteration of any part of the purely sensory reaction. The whole effect, in short, was upon the motor side rather than the sensory, and it was this increase in the number and degree of motor alliances and interferences which corresponded exactly with the increase of pleasantness and unpleasantness as reported by the subjects.

As a result of this research and other similar data accruing to psychology from the medical sciences, it is generally assumed that the free flow of nervous energy as well as the mutual conflicts and interferences between nervous impulses which the physiologists and neurologists definitely correlate with affective tone, are to be looked for primarily in the motor centres rather than in the sensory centres. R. S. Woodworth,

1 H. Head and G. Holmes, " Sensory Disturbances from Cerebral Lesions/' Brain, 1911, vol. 34, p. 109.

for instance, expresses his interpretation in this fashion, 1 " Putting this fact into neural terms, we say that pleasantness goes with a neural adjustment directed towards keeping, towards letting things stay as they are; while unpleasantness goes with an adjustment towards riddance." A " neural adjustment towards letting things stay as they are " must consist of a free flow of unobstructed motor impulses, all in alliance, because all are directed toward a unified behaviour pattern of the whole organism which.is meeting with no

opposition. An " adjustment toward riddance " must with equal certainty consist of a motor set rather than sensory set; and carries, also, suggested implication that there is some motor conflict with the object which the individual would rid himself of. Motor sets, then, seem to be regarded as neurologically responsible for primary feelings rather than sensory sets.

How Do Motor Alliances and Conflicts Reach Consciousness?

This result confronts psycho-physiological theory of feelings with the same problem faced by the theory of emotions considered in the last chapter. The p:oblem is : If our primary feelings of pleasantness and unpleasantness depend upon alliances and antagonisms between nerve impulses in the motor centres, how does this motor phenomenon ever reach consciousness ? *

Theories That Feeling Is an Integral Part of Sensation

Two different methods have been used in attempting the impossible task of getting motor phenomena into consciousness in terms of sensation. The first method, employed by many psychologists of the older school, consisted of setting up the simple hypothesis that feeling is merely an integral part of sensation. Pleasantness or unpleasantness would then be referred to as aspects of sensory experience, and we should be compelled to assume there is no sensation free from affective tone. This assumption would not be so far from the truth, but it is far more difficult to account for the changes in feeling tone which a given sensation may undergo without any change whatsoever in the sensory stimulus. The change in feeling

seems to accompany a change in motor response to the sensation experienced, rather than to inhere in the sensory conscious-

1 R. S. Woodworth. Psychology, New York, 1025, p. 178.

ness itself. There remains also, the extreme difficulty of finding any neurological mechanism by which a motor effect that takes place after could be reflected back in such a way that it could become an integral portion of the sensory event which had gone before and which might well have been completed by the time the motor phenomenon occurred.

During my own approach to the problem, being awed, at the time, by Psychology's current taboo on motor consciousness, I worked for the better part of an academic year in trying to discover in the literature of either psychology or neurology feasible mechanisms by which motor conflicts and. alliances could be conceived of as adding feeling tone to their preceding sensations. The best expedient which I was able to hit upon was to suppose that a motor blockage might cause the sensory impulse blocked to increase ils intensity in the sensory centres, above the upper limen of qualitatively distinct sensory consciousness; while mutual facilitation of motor impulses might be supposed to result in a drop of intensity in the sensory impulses below the lower limen of sensation. This theory only defined pleasantness and unpleasantness as near-sensations (that is, supra-liminal and sub-liminal sensory awareness), but it was the best I could do in warping motor phenomena

into sensory terms. I thought the suggestion a rather ingenious one, at the time I worked it out, but after some two ytftirs of observation and experiment I found that there was just one trouble with the theory. It wasn't so. Feelings, and the motor phenomena upon which they depend, simply cannot be defined even in near-sensory terms. They distinctly occur after the sensation is completed, and with entire independence of it. I was driven, after thus disproving my own theory, to abandon altogether, as most psychologists had done before me, any attempt to regard affective tone as an integral aspect of sensation.

Theories That Visceral Sensations Are Also Feelings

The second method, a modern one, by which even at the present moment, many psychologists are striving to drag motor phenomena into consciousness in terms of sensation, is the arbitrary appropriation of certain sensations, usually visceral ones, to constitute fueling tone ipso facto. Just why visceral sensations are so generally thought to possess especial affective value would be very hard to say. One reason

probably is that these sensations were for a long time much less definitely known and recognized than are the sensations having their origin at the surface of the body. It was not until 1912 that Cannon and Washburn succeeded in identifying stomach sensations with hunger, 1 while the works of Carlson, 2 Boring 3 and others in experimental examination of sensations from the alimentary tract are also the work of the

present generation. These experimenters have definitely shown that visceral receptors are meagre but specific, responding to extremes of temperature, pressure and pain. They evoke recognizable sensations. They do not evoke feelings. If, according to the James-Lange champions, primary feelings and emotions are composed entirely of visceral sensations, how is it possible to account for the fact that visceral sensations possess double characteristics, being felt both as sensations and also as feelings, while other sensations produced by corresponding receptor mechanisms from the external surface of the body, possess but the single characteristic of sensation ?

However, such a slight peculiarity in the psycho-physiological make-up might not deter the energetic psychologist from pursuing this visceral-affection theory, were it not for other and more insurmountable difficulties. Unfortunately for James-Lange addicts, there does exist definite experimental evidence which precludes the theoretical revamping of visceial sensations into feeling-tone consciousness. As noted in the last chapter, Cannon has shown (following Langley's description of the autonomic innervation of the viscera) that visceral changes resulting from motor discharge from the central nervous system occur in large and uniform patterns. That is to say, the autonomic motor nerves which influence the viscera operate on the principle of a non-synaptic nerve net. If one portion of the viscera, therefore, is altered in a certain way, all the visceral regions controlled by that section of the nerve net are similarly and simultaneously influenced. Cannon has shown that as a result of this situation, different emotions and affective states produce identical visceral changes. If the

1 W. B. Cannon and A. L, Washburn, " An Explanation of Hunger, 1 ' Ant. Jr. of Physiology, 1912, vol. XXIX, pp. 442-445.

2 A. J. Carlson, The Control of Hunger in Health and Disease, Chicago, 1916, Ch. VII, p. 101, The Sensibility of the Gastric Mucosa.

8 E. G. Boring, " The Sensations of the Alimentary Canal/ 1 Am. Jou.\ Psychology, 1915, vol. XXVI, pp. 1-57.

changes in the viscera are identical, how can the sensations resulting from these changes be different ? Cannon states that they cannot be : and concludes that, " It would appear the bodily conditions which have been assumed by some psychologists to distinguish emotions from one another must be sought for elsewhere than in the viscera/' 1

One would think that the physiologists* conclusion in this matter would be accepted as final, but a few psychologists, driven on, apparently, by the frantic urge to squeeze feeling 'tone into sensation by hook or by crook, have persisted to the last ditch in trying to find some loop hole in the physiologists* dictum. One such attempt is that of Allport, who says: 8 "The cranio-sacral division of the autonomic,... innervates those responses whose return afferent impulses are associated with the conscious quality of pleasantness. The sympathetic division produces visceral responses which are

represented in consciousness as unpleasantness." This idea is precisely what Cannon believed his results had disproved. But Allport attempts to use his own version of Cannon's results to support the visceral affection hypothesis. Allport quotes Cannon as stating that pleasant toned emotions result in motor discharge through the cranial and sacral branches of the autonomic nervous system, and that all unpleasant Demotions uniformly discharge into the viscera through the sympathetic (thoracio-lumbar) division of the autonomic system. I, am sure that Allport had no intention of deliberately misinterpreting Cannon's results, and so we cannot but suppose that Allporl, in his visceral-affective zeal, overinterpreted Cannon's work in a rather surprising way. For Cannon states 3 : "In terror, rage, and intense elation, for example, the responses in the viscera seem too uniform to offer a satisfactory means of distinguishing states which in man, at least, are very different in subjective quality." Terror, rage, and intense elation according to Cannon result in sympathetic motor discharge, as do also emotions producing sexual orgasm, and " anxiety, joy, grief, and deep disgust." 4

1 W. B. Cannon, Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear and Rage, New York and London, 1920, p. 280.

2 F. Allport, Social Psychology, Cambridge, 1924, p. 90.

3 W. B. Cannon, Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear and Rage, New York and London, 1920, p. 280.

4 W. B. Cannon, Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear and Rage,

New York and London, 1920, p. 279.

Can we believe that Allport regards intense elation, joy, and the climax of sexual emotion as unpleasant emotional states ? If not, then Allport 's theory that sensations caused by sympathetic motor impulses constitute unpleasantness finds itself contradicted. Similarly, Cannon emphasizes the fact that various intensely unpleasant emotions, such as extreme fear, may result in sacral motor discharge causing evacuation of the bladder and colon. In this observation of Cannon's, Allport must find singularly little support for the second part of his theory which identifies pleasantness with sensations caused by sacral-cranial discharge.

The acme of ingenuity in visceral-affection theories has been reached by W. W. Smith. 1 It must first be explained that Smith names his affective elements "positive feeling tone 1 ' and " negative feeling tone ", defined as those feelings which promote or delay, respectively, associative recall of memorized words. These feelings, he says, are " very close to " pleasantness and unpleasantness. Smith begins discussion by committing himself " four-square " to the James-Lange theory of emotion, and further presupposes that all affective states are composed of nothing but " endo-somatic sensations ". His problem then is : What endo-somatic sensations constitute positive feeling tone, and of what sensations is negative tone composed ? Smith's answer, like that of so many others, i? based upon the motor-impulse situation; and, like the others mentioned, he identifies positive feeling tone with harmonious motor discharge from co-operating " ideas ", and negative

affective tone with conflicting motor discharge from opposed " ideas ".

Then comes Smith's bid for the role of miracleworker. He attempts to translate these harmonious and conflicting motor impulses into sensory consciousness in an extremely novel way. The motor impulses, he says, are subliminal; yet diey have the extraordinary ability to evoke, in some way difficult to comprehend, the visceral sensations which constitute the actual conscious content of positive or negative feeling. If the " subliminal innervations of the physiological mechanisms ", says Smith, are incompatible, " endo-somatic sensations are thereby generated which, when perceived, give rise to one variety of affective tone " (negative). Relative

1 W. W. Smith, The Measurement of Emotion, New York and London, 922'.

relief from this war of the subliminally evoked endo-somatic sensations gives positive affective tone, which " is in the nature of a contrast effect ". Astounding doctrine ! Allport may have revised Langley and Cannon to suite himself by insisting that identical visceral sensations can be different according to the pleasantness or unpleasantness of the emotions that cause them, but Smith has gone him one better. Smith assumes not only that a nerve-net type of conductor is capable of effecting differential visceral changes, but he also appears to suggest that subliminal motor impulses, playing about within

this nerve-net, can somehow rise above their own categorical limitations and produce end-effects more emotionally potent than could be brought about by the most intense supraliminal impulses. Long life to this theory ! May it survive as a monument to future generations symbolizing the heights of acrobatic mentality scaled by man in the brave though futile cause of glorifying his visceral sensations !

Unsolved Problem

It can be seen, even from the above abbreviated review, that many authorities are in substantial agreement as to the physical basis underlying pleasantness and unpleasantness. Yet, despite this fundamental agreement that feeling tone depends upon alliance or conflict of motor set, both methods of translating motor impulses into sensory consciousness have fallen flat. 9 On the one hand, the facts do not support the assumption that motor phenomena can retroactively imbue preceding sensations with their own attributes. On the other hand, motor discharge which is admittedly linked with strong affective tone, has been found by the physiologists to be incapable of producing sensations sufficiently potent or diverse to correspond in any way with the associated feelings of pleasantness and unpleasantness. The problem of getting affective or motor discharge into consciousness remains* unsolved.

Feeling Tone is Motor Consciousness, or Motation

My own solution has already been suggested in the last chapter. I have ventured to step in where angels fear to tread. I have entered the gates of motor consciousness long guarded by psychology's sacred taboo. Once one has entered this forbidden territory, however, one finds the building

materials for affective and emotional theories ready-cut and prepared for immediate use. Accepting the conclusion agreed upon by the authorities cited, that motor facilitations and conflicts underlie pleasantness and unpleasantness, I have only to select appropriate units of psychonic energy necessarily generated in the motor centres where these motor impulses are integrated and, behold ! these items of motor consciousness are pleasantness and unpleasantness. If one accepts the existence of motor consciousness, then, there is no necessity for devising a round-about way of accounting' for our affective awareness of the result of motor discharge. The awareness has already occurred at the psychons where the motor impulses in question had their origin.

Integmtive Principles of Pleasantness and Unpleasantness

Connector nerve impulses arrive at certain original motor psychons from various associative centres of the brain, and are there integrated into specifically directed motor impulses. These specific motor impulses in turn, are obliged to form several sets of subsequent psychonic connections with each other and with motor impulses previously occupying the paths which they seek to enter. At all the psychons in this series, between the highest motor centres of the brain and the final common nerve paths leading to the muscles or glands innervated, integrative relationships of alliance or antagonism may exist between the various motor nerve disturbances combined at the psychons in question. Each of these synaptic combinations of motor impulses, therefore, must be expected to

give rise to one of the two primary elements of motor consciousness, pleasantness or unpleasantness, as well as to form complex varieties of mo tat ion corresponding with superadded complexities of impulse relationship.

According to this suggestion, the mutual facilitation of any two motor impulses on a motor psychon constitutes, ipso facto, conscious pleasantness. Antagonism between two or more motor impulses within any motor psychon constitutes conscious unpleasantness.

Causal Attributes of Pleasantness and Unpleasantness as Primary Elements of Motation

Pleasantness and unpleasantness, according to the theory proposed, are the primary elements of motor consciousness,

But primary elements, as here used, must not be taken to mean an element or unit from which all more complex mo tat ion can be derived. It seems to me a mistake in conceptual understanding of causation, for instance, to think of water as composed of nothing but hydrogen and oxygen. Or, to put it the other way, it seems a mistake to think of hydrogen and oxygen as containing within themselves all the materials from which water is made. The correct view seems rather to be that the simpler energy units composing the atoms of hydrogen and oxygen possess the capacity, when brought

into more complex relationship by the combination of hydrogen and oxygen in certain quantitative proportions, to generate a still more complex stabilization of energy; namely, water. This more complex energy form contains, it is true, atoms of hydrogen and oxygen, but it contains, also, additional energy units which are its own and which did not exist before in either the hydrogen atom or the oxygen atom or in both. This concept is but another application of our fundamental analysis of physical science into mechanistic-type and vitalistictype causes. The hydrogen and the oxygen, acting as mechanistic causes, create water which thereupon, as a vitalistictype cause, possesses powers not resident in either of its socalled elements. In the same way, for the sake of clarity qf thought and removal of prejudice against the general concept of " primary elements ", it seems advisable to think of pleasantnesj and unpleasantness as simple, integrative units, the constituent units of which may combine in still more complex ways, forming still more complex units of affective tone. Such complex, affective units, therefore, while all of them may contain pleasantness or unpleasantness, or both, must be expected to possess new attributes of motation which are actually not present in pleasantness and unpleasantness per se.

*>

Possible Objections To Proposed Theory of Pleasantness and Unpleasantness

What are the objections to the hypothesis that pleasantness and unpleasantness are based upon simple facilitation and conflict of impulses ? One objection sometimes argued, maintains that unpleasantness can not be based upon motor

conflict because some of our swiftest reactions are intensely unpleasant, The argument is taken that swift actions

8o EMOTIONS OF NORMAL PEOPLE

not result from motor conflicts and that, therefore, we find intense unpleasantness present without corresponding motor interference. This objection, however, like so many of our present psychological difficulties, is based upon failure to work out clearly the nerve impulse situation which is under discussion. While it is certainly true that swiftness of reaction does not result from the motor conflict element of preceding integration, it is also true that nearly all swift action taken in an emergency causes" motor conflicts. If, for example, one is walking serenely along a country lane, " day dfeaming " of pleasant experiences to come, and if a car, rushing down from behind, honks its horn, the startled dreamer may leap off the road in record time. There existed no dimunition of the motor impulses which succeeded in gaining outlet and which resulted in the jump. But what of the impulses which had been controlling the body and mind a moment before ? The large volume of motor discharge which had successfully found outlet just before the horn sounded, was interrupted, and rudely cut off altogether from motor outlet by the jumping impulses. A motor conflict, therefore, must have existed, and the very intensity of the successful motor discharge bears testimony to the fact that the previously existing motor setting was interrupted by force rather than by harmonic readjustment. Such instances of swift and efficient action under stress of danger seem to offer evidence tending to identify unpleasantness with motor conflict, -rather than offering any evidence against such identification.

Conversely, the objection has been urged that pleasantness cannot depend upon positive facilitation since its resulting emotions appear to be of slow, easy-going variety, like the stroll down a country lane mentioned. This objection, again, seems not fully to grasp the exact neurological relationships involved. The relationship of mutual facilitation between impulses simultaneously passing over a given psychon is not to be confused with the intensity of the resulting motor excitation within the final efferent paths. Forbes and Gregg have, in fact, shown that the normal limit of excitation in any individual nerve fibre is quickly reached and that an intense stimulus thereafter super-imposes a sort of secondary rhythm upon the normal disturbance within the nerve. 1 Thus,

1 A. Forbes and A. Gregg, " Electrical Studies in Mammalian Reflexes/ 1 Am. Jour, of Physiology, vol. XXXIX, Dec. 1915. pp.

it seems clear that complete mutual facilitation of motor impulses free from secondary interference impulse waves can only occur if the impulses in alliance are of notably low intensity. The swiftness and decision of muscular rtiovement is a product not of the completeness of facilitation existing at any motor psychon, but rather of the intensity of the successful motor impulses which contract the muscles used. It is, in short, the completeness with which two motor impulses blend, that is to be thought of as fixing the degree of pleasantness of which we are conscious. The intensity of motor discharge has nothing to do with the matter, except

that it will become increasingly difficult for two or more motor impulses to effect complete alliance in proportion as the intensity of either impulse is increased. In other words, the more swift and abrupt any physical action becomes the more difficult it will be to make this action completely pleasant.

Another objection sometimes raised to the identification of pleasantness with free and unimpeded discharge of motor impulses rests upon the argument that practising any reaction makes it more smooth-running, and free from synaptic obstruction. The more habitual a given action becomes, therefore, the more unimpeded must be the motor discharge \yhich produces it. Yet, such actions, it is said, are not more pleasant than less practised responses, but rather tend to become increasingly indifferent in feeling tone. The initial fallacy in this argument is that free discharge of motor impulses is by no means synonymous with mutual facilitation of impulses at the junctional psychons. While it is true that habitual actions attain a maximum freedom of motor discharge, it is not true that habitual actions are the product of

232-233. " When a mammalian nerve trunk, such as the sciatic or one of its major branches (popliteal or peroneal) in the cat, is stimulated with single induction shocks of graded intensity, and the resulting action currents are recorded monophasically with the string galvanometer, the magnitude of the electrical response normally increases with increasing stimuli until the latter have reached a value in the neighbourhood of

40 Z units; with further increase in strength of stimulus no further increase in response occurs so long as this retains the form typical of a simple action current record, in short there is a limiting maximal value to the action current. When the increase in the strength of induction shock is carried far enough (usually about 200 Z in round numbers) the electrical responses no longer appear as simple curves, but show deformation which becomes increasingly marked as the strength of shock is further increased."

a maximal amount of facilitation between different groups of motor impulses. Quite the contrary. The more habitual an action becomes the more it tends to approximate the lower reflexes of the body. That is, those reflexes which employ a minimum number of synapses and maintain a continuously unimpeded discharge of energy across a single motor synapse, might be expected, according to the psychonic theory of consciousness, to produce a minimum of consciousness of any sort. While responses requiring motor impulse combinations at hundreds, or perhaps thousands of motor synapses might be expected to result in a maximal amount of facilitation (pleasantness) or interference (unpleasantness). The indifference of

habitual actions, therefore, again offers positive proof for the theory proposed and seems in accord with it at every point. The statement that the mere practicing of given responses renders them indifferent or less pleasant is far from fact. Such a proposition would suggest that the " dud " at golf enjoys his strokes more than does the finished master of the game; or that one derives more pleasure from the first tennis practice of a season than from the execution of a perfect return after months of practice. Such simply is not the case. The more perfectly practised a given movement is the greater pleasantness one derives from it provided that the consciousness attaching to the action in question is not itself diminished; tha* is, providing the movement is not accomplished by a more mechanical type of psycho-neural reflex containing a smaller number of synapses and psychons.

An objection which has been raised especially to the motor consciousness aspect of the theory proposed brings forward the suggestion that it would seem likely that most motor impulses would be able to gain final discharge without being compelled to form synaptic relationships of facilitation or interference with any motor impulses seeking to occupy a coirfmon path. If this were so, it is asserted, we should expect nearly all our reactions to cause a feeling tone of indifference whereas, as a matter of fact, nearly all human responses not habitual or " unconscious " are felt to be noticably pleasant or unpleasant. I would agree certainly, that a totally indifferent response is of comparatively rare occurrence and that, therefore, our motor consciousness theory must be prepared to account for the appearance of mutual facilitations or conflict of motor impulses in connection with a vast majority

of responses. The opinion of Sherrington might be quoted 1 to the effect that it seems to him questionable whether a relationship of complete indifference could obtain between any two co-existing motor excitations because of the complexity and close interconnection of the entire synaptic structure of the central nervous system, especially the brain. However, since this issue is a very important one it may be well to discover, if possible, a fundamental condition in the functioning of the nervous system taken as a unit which would account' for the expectation that nearly all motor impulses must form synaptic facilitations or antagonisms before reaching final efferent discharge. Such a fundamental reason may be sought in an examination of the continuous, or tonic discharges which persist throughout the life of the organism.

Constant Tonic Discharge Renders All Responses Initially Pleasant or Unpleasant

Recent neurological researches have tended to emphasize the importance of the tonic motor mechanisms which act continuously against the forces of environment to maintain posture and preparedness for adaptive action. Speaking of decerebrate rigidity, a condition affecting the same mechanisms aj those concerned in tonic discharge, Sherrington writes 1 : " llie muscles it predominantly affects are those which in that attitude (i.e. the one maintained by tonic reflexes) antagonize gravity. In standing, walking, running, the limbs would sink under the body's weight but for contraction of the extensors of hip, knee, ankle, shoulder, elbow; the head would hang, but for the retractors of the neck; the tail and jaw would

drop, but for their elevator muscles. These muscles counteract a force, gravity, that continually threatens to upset the natural posture. The force acts continuously and the muscles exhibit continued action, tonus....

" Two separable systems of motor innervation appear thus controlling two sets of musculature : one system exhibits

1 " In presence of the arcs of the great proficient receptors and the brain there can be few receptive points in the body whose activities are totally indifferent one to another. Correlation of the reflexes from points widely apart is the crowning contribution of the brain towards the nervous integration of the individual." C. S. Sherrington, Integrafive Action of the Nervous System, p. 147.

8 C. S. Sherrington, Integrative Action of the Nervous System, p. 30*.

those transient phases of heightened reaction which constitute reflex movements; the other maintains that steady tonic response which supplies the muscular tension necessary to attitude. Starting from the tonic innervation as initial state, the first step in movement tends to be flexion and involves under ' reciprocal innervation ' an inhibition of the extensor excitation then in progress. This will be involved whether

the excitation be via local reflex or via the motor cortex....

" And the tonic system will, on inhibition of it gassing off, contribute a return movement to the pre-existing pose, thus having it share in alternating movements and in compensatory reflexes. These two systems, the tonic and the phasic reflex systems, co-operate exertirg influences complimental to each other upon various units of the musculature."

Thus it is evident that every phasic, or transitory group of motor impulses which succeeds in winning through to motor outlet, and thus influencing bodily behaviour, must first conflict with (inhibit) the existing tonic discharge, or else facilitate (co-operate with) the continuous tonic impulses. And this same facilitation or antagonism must occur, according to Sherrington, no matter what level of reflex centres may be employed by the phasic impulses, from lowest (local reflex) to highest (motor cortex). If, then, pleasantness and unpleasantness are generated, in the form of psychonic motor energy, upon each occasion that relationships of alliance or antagonism occur in the motor centres, we must assume that some pleasantness or some unpleasantness will precede every linal bodily response; since, prior to each final response, the motorimpulses setting it off are compelled to ally themselves with, or to antagonize the pre-existing tonic discharge.

This result seems to accord precisely with the facts of experience as cited in the criticism of the motation theory of feeling now being discussed. I should like to add, however, that where a minimum of synaptic juncture between phasic and tonic impulses occur, and where the response is also devoid

of any considerable interrelationship between phasic impulses, the pleasantness or unpleasantness may be so slight as to escape the observation of the subject. Also, in the type of reaction where interrelationships of connector impulses predominate, with little motor energy escaping into final efferent paths, we should anticipate little observable affective tone. If " thinking " is based upon this connector-correlation type

of neural picture, then its apparent emotional indifference might stand accounted for.

Summary

In summary, there seems to be excellent neurological authority for the assumption that pleasantness is in some way attached, either to free, unimpeded discharge of impulses in the central nervous system, or to positive, mutual facilitation of impulses. Similar authority indicates that unpleasantness is connected with central blockage, stasis, or mutual interference of impulses. The work of Head and Holmes, corroborating this conclusion, also indicates that the facilitations and interferences of impulses running parallel with affective tone must occur in the motor centres rather than upon the sensory side of the central nervous system. Marked over-reactions, that is, motor exaggerations, accompanied increase of pleasantness and unpleasantness, while no alterations in the sensory integrations or receptor mechanisms were found.

Psychology, then, has long been faced with the problem :

How do we become conscious of the alliances and conflicts of motor impulses ? The first attempt to answer sought to regard feeling as a true aspect of sensation, and to establish jsome psycho-neural mechanism by which motor phenomena might retroactively influence their preceding sensations. But no sirh mechanism seems to exist. Other attempts to solve this problem have sought to set aside special groups of sensations, supposedly caused by the initial motor impulses in question, with the assertion that these sensory units enter consciousness not as sensations, but as affective tone. Visceral sensations have been the ruling favourites among those selected. But visceral sensations, sparse and feeble at best, cannot be evoked selectively by motor discharge from the central nervous system, because the autonomic nerve* net," excitable only in large sections, intervenes between the central nervous system and the viscera. The same visceral sensations accompany pleasant and unpleasant emotions.

The psychonic theory of consciousness answers the problem squarely, and without circuminvention. It holds that we become conscious of motor alliances and conflicts at the time they occur, in the motor synapses. A relationship of mutual facilitation between two or more motor impulses, once fowned

upon a motor psychon, is pleasantness. A relationship of motor antagonism, similarly formed, is unpleasantness. Examination of the evidence advanced by several types of objections to the theory proposed reveals the fact that all this data is closely in accord with the theory.