Page:The Harveian Oration,1902.djvu/57

As all the emotions, however complex, are founded ultimately on the affective tone accompainting the exercise of the organs of sensation in all their relations, visceral or somatic, the emotional and sensory substrata are one and the same. And it is not improbable that each organ has its own affective tone, its own centre, and contributes its own share to the general emotional result. Whether the feelings are conditioned from within or without, by presentation or representation, the effect on the circulation is the same. That which seems to constitute the chief difference between simple feelings and emotions is the relatively greater influence of the latter as compared with the former. Emotions are unitary composites of simple feelings and the resulting aggregate is much more powerful than any one of its individual elements. Fear, which is mental pain, causes greater acceleration of the heart, greater vascular constriction, and greater pallor than can be induced by mere physical pain. Not only is the circulation profoundly affected but there is a tendency to irradiation beyond the cardiac and vaso-motor into all the splanchnic functions, so that we observe inter