Dependence on Expression.—Since all emotions rest upon some form of physical or physiological expression primarily, and upon some thought back of this secondarily, it follows that the first step in controlling an emotion is to secure the removal of the state of consciousness which serves as its basis. This may be done, for instance, with a child, either by banishing the terrifying dog from his presence, or by convincing him that the dog is harmless. The motor response will then cease, and the emotion pass away. If the thought is persistent, however, through the continuance of its stimulus, then what remains is to seek to control the physical expression, and in that way suppress the emotion. If, instead of the knit brow, the tense muscles, the quickened heart beat, and all the deeper organic changes which go along with these, we can keep a smile on the face, the muscles relaxed, the heart beat steady, and a normal condition in all the other organs, we shall have no cause to fear an explosion of anger. If we are afraid of mice and feel an almost irresistible tendency to mount a chair every time we see a mouse, we can do wonders in suppressing the fear by resolutely refusing to give expression to these tendencies. Inhibition of the expression inevitably means the death of the emotion.

This fact has its bad side as well as its good in the feeling life, for it means that good emotions as well as bad will fade out if we fail to allow them expression. We are all perfectly familiar with the fact in our own experience that an interest which does not find means of expression soon passes away. Sympathy unexpressed ere long passes over into indifference. Even love cannot live without expression. Religious emotion which does not go out in deeds of service cannot persist. The natural end and aim of our emotions is to serve as motives to activity; and missing this opportunity, they have not only failed in their office, but will themselves die of inaction.

Relief through Expression.—Emotional states not only have their rise in organic reactions, but they also tend to result in acts. When we are angry, or in love, or in fear, we have the impulse to do something about it. And, while it is true that emotion may be inhibited by suppressing the physical expressions on which it is founded, so may a state of emotional tension be relieved by some forms of expression. None have failed to experience the relief which comes to the overcharged nervous system from a good cry. There is no sorrow so bitter as a dry sorrow, when one cannot weep. A state of anger or annoyance is relieved by an explosion of some kind, whether in a blow or its equivalent in speech. We often feel better when we have told a man "what we think of him."

At first glance this all seems opposed to what we have been laying down as the explanation of emotion. Yet it is not so if we look well into the case. We have already seen that emotion occurs when there is a blocking of the usual pathways of discharge for the nerve currents, which must then seek new outlets, and thus result in the setting up of new motor responses. In the case of grief, for example, there is a disturbance in the whole organism; the heart beat is deranged, the blood pressure diminished, and the nerve tone lowered. What is needed is for the currents which are finding an outlet in directions resulting in these particular responses to find a pathway of discharge which will not produce such deep-seated results. This may be found in crying. The energy thus expended is diverted from producing internal disturbances. Likewise, the explosion in anger may serve to restore the equilibrium of disturbed nerve currents.

Relief Does Not Follow if Image is Held Before the Mind.—All this is true, however, only when the expression does not serve to keep the idea before the mind which was originally responsible for the emotion. A person may work himself into a passion of anger by beginning to talk about an insult and, as he grows increasingly violent, bringing the situation more and more sharply into his consciousness. The effect of terrifying images is easily to be observed in the case of one's starting to run when he is afraid after night. There is probably no doubt that the running would relieve his fear providing he could do it and not picture the threatening something as pursuing him. But, with his imagination conjuring up dire images of frightful catastrophes at every step, all control is lost and fresh waves of terror surge over the shrinking soul.

Growing Tendency toward Emotional Control.—Among civilized peoples there is a constantly growing tendency toward emotional control. Primitive races express grief, joy, fear, or anger much more freely than do civilized races. This does not mean that primitive man feels more deeply than civilized man; for, as we have already seen, the crying, laughing, or blustering is but a small part of the whole physical expression, and one's entire organism may be stirred to its depths without any of these outward manifestations. Man has found it advisable as he has advanced in civilization not to reveal all he feels to those around him. The face, which is the most expressive part of the body, has come to be under such perfect control that it is hard to read through it the emotional state, although the face of civilized man is capable of expressing far more than is that of the savage. The same difference is observable between the child and the adult. The child reveals each passing shade of emotion through his expression, while the adult may feel much that he does not show.

3. CULTIVATION OF THE EMOTIONS

There is no other mental factor which has more to do with the enjoyment we get out of life than our feelings and emotions.

The Emotions and Enjoyment.—Few of us would care to live at all, if all feeling were eliminated from human experience. True, feeling often makes us suffer; but in so far as life's joys triumph over its woes, do our feelings minister to our enjoyment. Without sympathy, love, and appreciation, life would be barren indeed. Moreover, it is only through our own emotional experience that we are able to interpret the feeling side of the lives about us. Failing in this, we miss one of the most significant phases of social experience, and are left with our own sympathies undeveloped and our life by so much impoverished.

The interpretation of the subtler emotions of those about us is in no small degree an art. The human face and form present a constantly changing panorama of the soul's feeling states to those who can read their signs. The ability to read the finer feelings, which reveal themselves in expression too delicate to be read by the eye of the gross or unsympathetic observer, lies at the basis of all fine interpretation of personality. Feelings are often too deep for outward expression, and we are slow to reveal our deepest selves to those who cannot appreciate and understand them.

How Emotions Develop.—Emotions are to be cultivated as the intellect or the muscles are to be cultivated; namely, through proper exercise. Our thought is to dwell on those things to which proper emotions attach, and to shun lines which would suggest emotions of an undesirable type. Emotions which are to be developed must, as has already been said, find expression; we must act in response to their leadings, else they become but idle vaporings. If love prompts us to say a kind word to a suffering fellow mortal, the word must be spoken or the feeling itself fades away. On the other hand, the emotions which we wish to suppress are to be refused expression. The unkind and cutting word is to be left unsaid when we are angry, and the fear of things which are harmless left unexpressed and thereby doomed to die.

The Emotional Factor in Our Environment.—Much material for the cultivation of our emotions lies in the everyday life all about us if we can but interpret it. Few indeed of those whom we meet daily but are hungering for appreciation and sympathy. Lovable traits exist in every character, and will reveal themselves to the one who looks for them. Miscarriages of justice abound on all sides, and demand our indignation and wrath and the effort to right the wrong. Evil always exists to be hated and suppressed, and dangers to be feared and avoided. Human life and the movement of human affairs constantly appeal to the feeling side of our nature if we understand at all what life and action mean.

A certain blindness exists in many people, however, which makes our own little joys, or sorrows, or fears the most remarkable ones in the world, and keeps us from realizing that others may feel as deeply as we. Of course this self-centered attitude of mind is fatal to any true cultivation of the emotions. It leads to an emotional life which lacks not only breadth and depth, but also perspective.

Literature and the Cultivation of the Emotions.—In order to increase our facility in the interpretation of the emotions through teaching us what to look for in life and experience, we may go to literature. Here we find life interpreted for us in the ideal by masters of interpretation; and, looking through their eyes, we see new depths and breadths of feeling which we had never before discovered. Indeed, literature deals far more in the aggregate with the feeling side than with any other aspect of human life. And it is just this which makes literature a universal language, for the language of our emotions is more easily interpreted than that of our reason. The smile, the cry, the laugh, the frown, the caress, are understood all around the world among all peoples. They are universal.

There is always this danger to be avoided, however. We may become so taken up with the overwrought descriptions of the emotions as found in literature or on the stage that the common humdrum of everyday life around us seems flat and stale. The interpretation of the writer or the actor is far beyond what we are able to make for ourselves, so we take their interpretation rather than trouble ourselves to look in our own environment for the material which might appeal to our emotions. It is not rare to find those who easily weep over the woes of an imaginary person in a book or on the stage unable to feel sympathy for the real suffering which exists all around them. The story is told of a lady at the theater who wept over the suffering of the hero in the play; and at the moment she was shedding the unnecessary tears, her own coachman, whom she had compelled to wait for her in the street, was frozen to death. Our seemingly prosaic environment is full of suggestions to the emotional life, and books and plays should only help to develop in us the power rightly to respond to these suggestions.

Harm in Emotional Overexcitement.—Danger may exist also in still another line; namely, that of emotional overexcitement. There is a great nervous strain in high emotional tension. Nothing is more exhausting than a severe fit of anger; it leaves its victim weak and limp. A severe case of fright often incapacitates one for mental or physical labor for hours, or it may even result in permanent injury. The whole nervous tone is distinctly lowered by sorrow, and even excessive joy may be harmful.

In our actual, everyday life, there is little danger from emotional overexcitement unless it be in the case of fear in children, as was shown in the discussion on instincts, and in that of grief over the loss of objects that are dear to us. Most of our childish fears we could just as well avoid if our elders were wiser in the matter of guarding us against those that are unnecessary. The griefs we cannot hope to escape, although we can do much to control them. Long-continued emotional excitement, unless it is followed by corresponding activity, gives us those who weep over the wrongs of humanity, but never do anything to right them; who are sorry to the point of death over human suffering, but cannot be induced to lend their aid to its alleviation. We could very well spare a thousand of those in the world who merely feel, for one who acts, James tells us.

We should watch, then, that our good feelings do not simply evaporate as feelings, but that they find some place to apply themselves to accomplish good; that we do not, like Hamlet, rave over wrongs which need to be righted, but never bring ourselves to the point where we take a hand in their righting. If our emotional life is to be rich and deep in its feeling and effective in its results on our acts and character, it must find its outlet in deeds.

4. EMOTIONS AS MOTIVES

Emotion is always dynamic, and our feelings constitute our strongest motives to action and achievement.

How Our Emotions Compel Us.—Love has often done in the reformation of a fallen life what strength of will was not able to accomplish; it has caused dynasties to fall, and has changed the map of nations. Hatred is a motive hardly less strong. Fear will make savage beasts out of men who fall under its sway, causing them to trample helpless women and children under feet, whom in their saner moments they would protect with their lives. Anger puts out all the light of reason, and prompts peaceful and well-meaning men to commit murderous acts.

Thus feeling, from the faintest and simplest feeling of interest, the various ranges of pleasures and pain, the sentiments which underlie all our lives, and so on to the mighty emotions which grip our lives with an overpowering strength, constitutes a large part of the motive power which is constantly urging us on to do and dare. Hence it is important from this standpoint, also, that we should have the right type of feelings and emotions well developed, and the undesirable ones eliminated.

Emotional Habits.—Emotion and feeling are partly matters of habit. That is, we can form emotional as well as other habits, and they are as hard to break. Anger allowed to run uncontrolled leads into habits of angry outbursts, while the one who habitually controls his temper finds it submitting to the habit of remaining within bounds. One may cultivate the habit of showing his fear on all occasions, or of discouraging its expression. He may form the habit of jealousy or of confidence. It is possible even to form the habit of falling in love, or of so suppressing the tender emotions that love finds little opportunity for expression.

And here, as elsewhere, habits are formed through performing the acts upon which the habit rests. If there are emotional habits we are desirous of forming, what we have to do is to indulge the emotional expression of the type we desire, and the habit will follow. If we wish to form the habit of living in a chronic state of the blues, then all we have to do is to be blue and act blue sufficiently, and this form of emotional expression will become a part of us. If we desire to form the habit of living in a happy, cheerful state, we can accomplish this by encouraging the corresponding expression.

5. PROBLEMS IN OBSERVATION AND INTROSPECTION

1. What are the characteristic bodily expressions by which you can recognize a state of anger? Fear? Jealousy? Hatred? Love? Grief? Do you know persons who are inclined to be too expressive emotionally? Who show too little emotional expression? How would you classify yourself in this respect?

2. Are you naturally responsive to the emotional tone of others; that is, are you sympathetic? Are you easily affected by reading emotional books? By emotional plays or other appeals? What is the danger from overexciting the emotions without giving them a proper outlet in some practical activity?

3. Have you observed a tendency among adults not to take seriously the emotions of a child; for example, to look upon childish grief as trivial, or fear as something to be laughed at? Is the child's emotional life as real as that of the adult? (See Ch. IX, Betts, "Fathers and Mothers.")

4. Have you known children to repress their emotions for fear of being laughed at? Have you known parents or others to remark about childish love affairs to the children themselves in a light or joking way? Ought this ever to be done?

5. Note certain children who give way to fits of anger; what is the remedy? Note other children who cry readily; what would you suggest as a cure? (Why should ridicule not be used?)

6. Have you observed any teacher using the lesson in literature or history to cultivate the finer emotions? What emotions have you seen appealed to by a lesson in nature study? What emotions have you observed on the playground that needed restraint? Do you think that on the whole the emotional life of the child receives enough consideration in the school? In the home?

CHAPTER XVI

INTEREST

The feeling that we call interest is so important a motive in our lives and so colors our acts and gives direction to our endeavors that we will do well to devote a chapter to its discussion.

1. THE NATURE OF INTEREST

We saw in an earlier chapter that personal habits have their rise in race habits or instincts. Let us now see how interest helps the individual to select from his instinctive acts those which are useful to build into personal habits. Instinct impartially starts the child in the performance of many different activities, but does not dictate what particular acts shall be retained to serve as the basis for habits. Interest comes in at this point and says, "This act is of more value than that act; continue this act and drop that." Instinct prompts the babe to countless movements of body and limb. Interest picks out those that are most vitally connected with the welfare of the organism, and the child comes to prefer these rather than the others. Thus it is that out of the random movements of arms and legs and head and body we finally develop the coördinated activities which are infinitely more useful than the random ones were. And these activities, originating in instincts, and selected by interest, are soon crystallized into habits.

Interest a Selective Agent.—The same truth holds for mental activities as for physical. A thousand channels lie open for your stream of thought at this moment, but your interest has beckoned it into the one particular channel which, for the time, at least, appears to be of the greatest subjective value; and it is now following that channel unless your will has compelled it to leave that for another. Your thinking as naturally follows your interest as the needle does the magnet, hence your thought activities are conditioned largely by your interests. This is equivalent to saying that your mental habits rest back finally upon your interests.

Everyone knows what it is to be interested; but interest, like other elementary states of consciousness, cannot be rigidly defined. (1) Subjectively considered, interest may be looked upon as a feeling attitude which assigns our activities their place in a subjective scale of values, and hence selects among them. (2) Objectively considered, an interest is the object which calls forth the feeling. (3) Functionally considered, interest is the dynamic phase of consciousness.

Interest Supplies a Subjective Scale of Values.—If you are interested in driving a horse rather than in riding a bicycle, it is because the former has a greater subjective value to you than the latter. If you are interested in reading these words instead of thinking about the next social function or the last picnic party, it is because at this moment the thought suggested appeals to you as of more value than the other lines of thought. From this it follows that your standards of values are revealed in the character of your interests. The young man who is interested in the race track, in gaming, and in low resorts confesses by the fact that these things occupy a high place among the things which appeal to him as subjectively valuable. The mother whose interests are chiefly in clubs and other social organizations places these higher in her scale of values than her home. The reader who can become interested only in light, trashy literature must admit that matter of this type ranks higher in his subjective scale of values than the works of the masters. Teachers and students whose strongest interest is in grade marks value these more highly than true attainment. For, whatever may be our claims or assertions, interest is finally an infallible barometer of the values we assign to our activities.

In the case of some of our feelings it is not always possible to ascribe an objective side to them. A feeling of ennui, of impending evil, or of bounding vivacity, may be produced by an unanalyzable complex of causes. But interest, while it is related primarily to the activities of the self, is carried over from the activity to the object which occasions the activity. That is, interest has both an objective and a subjective side. On the subjective side a certain activity connected with self-expression is worth so much; on the objective side a certain object is worth so much as related to this self-expression. Thus we say, I have an interest in books or in business; my daily activities, my self-expression, are governed with reference to these objects. They are my interests.

Interest Dynamic.—Many of our milder feelings terminate within ourselves, never attaining sufficient force as motives to impel us to action. Not so with interest. Its very nature is dynamic. Whatever it seizes upon becomes ipso facto an object for some activity, for some form of expression of the self. Are we interested in a new book, we must read it; in a new invention, we must see it, handle it, test it; in some vocation or avocation, we must pursue it. Interest is impulsive. It gives its possessor no opportunity for lethargic rest and quiet, but constantly urges him to action. Grown ardent, interest becomes enthusiasm, "without which," says Emerson, "nothing great was ever accomplished." Are we an Edison, with a strong interest centered in mechanical invention, it will drive us day and night in a ceaseless activity which scarcely gives us time for food and sleep. Are we a Lincoln, with an undying interest in the Union, this motive will make possible superhuman efforts for the accomplishment of our end. Are we man or woman anywhere, in any walk of life, so we are dominated by mighty interests grown into enthusiasm for some object, we shall find great purposes growing within us, and our life will be one of activity and achievement. On the contrary, a life which has developed no great interest lacks motive power. Of necessity such a life must be devoid of purpose and hence barren of results, counting little while it is being lived, and little missed by the world when it is gone.

Habit Antagonistic to Interest.—While, as we have seen, interest is necessary to the formation of habits, yet habits once formed are antagonistic to interest. That is, acts which are so habitually performed that they "do themselves" are accompanied by a minimum of interest. They come to be done without attentive consciousness, hence interest cannot attach to their performance. Many of the activities which make up the daily round of our lives are of this kind. As long as habit is being modified in some degree, as long as we are improving in our ways of doing things, interest will still cling to the process; but let us once settle into an unmodified rut, and interest quickly fades away. We then have the conditions present which make of us either a machine or a drudge.