THE TYPICAL varieties of emotion are each connected with certain charac-
teristic . . . trends of activity. Anger involves a tendency to destroy and
forcibly to break down opposition. . . . Joy involves what we may call
expansive activity. . . . In grief there is a general depression and dis-
turbance of the vital functions. . . . Fear . . . arises in a situation which
demands action for averting, evading, or escaping a loss or misfortune
which has not yet taken place.

G. F. Stout, The Groundwork of Psychology, 1903

In this chapter, as in the preceding, we are concerned, not
with a principle, but a problem. The problem, in large part,
is that of deciding what to do about the term emotion. Is this
word to be kept in service as an aid to our understanding of
behavior, or should we retire it from active scientific duty?
The question may strike you as a foolish one. Emotion, one
hears, is something that colors human life from birth until
death. It is the essence of pleasure and the companion of pain;
it is the spirit of ecstasy and the soul of despair; it is the friend
of creative effort; it promotes well-being and ruins digestion.
Do without it? Would we not be left with a colorless and cold
existence?

This attitude misses the point of our problem. We did not
propose to shirk our obligation to deal with those aspects of
behavior which, in common speech throughout the ages, have
been called 'emotional.' We asked only if a clear and useful
meaning could be given to the word. What we sought to em-
phasize was the danger that lies in adopting, for scientific
purposes, a term that has such a variegated history of usage

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