Self and Emotion 181“9x6” b2726 Self and the Phenomenon of Life: A Biologist Examines Life from Molecules to Humanityin the animal world. Thanks to this faculty, we animals can procure food,
avoid danger, and beget progeny more efficiently than a cabbage.
9.2 What is Emotion?
First, let me clarify a few terms I use in this chapter. The word “emotion”
when used without qualification denotes the general affective aspect of
the mind as opposed to the cognitive function such as knowing and ratio-
nal thinking. I use the word in its broadest sense, to include such things
as joy, sorrow, love, hatred, fear, jealousy, and the like. I distinguish two
aspects of emotion: one is the peripheral and outwardly response, which
I shall call “emotional expression” or, in the extreme case, “emotional
outburst;” the other is the inner experience with or without an outward
expression, which I shall call “feeling, or mood.” Emotional expression
includes facial features showing anger, horror, surprise, pleasure, or hap-
piness, as well as involuntary bodily reactions such as palpitations, rapid
respiration, muscle tension, or intestinal spasm. “Feeling” is the subtle
aspect of emotional experience without overt bodily components. It is a
high-order mental function derived from the interaction of cerebral cor-
tex and the subcortical emotional centers. “Mood” is a prolonged feeling
of a diffuse nature that serves as a tonal background.^2
9.3 Where is the “Seat” of Emotion?
Common sense tells us that the heart is where we feel the emotion.
Everybody understands when your heart is “broken,” or so-and-so is
“kind-hearted,” or when you thank someone from the “bottom of your
heart.” When excited, angered, frightened, or deeply in love, you feel it
in your heart. When Cupid (meaning desire in Latin) shoots his arrow at
a young man and woman, it is the heart that he aims at. That the heart
is the seat of emotion is deeply engrained in all folk culture. Four thou-
sand years ago, when the Egyptians mummified their dead, the heart
was carefully preserved in a jar and placed next to the body while the
brain, thought to be junk, was simply discarded.