tion 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
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