t is
necessarily of longer duration, the emotion also will live longer. The
fear which follows the thunder is relatively brief; for the shock is
gone in a moment, and our thought is but temporarily disturbed. If the
impending danger is one that persists, however, as of some secret
assassin threatening our life, the fear also will persist. The grief of
a child over the loss of someone dear to him is comparatively short,
because the current of the child's life has not been so closely bound up
in a complexity of experiences with the lost object as in the case of an
older person, and hence the readjustment is easier. The grief of an
adult over the loss of a very dear friend lasts long, for the object
grieved over has so become a part of the bereaved one's experience that
the loss requires a very complete readjustment of the whole life. In
either case, however, as this readjustment is accomplished the emotion
gradually fades away.

EMOTIONS ACCOMPANYING CRISES IN EXPERIENCE.--If our description of the
feelings has been correct, it will be seen that the simpler and milder
feelings are for the common run of our everyday experience; they are the
common valuers of our thought and acts from hour to hour. The emotions,
or more intense feeling states, are, however, the occasional high tide
of feeling which occurs in crises or emergencies. We are angry on some
particular provocation, we fear some extraordinary factor in our
environment, we are joyful over some unusual good fortune.

2. THE CONTROL OF EMOTIONS

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 condi