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We are living in an age when the contrast between intellectual complexity and emotional simplicity is becoming so great that the emotional reactions and, because of them, the creative and destructive acts of men are more and more unpredictable and variegated. Intellectual attainment has reached an extraordinary height. Emotions have not been trained or developed, if indeed they are capable of development. They may not be, though it will be assumed in a later chapter that they are susceptible of the kind of training that is produced by reassociation. Emotions are the organic sensations perceived by the ego as the result of reactions, caused by impressions from the external world, reactions taking place within the tissues of the body, and associated with external impressions. Emotions are no more complex than they were thousands of years ago.

When we say that the emotions of one man are finer than those of another man we may mean either that he has repressed his sexual emotions, which we have not been taught to call fine, or that his emotions of surprise, awe, love, hate, jealousy and others are aroused by, that is, associated with, more complicated external impressions than they are in another man. Or we may call fine emotions the constructive emotions with which pleasure is associated.