ABSTRACT
William James was an American psychologist and philosopher, who spent most of his career as a Professor at Harvard University. He offered one of the first courses in the United States in the area of psychology and his ideas were remarkably influential in shaping the modern field. His theory on the nature of emotion marked a significant break in explaining the operation of emotion and has been especially important for historians of emotion. He was not entirely alone in coming to these ideas; Carl Lange and Giuseppe Sergi were making similar points in their own scholarship during the period. He suggested that emotions were labels that people placed upon their biological experience and which gave them meaning. People's natural way of thinking about these coarser emotions is that the mental perception of some fact excites the mental affection called the emotion, and that this latter state of mind gives rise to the bodily expression.
