ABSTRACT
UNTIL NOW this recurrent theme has been only an implication; here it comes to full statement as the dominant hypothesis. We have already seen emotion viewed as an energy disorder (Chapter VI), as a disorder of the milieu intérieur (X B), as the disorder of conflict (XVI), In Chapter X C, emotion was presented in terms of 'explosions', 'delays', 'disintegrations', and it was connected to a second kind of willing which interferes with the rational ordered kind. Then we have seen such notions as 'bouleversement' (Burloud) and 'Erschiitterung' (Stern)—and even Lewin's 'Umschichtung' can be taken as disorder. The idea of disorder given in Chapter VII differs from what we shall encounter here because there the disorder was due to quantitative excess. Emotion was simply excess, and as the excess of anything can be disordering, so emotion was disorder. Here, however, emotion is disorder because of its irrational or unordered essence. Disorder also entered into Chapter XIII where some genetic theories proposed a common, simple root for all emotion, calling it— in one way or another—desire. Desire was then linked with the Fall, the separation from the natural state and perfect order, and with evil. Also, in Chapter XII, where emotion was explained by the subject-object gap, this void was taken as an imperfection, giving us again an 'unnatural' view of emotion.
