which his first appearance will make upon us. It is because of this difference between the effect and our preconception of it that the new events that are expected may still surprise us.

As we are often surprised by the events that we have expected, so others that we have not expected may fail to surprise us. Things which happen uniformly throughout the day we do not often consciously anticipate. We have grown too accustomed to them. The clock on the mantel-piece strikes the hours and half-hours at regular intervals. The day slowly passes and twilight comes; and the servant lights the room. But how many of these events do we think of before they happen, or attend to when they do? They pass for the most part unnoticed. They cannot surprise us, not because we have expected them, but because they are so monotonous and regular. If some break occurred in their established order, and we noticed it, we should be surprised, and say, "The clock has not struck the hour"; "the servant has not lighted the room." "What is the meaning of it?" Yet in both cases the negative condition is the same: the event is unexpected. But the one event was in conformity with our preceding experience; the other conflicted with it. Therein lies the difference between them, and the reason why in the one case we are not surprised whilst in the other we are. The mind adapts itself to events that are monotonous and regular, dispensing with our foresight and attention; but it cannot adapt itself at once to those that are new and irregular. There is a momentary hitch, which occasions the shock of surprise. It is for this reason that both the new and also the sudden and unexpected are so apt to surprise us.

There seems to be a law implied in this connexion which we may attempt to enunciate: (95) The degree of surprise is, other things equal, proportionate to the degree in which the present experience of something jars or conflicts with the memory of past experience of it, or with present expectation. This conflict is determined by a difference (1) in the intensity of the experience, or (2) in its manner of occurrence, or (3) in its nature, compared with the preceding experience or with the present expectation.

(1) We are startled by a sudden, loud noise, because it contrasts with the preceding state of things. But where the disturbance has followed a similar state we are not. We grow accustomed to the rattle of rifle-fire; it may still be disagreeable, but after a time it no longer startles us. But we are startled by even faint noises when they contrast with preceding silence: as in the stillness of the evening, by the faint noise of a footstep behind us, or even by the crack of the furniture. For our preceding experience has not prepared the mind for it.

(2) We are startled, also, when an event occurs in a very different manner from preceding events. As we pass down stairs a child springs upon us from its hiding-place. If it had approached us in the ordinary way we should not have been startled.

(3) We are also surprised when familiar things are changed for us suddenly, or appear in unfamiliar surroundings. If I meet a friend in a place where I have never before seen him, and do not now expect to see him, I am surprised because there is a conflict between the present experience and the effect left on the mind by my previous experiences of him. But if I meet him where we have occasionally met before, I am less surprised, because there were some previous experiences similar to the present one. For the effects of previous experience survive, though we be not conscious of them, and interact with present experience; and the conflict on which surprise depends may lie between a present experience and these subconscious facts of memory.

In other cases the conflict on which surprise depends lies between two facts, both of which are present to consciousness. We are surprised when our experience is different from our expectation, and in proportion not merely to the degree of this difference, but to the degree of confidence with which we expected it not to be different. If we have an appointment to meet someone, and he fails to keep it, the degree of our surprise tends to be proportioned to the degree in which we expected its fulfilment.

Thus in all cases the cause of surprise seems to be due to some jar or conflict between a present experience and some

thing else in the mind, be it present expectation or the effects of past experience, and to which we cannot at once adapt ourselves.

2. Adam Smith's Theory of the Nature of Surprise

If Adam Smith's theory of the causes of surprise and wonder does not serve to discriminate the two emotions, his account of the nature of surprise approximates to a true theory. Surprise, he tells us, "is not to be regarded as an original emotion of a species distinct from all others. The violent and sudden change produced upon the mind, when an emotion of any kind is brought suddenly upon it, constitutes the whole nature of surprise."1 Thus, there are surprises of fear, anger, joy, sorrow, disgust, of hope and disappointment, of gratitude, pity, shame, and many other secondary emotions. But his denial that the surprise mixed with them is an original and distinct emotion, must be taken to mean that it is not capable of separate existence. The violent and sudden change produced upon the mind constitutes its "whole nature." But this at least seems to confer upon it uniqueness of feeling, as well as considerable intensity, and constitutes it an original emotion in this sense. Though mixed with fear, anger, joy or sorrow, it is the same in all, yet different from any one of them.

It is a great heightener of the intensity of other emotions. Those "violent consternations which at once confound whole multitudes, benumb their understandings and agitate their hearts with all the agony of extravagant fear, can never be produced by any foreseen danger, how great soever. Fear, though naturally a very strong passion, never rises to such excesses, unless exasperated both by Wonder from the uncertain nature of the danger, and by Surprise from the suddenness of the apprehension."2 Yet it mixes more readily with some emotions than with others; and Smith observes, though without due allowance for the different tempers of men, that there is something in its nature that "makes it unite more easily with the brisk and quick motion of joy, than with the slower

and heavier motion of grief." "The heart springs to joy with a sort of natural elasticity, it abandons itself to so agreeable an emotion, as soon as the object is presented: it seems to pant and leap forward to meet it, and the passion in its full force takes at once entire and complete possession of the soul. But it is otherwise with grief: the heart recoils from, and resists the first approaches of that disagreeable passion, and it requires some time before the melancholy object can produce its full effect. Grief comes on slowly and gradually, nor ever rises at once to that height of agony to which it is increased after a little time . . . The change produced by a Surprise of joy is more sudden, and upon that account more violent and apt to have more fatal effects, than that which is occasioned by a Surprise of grief."1

This remarkable passage is of that rare kind in the work of the older psychologists which describes a movement of the mind, and enables us to discern the law underlying it. Let us first attempt to enunciate the law which it implies: (96) Surprise tends to increase the intensity of every emotion with which it blends, or by which it is rapidly followed. This seems to be a genuine and universal law of mind, though further research may disclose facts that contradict it. The emotion of joy, however, may not arise in the first shock of surprise, but after the confusion of the mind has to some extent abated. If, however, the shock of surprise is excessive, and the joy itself too intense, it may be brought to an end by a swoon or by anxiety about oneself.

There is a second law implied which is not true without qualifications. The heart does not always spring to joy "with a sort of natural elasticity," but recoils from it in depressed moods or under the influence of acute sorrow. There are, too, angry moods that resist other joy than that which arises from the satisfaction of their impulses. There are apprehensive moods that respond to sudden terror, but exclude all cheerful emotions. But so far as the temper of a man is joyous, as in youth and health, it responds to surprises of joy, and resists those of sorrow. Thus when some sudden misfortune comes to the cheerful, they at first refuse to believe 1 Op. cit., sect. i.

in it. "It cannot be true," they say. But to the melancholy and pessimistic, it is that in which they are most disposed to believe.

3. Of the Chief Varieties of Surprise and what they have in

common

Now there are two chief varieties of surprise that we may name 'sensational' and 'cognitive' surprise. Of the three causes of surprise to which we have referred, the two which are connected with the intensity of an experience and its mode of occurrence, belong to sensational surprise; that which is connected with the nature of its object belongs to cognitive surprise. When we are startled, our surprise is sensational. Thus we are startled by a sudden loud noise, or by someone springing upon us from a hiding-place, or by someone from behind clapping us upon the shoulder. We are startled by the sudden sensation, so different from our preceding experience, not by our cognition of its object or cause. In fact it is of the essence of this type that we must feel the shock before cognising the object. If we could see the child approaching before she springs at us, and identify her action as a game, we should not be startled. If we could foresee the lightning-flash, or anticipate the thunder, we should not be surprised, unless it were much brighter or louder than we had expected. When, on the other hand, our surprise is cognitive, we must first recognise the object as a condition of feeling the emotion. If I meet a friend, after a long absence, and am shocked by his altered appearance, I must first recognise him to be the man I knew, if I am to feel surprised. My memory of him must interact with my present experience, and while it enables me to recognise him, must leave uninterpreted, and in conflict with it, the fact of his altered appearance. If I find a strange man in my room at night, I must first recognise him to be a man, if not also a stranger, if I am to feel the sudden shock of surprise at his presence.

Of these chief varieties of surprise, the first two must be classed as primitive surprise. They correspond to the primitive varieties of fear and anger which we considered