Thinking by Feeling

Rebecca Lee, in a review of Adam Wilson's What's Important is Feeling, quotes Roethke: "We think by feeling. What is there to know?"

The Enlightenment is sometimes blamed for celebrating logic over emotion ("I think, therefore I am."); I blame Plato, myself. Whoever.

Human physiology says that Roethke's right. An incoming sensory experience activates an emotional response that goes first to the body and then to the brain. The time differential is something like .0268 of a second. If I had a better filing system, I'd be more accurate with that number. But it's the order - emotion, body, brain - that matters.