_REPRESENTATION AND EMOTION_
“I feel cold,” and “I feel afraid of cold,” are expressions which denote
two tolerably distinct feelings. The main characteristic which
distinguishes the second feeling as an emotion is obviously
representation. In the first case, I have pain with presentation of the
cold, in the second, pain with the mere representation of the cold. If I
feel cold, I have direct and immediate experience; if I fear the cold, I
have an experience in view of experience, pain at pain. When one says,
“I have a violent pain in my head,” and a friend answers, “I am deeply
pained to hear it,” we recognise at once the fundamental distinction
between sensation and emotion. We have in this chapter to discuss some
points as to the rise and nature of emotion in its relation to
representation.
The theory which we have been elaborating is that pure pleasure and pain
are the original and causative elements in the whole realm of mind. Pure
feeling is the most direct and necessary, and so the first response in
conscious form, to all stimuli, and it is the incitement to all
cognitive activity in its inception and growth. The harm and good to
organism, are at once, and most quickly realized in terms of pure
feeling, and the painful necessities in the struggle for existence, lead
to a continuous development from this point. Dominant pleasure and pain,
with the different presentation forms, constitute different feelings, as
of warmth, hunger, cold, etc., to which some fuller objectification may
be added. Adjustment is thereby made manifold, but only with present
stimulus. There is no appreciation of the experienceable. All that is
attained is immediate present apprehension which in no wise suggests or
interprets, but which is strictly self-contained.
We must, indeed, acknowledge that no consciousness, save, of course, the
very first, can exist in perfect isolation totally unaffected by any
other. The second conscious activity was not a perfect facsimile of the
first, and its variation is due at least in the main to the precedent
mentality. What is, is determined by what has been, and this universal
law is in mind the inductive nature of all experience. The solidarity of
all mentality and of all materiality is a scientific postulate, a
principle which we must assume, or deny all scientific investigation.
The movement of a molecule in the sun, millions of years since,
influences the condition of my body to-day, and the flush of pain in
some protozoan millions of years since, has had an infinitesimal share
in determining my present state of mind. Yet this fact that every
psychosis is what it is by reason of the whole line of previous
psychoses, does not lead us to suppose that experience cognizes itself
from the beginning, and consciously builds itself up. There is for a
long time no consciousness of process of mental integration. The whole
universe of mind is the necessary _prius_ of each individual
manifestation, yet the particular phenomenon in consciousness does not
include a sense of, or reaching out to, these conditioning agencies. No
sense of dependence is generated. But we ask, How can one conscious
state unconsciously effect or determine another? How can consciousness
be affected without consciousness of affection? Yet, difficult as it may
appear to set clearly before us the nature of this relation of a
consciousness to all the preconsciousness, it is still obvious that the
intricate _nexus_ of cause and effect in mind does not need to be known
of mind or realized in the individual consciousness, and is not, and
cannot be. Every consciousness is the derivative resultant of
innumerable pre-consciousnesses, and it goes to the determining and
qualifying of innumerable post-consciousnesses, yet it is neither
consciousness of the future or the past, though it involves both.
The early phase of mind where consciousnesses are wholly un-unified from
within by any central or continuous consciousness, and whose solidarity
is wholly in an unconscious integration is so foreign to us who have
minds where experience of experience is continually in process, that it
is with the utmost difficulty we can in any wise conceive it. It is
evident that a very low organism may have consciousnesses, but no mind,
that is, no self-unifying whole of consciousnesses. It does not possess
a mind, but during its whole life it attains psychoses which are merely
_disjecta_ reached to help an immediate necessity of existence, and then
fading completely away. Each psychosis is achieved more easily than the
former by reason of the former, though there is no consciousness of
connection with it. The increment and qualifying of a given experience
by past experience is not reached by it. Some differentiation is
attained under pressure of struggle for existence, and experience is
constituted, but is wholly unknowing of itself and in no wise
self-formative.
We have now, however, to consider the problem, how experience came to
itself, and how and why representation and emotion should arise in the
struggle of existence.
At the first, as we have seen, organisms responded in conscious form
only in pleasure and pain, and this only when the actual damage or
benefit to the individual was very considerable. When the hurt was
critical, then only was pain accomplished as a function to secure
self-preservative action, but gradually through survival of the fittest
the greater susceptibility was attained, so that minor lesions are felt
in pain terms, and some general sensing and objectifying lead to some
differentiation in adjustment. The external parts of the body become
specially sensitive, and ciliate extensions are formed. Injury to these
results in pain and consequent reactions, and in this wise by injury to
a small part great harm to the organism as a whole is prevented. The low
forms of life are thus enabled to avoid the hurtful before they meet it
in full annihilatory force. These practically anticipatory
reactions—though there is no real anticipation in consciousness, no real
experience of experience—I term the method of incipiency. Pain reactions
are thus reached with less and less actual harm until the very slightest
injury to a minute tentacle will suffice to awaken pain.
This tentacular experience, however, is obviously very limited, and has
incidental disadvantages. Further, that pain should be attained when
there is little actual harm, is good, but to attain pain, and
self-conservative action before any injury is done, but only about to be
done is better. Reaction to potential harm is a most important
advantageous step. In the earlier form of mentality, the animal must
actually be in the process of being devoured by an enemy before a pain
reaction is achieved, but in the later representative form of reaction
there is complete anticipation, and the animal can come off with an
absolutely whole skin. Ideal pains, as fear, anger, and other emotions,
are gradually substituted for pains which are real in the sense that
they arise in a positive hurt to the life of the organism. The saving
which is effected through emotion is most important, and this economy is
reason for the rise of emotion in the struggle of existence. Those
animals who are able, not merely to react on slight injuries to
themselves, but also through fear, etc., to avoid all actual injury,
have a very manifest advantage.
If now the _rationale_ of the rise of emotion is apparent, let us next
proceed to some analysis of emotional process in general. The mental
mechanism by which anticipatory function is secured is certainly
complex, and a complete analysis presents many difficulties.
In the incipiency stage, which we have just discussed, the organism was
enabled to avoid the full force of the injurious by meeting it half-way
with extensions from its own body, but we cannot suppose that this was
purposely accomplished, or that the lesser pain conveyed in any form
sense of the greater pain. There was no fear, no anger, not any
experience at experience in consciousness. There is simply pain on less
and less injury, but no anticipation of pain.
In early consciousness there is, of course, frequent return of a given
object which becomes the occasion of a large number of objectifyings
which are identical in nature yet do not contain sense of identity.
There is repeated reaction to the same objective stimulus, yet with no
sense of sameness, there is frequent cognition of the same thing yet no
recognition. With primitive consciousness, no matter how often a thing
is experienced, it is equally new; revival of the past is not
stimulated, nor sense of identity attained. Mere return of a state is
not sense of return, and no amount of re-occurrence or combinations
thereof will make sense of re-occurrence. Re-occurrence of a psychosis
is nothing more subjectively than occurrence unless there arise sense of
re-occurrence or revival. The pure feeling states in primitive
consciousness are perfectly identical in nature, and they arise on
occasions which are the same, yet there is of course no sense of
identity. A young child may see a thing a hundred times without
recognising it; there are a hundred re-occurrences of state yet no sense
of re-occurrence. The hundredth perception does not differ materially
from the first, does not include any true representative element. The
immediate image does not stand for the past, the mind does not revive
previous presentation on the strength of it.
Mind is regarded by many as consisting fundamentally of vivid sense
presentations and their faint reproductions, of sense impressions and
their representations. That which has been repeatedly experienced has a
tendency to re-occur without the particular objective stimulus, but
merely indirectly by some connected stimulus, through an association of
states. But this revival, however attained, does not constitute real
representation, it does not really differ from the presentation simply
because it re-occurs without the original particular objective stimulus.
Representation in true sense of term is representation with sense of
re-presentation. A representation is a repetition of a presentation with
no consciousness of repetition or any added nature. Repetition is a fact
in consciousness before it is a fact for consciousness. All
presentations and re-presentations have mere immediate validity and
value, they point to nothing, and mean nothing, there is no going beyond
what is immediately given, no prescience of a possible experience.
Revival often occurs in mind without sense of revival, and so is not
true representation. In disordered states of the nerves we frequently
see objects which have no real existence, the states are revival states
as objectively interpreted, yet there being no sense of revival they
stand in consciousness for real presentations. When I see a person
sitting in a chair but afterwards find that no one was there, I
characterize the state very naturally as a mere imagination, a
representation; yet in fact it was in subjective quality a presentation.
We are not to psychologically classify, as is too often done, psychical
states according to presence or absence of object, but as to sense of
presence or absence of object. It is only as consciousness takes note
with reference to object that there is differentiation in consciousness
to make presentation and representation.
We must consider it probable that the earliest revivals by consciousness
were solely of the unconscious sort, or, objectively speaking, were
hallucinatory. A sense order is formed, which attends to a series of
objective realities; let now, on some occasion, one of these objects
drop out, yet there will be attaining of some sense of it as though it
were present, and the proper reaction will be carried out. The mind gets
its early revivals without sense of revival. They have presentative
force, and are sensings of objective reality though there is no
objective reality there at the time to sense.
These early simple revivals, which are all hallucinatory, perform an
important function. They are practically anticipatory, in that the
reaction is secured before the actual presence of the reality. Thus they
save an actual bodily experience, though the mental is quite real, yet
fainter than actual object would give. Thus with an enemy an animal will
revive, upon slight indirect sensation, previous experiences, and it
will have in ideal form, _i.e._, without the objective reality, a very
real experience with what is to it real enemy, thus escaping before full
advent of enemy. When a shadow alarms a low organism—and even very low
organisms seem to react to shadows—there is no actual harm done to its
members as would happen with a concrete body, and hence there is no
direct pain. The shadow is yet taken for real body, and revival pains
and revival sensations are attained with this, and there is consequent
activity. Shadow does not appear as sign of enemy, but in itself a
dangerous reality, so that anticipatory reaction is gained without
actual representation. In most cases in low organisms what we take for
fear or other emotion is probably no more than revival of the type of
which this shadow experience is an example. What is actually unreal,
being only revival, is taken for the real, and is acted on accordingly,
and in most cases this action is of service as anticipatory. When the
organism discovers the shadow to be but shadow, a something, not the
object, yet connected with it, when it becomes a sign of further
experience, this is representation as the basis of emotions such as fear
and anger.
The pain intensity in the simple revivals, re-presentations, is
doubtless less than in experience with objective realities, so there is
a saving on this score in pseudo-direct experience. While reactions are
secured upon this method without injury being actually inflicted, still
there is loss of economy in this, that the activity is excessive under
the circumstances. Priority of action to real injury is secured, but at
an excessive expense of energy, almost equal to that in actual
experience with the real thing.
This acting to a false reality, while it has a value for experience, is,
as said, uneconomical, and it must sometimes not have the anticipatory
force. The cheat and illusion is ultimately at some critical moment
cognized by consciousness, revival comes to be estimated at its real
worth, and sense of reality and unreality is formed. The revived
presentation does not stand in and by itself alone, but it acquires a
significance, and it loses the force of complete reality value. That
which is brought into consciousness again is not only revival, but is
felt to be such.
To constitute representation, then, there must be not merely revival,
but sense of revival with some sense of unreality of revival form. But
this would avail nothing save it brought in sense of its value for
experience. The revival must not only be appreciated as such, but the
relation to the experienceable must be cognized. The calling up of the
past must be applied to experience. The sight of a fire not only calls
up revivals, but there is the sense of the experienceable therewith, and
an emotion which incites me to walk to the fire and receive warmth. Mere
return and sense of return must be supplemented by sense of value for
future experience. Representation is experience doubling on itself. All
representation is more than representation of thing, revival; it is
representation of experience as such, hence an experience of experience.
We must always emphasize as the essence of representation not the
revival, but the sense of the experienceable or experienced thereby
conveyed.
The process to representation we see exemplified in measure in awaking
from a dream. The dream itself, speaking from the objective point of
view of observing psychologist who detects no real things in interaction
with the body, is representative in nature; but, for the experiencing
consciousness, there is no sense of revival, and all is presentative
activity. Things are known as such, and not as dreamt or represented.
Awaking is a gradual pouring in of sense of revival and of sense of
objective unreality of the experience; we become conscious that the
activity is no direct consciousness, but a recalling or reproduction.
The dream image, which was so real to me while in the dream, I now hold
as representative only, as having no immediate answering form and
substance. When, as with the superstitious, the dream is felt to have
significance, to have a meaning for life in pleasure-pain terms, then
emotion becomes possible, and fear, hope and kindred feelings are
excited.
We observe that representation is then a new order of consciousness.
Representation cannot be attained by any combination of experiences,
revival or direct, but it is a unique and reflex act. It is not a
development of presentation, as an echo and re-echo of it; and the mere
fact of absence of external cause or object does not constitute a
cognition as representation. The objectifying is not self-contained, but
it conveys a meaning for experience. Representation is an experience
which includes some cognizance of or sense of experience, and it is thus
the germ of self-consciousness and consciousness of consciousness.
Experience comes to be more than a series of detached and isolated
activities with no cognitive power beyond a direct and immediate
apprehension, but by rising to some appreciation of itself it becomes
forewarned and forearmed, able to consciously appreciate and attend to
its own welfare.
We have also to emphasize this, that while representation involves a
conscious re-objectifying, it must also include some re-feeling
consciously accomplished of pain and pleasure. Revivals of pain and
pleasure are felt and are appreciated as revivals, as having their basis
not in present object, but in previous experience. It is by
understanding feeling as experienced and experienceable, it is in view
of pleasure-pain experience, that emotion arises. It is not sense of
imminence of object, but of imminence of pain and pleasure, that awakens
responsive emotion and so self-conservative action. Emotion always
implies a pleasure or a pain in ideal sense of the experienceability of
either. Representation as cognitive revival and sense thereof is
subsidiary to representation as feeling revival with sense thereof. For
instance, the representation of a tooth and of pain of toothache are
correlative representations. Mere representation of cognition has no
value in itself, is a mere idle panorama, save as it brings on
representation of pleasure-pain. Unless representation of object implies
representation of pain, there is no deterrent effect on the mind, and no
proper bodily reaction.
We may believe that the order and basis of the representative side of
mind is practically the same as indirect and simple activity, that the
actual motive forces and originating impulses are pleasures and pains.
We should suspect that the first revival attained was a pure feeling
revival, and that the first representation was of pain and pleasure, and
not of object, a consciously re-feeling rather than a consciously
re-objectifying. The immediate value of the feeling side necessitates
that all differentiation be initiated there.
Representation is only of experience of things or of pleasure-pain
experience. It is always experience of experience, hence the expression,
representation of an object, is, in strictness, inaccurate. Experience
of things, as cognitive act, is always presentation. Yet early
representation must be considered as very much adulterated by
presentative elements. It was only slowly that representation was
differentiated as a distinct power such as we find it in human
consciousness; at the first it must have resembled the confused state
that we sometimes experience between sleeping and waking when a given
image often shifts from presentation value to representation value, and
then back again.
Representation at the first is also purely concrete and particular. Bare
appreciation of the experienceable does not include idea of experience.
But representation in itself is merely a calling up and application of
definite experiences as such. Experience as general term is not known,
but only the particular facts as experiences.
The earliest emotions arise, of course, with reference to the bodily
functions which have the most direct vital significance, as nutritive,
reproductive, and motor activity. Very simple organisms seem to
apprehend that a certain object is food before actually consuming, to
have sense of the experience, and some emotive disturbance. The pleasure
of feeding and incorporating into the bodily tissue is sensational, but
any feeling previous or subsequent to this and with reference to this is
emotional. A very young child feeds, and does not know food. Gradually
it associates the visual sensation of whiteness of the milk with the
immediate taste sensation and pleasure feeling. But the sense of
whiteness at first arises only with and after the actual taste and
pleasure experiences; it only gradually notices what gives it
satisfaction or pain, thus repeating the evolution of mind, which is
from feeling to sense, and not _vice versâ_. Only slowly does it attain
power of appreciating whiteness previous to actual experience and as
_indicative of such_, that is, a power of representation. Then emotions,
as expectancy, and desire, become possible, and will can be stirred to
active appropriation of food, a fact of the greatest importance in the
struggle for existence. Once attaining the sense of the representative
value of its cognitions, the child is enabled to consciously accomplish
anticipatory actions.
An element which complicates emotion at a late stage is representation
of representation in indefinite _regressus_. In advanced human
consciousness, where mind is very reflective and introspective, this
phase is prominent. The _nuances_ of modern emotion are largely due to
this mode of complication. Montaigne remarks that what he most fears is
fear. As fear implies representation, fear of fear implies
representation of representation, which in its turn may be feared, and
so on _ad infinitum_. Spencer terms love of property a re-representative
feeling; but this psychosis does not imply representation of
representation, but merely representation of desirable realities. Desire
of possession is an emotion, but not emotion at emotion. It is not an
experience in view of representative experience, but with reference to a
direct experience, that of ownership. Since we make representation the
basis of emotion, it would be natural to make classes of emotion
representative, re-representative, etc.; but this is quite too subtle a
distinction to be fruitful or practical.
As there are stages of representation, so there are varying degrees of
strength in the sense of representativeness. A colour may be recalled to
consciousness several times as neither more nor less red, and precisely
of the same quantity, yet the sense of its representation quality may
differ greatly at each time. There are all degrees of intensity in this
sense, from dimmest feeling, when the representation hovers on the
confines of the presentation field, to the point of perfect conviction
of representative nature. When consciousness is not exactly sure whether
an object is directly seen or only recalled, is a presentation or only a
revival, sense of representation is obviously at its lowest degree of
intensity.
We have also to remark that in presentation and representation the
object is not to be divorced from activity. It is a natural analogy that
cognition as subjective-objective is a picturing, the picture and the
object pictured seeming to be diverse but co-existent constituents of
consciousness. Cognition seems to consist in both the thing as realized
and the realizing act. It is an attitude of mind which is a holding on
to a something which it has in its grasp. But there is no distinction in
consciousness itself of the presented and the presenting, the
represented and the representing, of product and process, of content and
activity; there is only the presenting, the activity, which is itself
the object. Sense of colour conveys, indeed, by the common vice of
language that the colour exists for consciousness, and is perceived by
consciousness. But, subjectively and psychologically speaking, the
object is always no more than the objectifying, the thing no more than
the activity. Thus the analysis into content and activity is
fundamentally false; it assumes a world of objects which are merely at
bottom object-sensings.
Emotion is an arousing and energizing. It is perturbation, disturbance,
agitation, excitement. It is a throwing open the throttle and putting on
a full head of steam. The whole organism quivers with the sudden inflow
of force and life, is quickened to its highest pressure. In all higher
psychic life it is a driving force of the utmost importance. However,
the trend of evolution is in the direction of economy, and with the
highest forms of consciousness emotion accomplishes its work even before
arriving at agitation intensity. Feeling of the emotion type, that is,
representative, is always at first a rather intense perturbation. Fear,
for example, is with the lower minds always fright; with higher minds it
often appears as dread. I stand on the railway track when a train is
approaching, and a slight fear enables me to take the self-conservative
action of stepping from the track; but with my dog, in similar
circumstances, I judge by his hasty jump and general expression that his
fear is always more intense and more generally disturbing. Emotion being
a force which quickly tends to exhaustion, it is obvious that those
animals will, _ceteris paribus_, have the advantage which react with the
least expenditure. Thus the tendency of evolution is away from intense
emotionalism.
In this emotion conforms to a general law. The earliest occurrences of
any given form of psychosis are with strenuousness and with exaltation
and excitement of the organism. We speak of fits of anger and gusts of
passion, but for early consciousness we might also justly speak of fits
of seeing and hearing. Common vision of external objects is for lower
consciousness as rarely attained, and requires as much of force as
beatific vision of seer and poet in the human mind. The new psychosis is
but momentary, and implies high tension and great friction, but progress
is toward continuity and ease of working. Emotion is in human life a
tolerably constant element, like perception with whose representative
side it is correlated, and within certain ranges it rises because of the
force of heredity with apparent spontaneity.
We remark that the social significance of emotion is embodied in the
word _treat_, as _treat_ kindly, badly, etc. Our _treatment_ of each
other always means activities inspired by some emotion.
We must acknowledge that representation is very complex and difficult
of analysis. For our present purpose, however, representation is a
revival with sense of revival and unreality, and yet indicative of
reality experienceable in pleasure-pain terms, and thus the occasion
of emotion as stimulus of self-conservative action. The young child
perceives no danger; its pleasures and pains are not related to
things, and have not led to the evolution of a world of objects. Pain
and pleasure lead it slowly to correlate its senses, so that the burnt
child learns to dread the fire; the emotion of fear is aroused with
cognition of the experienceable. Objectively, we must divide psychoses
into those which directly result from actual engagement of the
organism with objects, or the reverberations therefrom; subjectively,
into simple self-contained states, and into reflex states which view
experience, and so being representations involving emotion. Just how
from re-experience sense of re-experience and of its value for
experience—sense of pre-experience—arises, is something we have not
particularly inquired into, but it is something that appears a
mysterious and difficult problem. That the perception of object should
ever carry with it sense of possibility or certainty of further
experience, painful or pleasurable, is, when candidly considered, a
remarkable and singular operation. The problems of origin of
consciousness of self, of consciousness of consciousness, and of sense
of reality seem unsolved, but I believe that a thorough study of
representation would throw much light on these points; but this is not
the place to pursue this investigation. When we take up
representation—emotion life in detail, we may be able to make
suggestions on some moot points.