_ON DESPAIR_
Despair is a phase of painful emotion which is certainly related to
fear, yet is very distant from it. Despair has always a fear basis; we
can only despair where fear is implied, and what does not excite fear
will give no hold for despair. I must first fear a pain before I can
despair of escaping it. The prisoner condemned to death must fear death
before he will be in despair at the prospect of it. Yet while despair
always implies fear, fear may often exist and that in very strong form
without despair. The prisoner often displays great fear, but no despair.
There is, in fact, a strong contrast between fear and despair. Fear
normally stimulates effort, despair depresses it. Fear is active,
despair passive. Deep dejection and lassitude mark despair, while fear
is intense agitation and activity. Fear in its original and normal
function is stimulant of defensive action, fear as paralytic being
secondary or abnormal, but in normal despair there is absolute
inertness. Fear, again, in contrast with despair, is direct and
transitive. I fear the pain or injury, but my despair is only in
relation to it, despair _of_, _in_ despair, etc. Fear is at the evil
itself, it is a direct attitude of mind toward it, through an ideal
pre-experiencing, the very representation of any pain as experienceable
carrying with it a thrill of fear. But despair concerns itself, not with
the pain _per se_ as experienceable, but with the inevitability of the
painful. Fear rests upon idea of pain, despair, upon idea of its
inevitability. “I despair of escape,” means a recoil of painful emotion
at inevitability of painful experience. Sense of complete and permanent
inability to attain an end, whether release from pain, or positively, a
securing a pleasure, generates commonly this distressful emotion.
Despair is not then simple pain at pain, but at the unavertibility of
the pain. Despair is then the mind bent down and crushed by the sense of
the inevitable and irremediable nature of the pain, positive or
negative, it experiences or is to experience. Despair is, indeed,
hopelessness, though all hopelessness is not despair. There is no hope
in stolidity or in stoicism, psychic modes quite distinct from despair,
but which take the place with some natures.
Again, we must note that while fear has its degrees, and may be but
partial, despair is always complete collapse. I may fear a little but
not despair a little, I may be frightened “just the least bit,” but not
despair a little bit. The hostess who is “in despair” because the ice
cream has not come, speaks truly, however, for the affair is for her so
important and momentous as to be the basis of real despair. That which
is the occasion of despair must always be or seem of capital value.
An adjacent and often precedent state to despair is desperation, which
is a feeling of the almost inevitable. In the face of heavy odds there
is often awakened a painful emotion which we term desperation, and which
leads to strong and furious will action, to an intense and general
struggle which is often advantageous. An enemy fears to drive his
adversary to desperation. In desperation we take one chance in a
thousand or in a million; for example, the leader of a forlorn hope. It
would be difficult to say whether despair or desperation contains more
of pain, but they are obviously quite opposite in their character. To
combative temperaments and with pugnacious animals the sense of the
seeming inevitable is often stimulative of desperation rather than
despair. Such are “game” to the last. A criminal of this type will run
amuck rather than submit to his fate in despair. The desperado is
defiant to the end. With some whose natures are balanced between
reflection and action there are in the face of the inevitable or almost
inevitable rapid fluctuations of despair and desperation.
Dismay is another form closely akin to despair. Dismay is the immediate
result for feeling of a sudden cognition of great difficulties and pains
as imminent. As the transition stage of rapid movement in feeling toward
despair, as the sudden falling in temperature from hope, it is really
incipient despair. Dismay is essentially temporary, and settles quickly
into despair or rises into renewed hope. Though but such a passing mode,
it yet has for the moment that sense of self-efficiency annihilated
which is so characteristic of despair. Consternation is very intense
dismay.
But what now is the real quality and inner nature of despair? what
essentially is this strange drooping before inevitable loss, injury and
pain? and what is its significance for life? Despair is certainly a very
advanced and complex emotion, and we can do no more at present than
merely remark on some of its most striking features.
A most noticeable and remarkable quality of despair is its introactive
tendency. When the whole strength and vital motive, of a full-grown
teleologic psychic life—the _dilettante_ is not capable of despair—is
suddenly and completely withdrawn, there results, not indifference nor
_ennui_ but a deep disturbance which is active on the _minus_ side of
mental life. The complete breaking up of great and absorbing hopes and
of the free objective activity flowing from them brings will tension
down, not simply to _nil_, but gives it a spring back into the negative
region beyond the line of mere quiescence and indifferentism. Despair is
a revulsive process by which the whole mind is broken up, just as a
propeller wheel running at high speed out of water or an engine working
at high pressure when disconnected from its shafting, tend to wrench and
shatter themselves. Desire is not really extinct, but latent; though
smothered it burns inward. This is that peculiar cankering, corroding
quality, which is always so marked in despair. Will, not self-shattered,
but forcibly pent by external circumstances, gives a sullen restlessness
to the mental life now turned in upon itself. Hence the capacity for
despair will be directly as the co-ordinate capacity for action and
reflection in any individual, and as such co-ordination marks the
highest level of conscious life, despair is certainly a phenomenon of
exceptionally complex and advanced consciousness.
Again, we note that despair is intensely and oppressively a pain state,
but the dull despair pain is distinct from racking fear pain. What now
is the nature of despair pain, and what the reason for its peculiar
quality? Here is not as in fear a feeling pain at pain, but at the idea
of its inevitability and completely destructive power. The actual pain
foreseen may seem bearable and excite little feeling, but it is the
total loss of personal success, the complete thwarting of
self-realization, that moves the mind to despair, that causes that
sickening, dull, emotional pain which we term despair. Thus despair is
eminently a disease of self-hood, an egoistic distemper, the strong and
large individuality being peculiarly subject to it. However, the general
problem of despair pain is practically the same as of the origin and
nature of fear pain, which has already been discussed. Whether any mere
representation induces pain, and how it does so, is certainly one of the
most difficult problems of emotional psychology. We have in a previous
chapter sought to indicate in a general way that purely subjective or
mental pain which is not in any wise revival of sensation or objective
does really exist. Also since pain _per se_ is always simple and
identical, the differentiation of pains as seemingly quite different in
kind, as fear pain, despair pain, etc., is really due to sensation,
will, and other elements which closely adhere to pain and give it a
certain local colouring. The whole emotion is a complex of various
factors which are closely knit into a single state which to common
observation seems simple, but which is really constituted in its
_ensemble_ by the total specific forces of many elements. In psychics,
as in physics, we know that common sense analysis of phenomena must be
at fault, and that one who says “I certainly have an entirely different
pain when I fear and when I despair,” is as much in the wrong as he who
maintains essential diversities in material substance, or radical
distinctions of species in the organic world. So we must believe that
the peculiar quality of the pain in despair exists, not in the pain
itself, but is really the colouring result from various coincident
sensations and ideas. The lowering of the mental tone far below the zero
point is greatly accentuated by refluent waves of organic sensation set
up from the physical basis of the psychic disturbance.
How, we may now ask, did despair ever evolve and become a well-defined
psychic form? in what way in the course of natural selection could such
an apparently disadvantageous variation have arisen and been developed?
The serviceability of fear is plain to every one, but of what possible
value could despair be in the struggle of life? The one who gives up in
despair is but very rarely doing the best thing. If we cannot look to
the general principle of evolution, serviceability, how can we account
for the appearance and growth of such a phase as despair, except as
abnormal variation, a disease, profitable to the enemies of the
individual, and so developed by and for external organisms. As there is
an abnormal pathological variation of fear, which we have previously
noticed, and which is forced in its development by enemies who profit by
it, so despair is a psychic disease, entirely hurtful to the individual,
and, so far, only advantageous for its enemies. Despair is, without
doubt, one of those altruistic variations which serve, not the
individual, but some antagonist in the struggle of existence. To bring
one to despair is to make him entirely helpless and wholly at our mercy
for our own ends. The possibility that active-reflective natures may
prey upon themselves is thus stimulated into an actual phenomenon whose
growth is continually fostered by those whose advantage it is to reduce
the individual to a helpless condition. Despair is hardly an hypertrophy
or atrophy of any normal tendency, it is rather a pathological _genus_
by itself. The capacity for despair being inherent in the general
formation of mind as subject to collapse, it arose solely in response to
the needs of organisms warring upon the organism afflicted. The whole
field of physical and psychical altruistic variation under the general
law of natural selection, decadent and self-injurious characteristics
being stimulated and maintained in a kind of artificial selection, is an
interesting but unexplored field, attention so far having been turned to
the individually advantageous as determining element in evolution.
Despair is a disease of advanced and mature psychic life. Children are,
in general, incapable of despair. It implies a well-developed sense of
self and a general experience of the world. High and strong emotional
natures, but rather weak-willed and narrow of intelligence, are
predisposed to it. Occasions which would lead to despair will with lower
natures be unnoticed or lead merely to stolidity; while with the highest
natures, there comes heroic endeavour and wide searching for means and
methods.