SOCIAL EXPRESSION
In order to find an explanation of the nature and origin of the
art-impulse we were compelled to enter upon a digression on the general
psychology of feeling. It appeared from this hasty examination that
in the motor concomitants of physical as well as of mental feeling
we have to do with a form of activity which, taken by itself, is
independent of all external motives. It was shown that the diffusion
of a feeling-tone always corresponds to some active manifestation,
generally outward, which increases in the same degree as the state
of consciousness gains in intensity and distinctness. Besides these
immediate transformations of energy which, owing to the law of inertia,
follow the primary enhancement or inhibition of function, we met with
reactions of a more conscious kind, by which the organism strives to
overcome the inhibition of pain, and to keep up the excitement of
pleasure. And it was also found that the universal animal desire to
increase every pleasure and to relieve every pain has given rise to
a multitude of secondary manifestations, by which we try to sustain
every pleasure, to make it more distinct for consciousness, and thus
enhance it by expression, while, during states of pain, we strive for
relief in diversion or in violent motor discharge. Finally it was
remarked that by the side of this expressional impulse we must take
account of a yearning after increased consciousness, which leads us
to pursue, even at the risk of some passing pain, all feelings and
emotions by which our sensation of life is reinforced and intensified.
All these impulses, accompanied by higher or lower degrees of conscious
endeavour, are psychical phenomena of fundamental importance. They are
not restricted to any particular stage of culture. And their coercive
force is equal—nay, even superior to that of the imitative impulse, the
play-impulse, and the impulse “to attract by pleasing.” If we could
deduce the desire for artistic creation from the activities connected
with feeling, we should here find the explanation of its universality
as well as of its force.
But among the manifestations described in the foregoing chapters
there is none which directly leads us to the artistic activity. As
against the _Spieltrieb_ theories it was objected that play never
develops of itself into art, so it may now be objected, with as much
reason, that all immediate or secondary emotional manifestations,
however interesting they may be, give us no information on artistic
manifestations. The instinctive tendency to express overmastering
feeling, to enhance pleasure, and to seek relief from pain, forms the
most deep-seated motive of all human activity. We can therefore derive
the distinctive qualities of artistic production from this impulse only
when it has been proved that art is better able than any other kind of
mental function to serve and satisfy the requirements which arise from
this impulse when it occurs in its purest form.
That this is the case, is the fundamental hypothesis upon which this
work is based. It was impossible to prove its validity as long as
emotional manifestations were treated as phenomena in the psychical
life of the individual. For art is in its innermost nature a social
activity. In order to elucidate the connection between art-impulse
and emotional activities, we must therefore examine the latter as
they appear in the social relations of mankind. We do not believe
that any new principles are necessary for this purpose. We need only
apply to social phenomena the same laws which were found to be valid
for the emotional life of the individual. As, however, the legitimacy
of such a course may be questioned, we must first devote some pages
to a treatment of what we may call—if the expression is allowed—the
interindividual life.
This digression brings us into a field of inquiry—that of the psychical
conditions of social life—which during recent years has been the object
of certain most important scientific researches. The investigations
into the psychology of masses, as well as the experiments on suggestive
therapeutics, have proved to how great an extent mental states may be
transmitted from individual to individual by unconscious imitation
of the accompanying movements. The doctrine of universal sympathy, a
clear statement of which was given long ago in the ethical theory of
Adam Smith,[97] has thus acquired a psychological justification in
the modern theories of imitative movement. Contemporary science has
at last learned to appreciate the fundamental importance of imitation
for the development of human culture.[98] And some authors have even
gone so far as to endeavour to deduce all sociological laws from this
one principle. At the same time natural history has begun to pay more
and more attention to the indispensability of imitation for the full
development of instincts, as well as for training in those activities
which are the most necessary in life.[99]
It is fortunate for the theory of art that the importance of the
imitative functions has thus been simultaneously acknowledged in
various departments of science. Whatever one may think of the
somewhat audacious generalisations which have been made in the recent
application of this new principle, it is incontestable that the
æsthetic activities can be understood and explained only by reference
to universal tendency to imitate. It is also significant that writers
on æsthetic had felt themselves compelled to set up a theory of
imitation long before experimental psychologists had begun to turn
their attention in this direction. In Germany the enjoyment of form and
form-relations has since Vischer’s time been interpreted as the result
of the movements by which not only our eye, but also our whole body,
follows the outlines of external things.[100] In France Jouffroy stated
the condition for the receiving of æsthetic impressions to be a “power
of internally imitating the states which are externally manifested in
living nature.”[101] In England, finally, Vernon Lee and Anstruther
Thompson have founded a theory of beauty and ugliness upon this same
psychical impulse to copy in our own unconscious movements the forms
of objects.[102] And in the writings of, for instance, Home,[103]
Hogarth,[104] Dugald Stewart,[105] and Spencer,[106] there can be found
a multitude of isolated remarks on the influence which is in a direct
way exercised on our mental life by the perception of lines and forms.
In most of these theories and observations, however, the imitative
activity has been noticed only in so far as it contributes to the
æsthetic delight which may be derived from sensual impressions. But its
importance is by no means so restricted as this; on the contrary, we
believe it to be a fundamental condition for the existence of intuition
itself. Without all these imperceptible tracing movements with which
our body accompanies the adaptation of the eye-muscles to the outlines
of external objects, our notions of depth, height, and distance, and
so on, would certainly be far less distinct than they are.[107] On
the other hand, the habit of executing such movements has, so to say,
brought the external world within the sphere of the internal. The
world has been measured with man as a standard, and objects have been
translated into the language of mental experience. The impressions have
hereby gained not only in emotional tone, but also in intellectual
comprehensibility.[108]
Greater still is the importance of imitation for our intuition of
moving objects. And a difficult movement itself is fully understood
only when it has been imitated, either internally or in actual outward
activity. The idea of a movement, therefore, is generally associated
with an arrested impulse to perform it.[109] Closer introspection will
show every one to how great a part our knowledge, even of persons,
is built up of motor elements. By unconsciously and imperceptibly
copying in our own body the external behaviour of a man, we may learn
to understand him with benevolent or malevolent sympathy.[110] And it
will no doubt be admitted by most readers that the reason why they know
their friends and foes better than they know any one else is that they
carry the remembrance of them not only in their eyes, but in their
whole body. When in idle moments we find the memory of an absent friend
surging up in our mind with no apparent reason, we may often note, to
our astonishment, that we have just been unconsciously adopting one of
his characteristic attitudes, or imitating his peculiar gestures or
gait.
It may, however, be objected that the above-mentioned instances refer
only to a particular class of individuals. In other minds, it will be
said, the world-picture is entirely built up of visual and acoustic
elements. It is also impossible to deny that the classification of
minds in different types, which modern psychology has introduced, is
as legitimate as it is advantageous for the purposes of research. But
we can hardly believe that such divisions have in view anything more
than a relative predominance of the several psychical elements.[111]
It is easily understood that a man in whose store of memory visual or
acoustic images occupy the foremost place may be inclined to deny that
motor sensations of unconscious copying enter to any extent into his
psychical experience. But an exclusively visual world-image, if such a
thing is possible, must evidently be not only emotionally poorer, but
also intellectually less distinct and less complete, than an intuition,
in which such motor elements are included.
The importance of motor sensations in the psychology of knowledge is
by itself of no æsthetic interest. The question has been touched upon
in this connection only because of the illustration which it gives
to the imitation theory. If, as we believe is the case, it is really
necessary, for the purpose of acquiring a complete comprehension of
things and events, to “experience” them—that is to say, to pursue
and seize upon them, not only with the particular organ of sense to
which they appeal, but also by tracing movements of the whole body,
then there is no need to wonder at the universality of the imitative
impulse. Imitation does not only, according to this view, facilitate
our training in useful activities, and aid us in deriving an æsthetic
delight from our sensations: it serves also, and perhaps primarily,
as an expedient for the accommodating of ourselves to the external
world, and for the explaining of things by reference to ourselves. It
is therefore natural that imitative movements should occupy so great
a place among the activities of children and primitive men. And we
can also understand why this fundamental impulse, which has played so
important a part in racial as well as in individual education, may
become so great as to be a disease and dominate the whole of conscious
life.[112] As children we all imitated before we comprehended, and we
have learned to comprehend by imitating.[113] It is only when we have
grown familiar by imitation with the most important data of perception
that we become capable of appropriating knowledge in a more rational
way. Although no adult has any need to resort to external imitation in
order to comprehend new impressions, it is still only natural that in a
pathological condition he should relapse into the primitive imitative
reaction. And it is equally natural that an internal, _i.e._ arrested,
imitation should take place in all our perceptions. After this
explanation of the universality of this phenomenon we have no further
need to occupy ourselves with the general psychology of imitation. We
have here only to take notice of its importance for the communication
of feeling.
As is well known, it is only in cases of abnormally increased
sensibility—for instance, in some of the stages of hypnotism and
thought transmission—that the motor counterpart of a mental state can
be imitated with such faithfulness and completeness that the imitator
is thereby enabled to partake of all the _intellectual_ elements of
the state existing in another. The hedonic qualities, on the other
hand, which are physiologically conditioned by much simpler motor
counterparts, may of course be transmitted with far greater perfection:
it is easier to suggest a pleasure than a thought. It is also evident
that it is the most general hedonic and volitional elements which have
been considered by the German authors on æsthetic in their theories
on internal imitation (“Die innere Nachahmung”). They seem to have
thought that the adoption of the attitudes and the performance of the
movements which usually accompany a given emotional state will also
succeed to some extent in producing a similar emotional state. This
assumption is perfectly legitimate, even if the connection between
feeling and movement be interpreted in the associative way. And it
needs no justification when the motor changes are considered as the
physiological correlate of the feeling itself.
Everyday experience affords many examples of the way in which feelings
are called into existence by the imitation of their expressive
movements. A child repeats the smiles and the laughter of its
parents, and can thus partake of their joy long before it is able
to understand its cause.[114] Adult life naturally does not give us
many opportunities of observing this pure form of direct and almost
automatic transmission. But even in adult life we may often meet
with an exchange of feeling which seems almost independent of any
intellectual communication. Lovers know it, and intimate friends like
the brothers Goncourt,[115] to say nothing of people who stand in so
close a rapport with each other as a hypnotiser and his subject.[116]
And even where there is no previous sympathetic relation, a state of
joy or sadness may often, if it is only distinctly expressed, pass
over, so to say, from the individual who has been under the influence
of its objective cause, to another who, as it were, borrows the
feeling, but remains unconscious of its cause. We experience this
phenomenon almost daily in the influence exerted upon us by social
intercourse, and even by those aspects of nature—for instance, blue
open sky or overhanging mountains—which naturally call up in us the
physical manifestation of emotional states. The coercive force with
which our surroundings—animate or inanimate—compel us to adopt the
feelings which are suggested by their attitudes, forms, or movements,
is perhaps as a rule too weak to be noticed by a self-controlled,
unemotional man. But if we want an example of this influence at its
strongest, we need but remember how difficult it is for an individual
to resist the contagion of collective feeling.[117] On public occasions
the common mood, whether of joy or sorrow, is often communicated even
to those who were originally possessed by the opposite feeling. So
powerful is the infection of great excitement that—according to M.
Féré—even a perfectly sober man who takes part in a drinking bout may
often be tempted to join in the antics of his drunken comrades in a
sort of second-hand intoxication, “drunkenness by induction.”[118] In
the great mental epidemics of the Middle Ages this kind of contagion
operated with more fatal results than ever before or afterwards. But
even in modern times a popular street riot may often show us something
of the same phenomenon. The great tumult in London in 1886 afforded, it
is said, a good opportunity of observing how people who had originally
maintained an indifferent attitude were gradually carried away by the
general excitement, even to the extent of joining in the outrages.[119]
In this instance the contagious effect of expressional movements
was undoubtedly facilitated by their connection with so primary an
impulse as that of rapine and destruction. But the case is the same
with all the activities which appear as the outward manifestations of
our strongest feeling-states. They all consist of instinctive actions
with which every one is well familiar from his own experience. It
is therefore natural that anger, hate, or love may be communicated
almost automatically from an individual to masses, and from masses to
individuals.
Now that the principle of the interindividual diffusion of feeling has
been stated and explained, we may return to our main line of research
and examine its bearings on the expressional impulse. We have seen that
in the social surroundings of the individual there is enacted a process
resembling that which takes place within his own organism. Just as
functional modifications spread from organ to organ, just as wider and
wider zones of the system are brought into participation in the primary
enhancement or inhibition, so a feeling is diffused from an individual
to a circle of sympathisers who repeat its expressional movements.
And just as all the widened “somatic resonances” contribute to the
primary feeling-tone increased strength and increased definiteness, so
must the emotional state of an individual be enhanced by retroactive
stimulation from the expressions by which the state has, so to say,
been continued in others. By the reciprocal action of primary movements
and borrowed movements, which mutually imitate each other, the social
expression operates in the same way as the individual expression. And
we are entitled to consider it as a secondary result of the general
expressional impulse, that when mastered by an overpowering feeling
we seek enhancement or relief by retroaction from sympathisers, who
reproduce and in their expression represent the mental state by which
we are dominated.
In point of fact we can observe in the manifestations of all strong
feelings which have not found a satisfactory relief in individual
expression, a pursuit of social resonance. A happy man wants to see
glad faces around him, in order that from their expression he may
derive further nourishment and increase for his own feeling. Hence the
benevolent attitude of mind which as a rule accompanies all strong and
pure joy. Hence also the widespread tendency to express joy by gifts
or hospitality. In moods of depression we similarly desire a response
to our feeling from our surroundings. In the depth of despair we may
long for a universal cataclysm to extend, as it were, our own pain.
As joy naturally makes men good, so pain often makes them hard and
cruel. That this is not always the case is a result of the increased
power of sympathy which we gain by every experienced pain. Moreover,
we have need of sympathetic rapport for our motor reactions against
pain. All the active manifestations of sorrow, despair, or anger which
are not wholly painful in themselves are facilitated by the reciprocal
influence of collective excitement. Thus all strong feelings,
whether pleasurable or painful, act as socialising factors.[120] This
socialising action may be observed at all stages of development. Even
the animals seek their fellows in order to stimulate themselves and
each other by the common expression of an overpowering feeling. As
has been remarked by Espinas, the flocking together of the male birds
during the pairing season is perhaps as much due to this craving for
mutual stimulation as to the desire to compete for the favour of the
hen.[121] The howling choirs of the macaws[122] and the drum concerts
of the chimpanzees[123] are still better and unmistakable instances
of collective emotional expression. In man we find the results of the
same craving for social expression in the gatherings for rejoicing or
mourning which are to be met with in all tribes, of all degrees of
development. And as a still higher development of the same fundamental
impulse, there appears in man the artistic activity.
The more conscious our craving for retroaction from sympathisers,
the more there must also be developed in us a conscious endeavour to
cause the feeling to be appropriated by as many as possible and as
completely as possible. The expressional impulse is not satisfied by
the resonance which an occasional public, however sympathetic, is able
to afford. Its natural aim is to bring more and more sentient beings
under the influence of the same emotional state. It seeks to vanquish
the refractory and arouse the indifferent. An echo, a true and powerful
echo—that is what it desires with all the energy of an unsatisfied
longing. As a result of this craving the expressional activities lead
to artistic production. The work of art presents itself as the most
effective means by which the individual is enabled to convey to wider
and wider circles of sympathisers an emotional state similar to that by
which he is himself dominated.
We propose in the next chapter to indicate the way in which art in its
various forms has served the expressional craving.