DEFINITION OF THE EMOTIONS
After sensations and images, we have to name among the phenomena of
consciousness, the whole series of affective states--our pleasures and
our pains, our joys and our griefs, our sentiments, our emotions, and
our passions. It is universally admitted that these states are of a
mental nature, for several reasons. (1) We never objectivate them as
we do our sensations, but we constantly consider them as indwelling or
subjective states. This rule, however, allows an exception for the
pleasure and the pain termed physical, which are often localised in
particular parts of our bodies, although the position attributed to
them is less precise than with indifferent sensations. (2) We do not
alienate them as we do our indifferent sensations. The sensations of
weight, of colour, and of form serve us for the construction of bodies
which appear to us as perceived by us, but as being other than
ourselves. On the contrary, we constantly and without hesitation refer
our emotional states to our _Ego_. It is I who suffer, we say, I who
complain, I who hope. It is true that this attribution is not
absolutely characteristic of mental phenomena, for it happens that we
put a part of our Ego into material objects, such as our bodies, and
even into objects separate from our bodies, and whose sole relation to
us is that of a legal proprietorship. We must guard against the
somewhat frequent error of identifying the Ego with the psychical.
These two reasons sufficiently explain the tendency to see only
psychological states in the emotional ones; and, in fact, those
authors who have sought to oppose mind to matter have not failed to
introduce emotion into their parallel as representing the essence of
mind. On this point I will recall the fine ironical image used by
Tyndall, the illustrious English physicist, to show the abyss which
separates thought from the molecular states of the brain. "Let us
suppose," he says, "that the sentiment love, for example, corresponds
to a right-hand spiral movement of the molecules of the brain and the
sentiment hatred to a left-hand spiral movement. We should then know
that when we love, a movement is produced in one direction, and when
we hate, in another. But the Why would remain without an answer."
The question of knowing what place in our metaphysical theory we ought
to secure for emotion seems difficult to resolve, and we even find
some pleasure in leaving it in suspense, in order that it may be
understood that a metaphysician is not compelled to explain
everything. Besides, the difficulties which atop us here are
peculiarly of a psychological order. They proceed from the fact that
studies on the nature of the emotions are still very little advanced.
The physical conditions of these states are pretty well known, and
their psychical and social effects have been abundantly described; but
very little is known as to what distinguishes an emotion from a
thought.
Two principal opinions may be upheld in the actual state of our
acquaintance with the psychology of the feelings. When we endeavour to
penetrate their essential and final nature, we have a choice between
two contrary theories.
The first and traditional one consists in seeing in emotion a
phenomenon _sui generis_; this is very simple, and leaves nothing more
to be said.
The second bears the name of the intellectualist theory. It consists
in expunging the characteristic of the affective states. We consider
them as derivative forms of particular modes of cognition, and they
are only "confused intelligence." This intellectualist thesis is of
early date; it will be found in Herbart, who, by-the-by, gave it a
peculiar form, by causing the play of images to intervene in the
formation of the feelings. However, this particular point is of slight
Importance. The intellectualist theory is more vast than Herbartism;
it exists in all doctrines in which the characteristic difference
between thought and feeling is expunged and feeling is brought back to
thought. One of the clearest means of so doing consists in only seeing
in the feeling the fact of perceiving something. To perceive is, in
fact, the property of intelligence; to reason, to imagine, to judge,
to understand, is always, in a certain sense, to perceive. It has been
imagined that emotion is nothing else than a perception of a certain
kind, an intellectual act strictly comparable to the contemplation of
a landscape. Only, in the place of a landscape with placid features
you must put a storm, a cataclysm of nature; and, instead of supposing
this storm outside us, let it burst within us, let it reach us, not by
the outer senses of sight and condition, but by the inner senses. What
we then perceive will be an emotion.
Such is the theory that two authors--W. James and Lange--happened to
discover almost at the same time, Lange treating it as a physiologist
and W. James as a philosopher. Their theory, at first sight, appears
singular, like everything which runs counter to our mental habits. It
lays down that the symptoms which we all till now have considered as
the physiological consequence, the translation, and the distant
effects of the emotions, constitute their essential base. These
effects are: the expression of the physiognomy, the gesture, the cry,
and the speech; or the reflex action on the circulation, the pallor or
blushing, the heat mounting to the head, or the cold of the shiver
which passes over the body. Or it is the heart, which hastens or
slackens its beats, or makes them irregular, or enfeebles, or augments
them. Or the respiration, which changes its rhythm, or increases, or
is suspended. Or else it is the secretion of the saliva or of the
sweat, which flows in abundance or dries up. Or the muscular force,
which is increased or decays. Or the almost undefinable organic
troubles revealed to us by the singing in the ears, constriction of
the epigastrium, the jerks, the trembling, vertigo, or nausea--all
this collection of organic troubles which comes more or less
confusedly to our consciousness under the form of tactile, muscular,
thermal, and other sensations. Until now this category of phenomena
has been somewhat neglected, because we saw in it effects and
consequences of which the rôle in emotion itself seemed slight, since,
if they could have been suppressed, it was supposed that emotion would
still remain. The new theory commences by changing the order of
events. It places the physical symptoms of the emotions at the very
beginning, and considers them the direct effects of the external
excitant, which is expressed by this elegant formula: "It used to be
said, 'I perceive a danger; I am frightened, I tremble.' Now we must
say, 'I tremble before a danger, first, and it is after having
trembled that I am frightened.'" This is not a change in order only;
it is something much more serious. The change is directed to the
nature of emotion. It is considered to exist in the organic
derangements indicated above. These derangements are the basis of
emotion, its physical basis, and to be moved is to perceive them. Take
away from the consciousness this physical reflex, and emotion ceases.
It is no longer anything but an idea.
This theory has at least the merit of originality. It also pleases one
by its great clearness--an entirely intellectual clearness, we may
say; for it renders emotion comprehensible by enunciating it in terms
of cognition. It eliminates all difference which may exist between a
perception and an emotion. Emotion is no longer anything but a certain
kind of perception, the perception of the organic sensations.
This reduction, if admitted, would much facilitate the introduction of
emotion into our system, which, being founded on the distinction
between the consciousness and the object, is likewise an
intellectualist system. The definition of emotion, as it is taught by
W. James, seems expressly made for us who are seeking to resolve all
intellectual states into physical impressions accompanied by
consciousness.
By the side of emotion we may place, as demanding the same analytical
study, the feeling of effort. We ought to inquire with effort, as has
been done with emotion, what is the psychological nature of this
phenomenon; and in the same way that there exists an intellectualist
theory of the emotions, viz. that of James, who reduces all the
history of the emotions to intelligence, so there exists an
intellectualist theory of effort, which likewise tends to bring back,
all will to intelligence. It is again the same author, that true
genius, W. James, who has attempted this reduction. I do not know
whether he has taken into account the parallelism of the two theories,
but it is nevertheless evident. Effort, that basis of activity, that
state of consciousness which so many psychologists have described as
something _sui generis_, becomes to James a phenomenon of perception.
It is the perception of sensations proceeding from the muscles, the
tendons, the articulations, the skin, and from all the organs directly
or indirectly concerned in the execution of movement. To be conscious
of an effort would then be nothing else than to receive all these
centripetal sensations; and what proves this is, that the
consciousness of effort when most clearly manifested is accompanied by
some muscular energy, some strong contraction, or some respiratory
trouble, and yields if we render the respiration again regular and put
the muscles back into repose.
To my great regret I can state nothing very clear regarding these
problems. The attempt to intellectualise all psychical problems is
infinitely interesting, and leads to a fairly clear conception, by
which everything is explained by a mechanism reflected in a mirror,
which is the consciousness. But we remain perplexed, and we ask
ourselves whether this clearness of perception is not somewhat
artificial, whether affectivity, emotivity, tendency, will, are really
all reduced to perceptions, or whether they are not rather irreducible
elements which should be added to the consciousness. Does not, for
instance, desire represent a complement of the consciousness? Do not
desire and consciousness together represent a something which does not
belong to the physical domain and which forms the moral world? This
question I leave unanswered.