reasons as pain, to be an additional phenomenon, a symptom, a sign,
a mark, denoting the satisfaction of certain tendencies; and that it
cannot be regarded as a fundamental element of the life of the
feelings. Like pain, pleasure is separable from the complex of which
it forms part, and under certain abnormal conditions may totally
disappear. _Anhedonia_ (if I may coin a counter-designation to
analgesia) has been very little studied, but it exists. I need not
say that the employment of anæsthetics suppresses at the same time
pain and its contrary; but there are cases of an insensibility
relating to pleasure alone. “The sensation of sexual pleasure is, in
very rare cases, subject to lesions affecting no other part of the
organism. Brown-Séquard saw two cases of special sexual anæsthesia,
all other kinds of sensibility, those of the urethral mucous
membrane and the skin, still persisting. Althaus quotes another
case. It would no doubt be possible to find such cases in larger
numbers were it not for the false modesty which prevents patients
from speaking of the subject. Fonssagrives cites a very remarkable
example observed in a woman.”[35] This insensibility exists not only
for physical but also for moral pleasure (joy, high spirits, etc.).
Apart from the cases of profound melancholy, which will occupy us
later on, where the individual is untouched by the slightest impulse
of joy, there are cases of anhedonia which seem simpler and clearer.
“Antoine Cros mentions the case of a patient, a young girl,
suffering from congested liver and spleen, which of course altered
the state of her blood, and thus, for a time, modified her
constitution. Her moral character was greatly altered by it. She
ceased to feel any affection for father or mother; would play with
her doll, but could not be brought to show any delight in it; could
not be drawn out of her apathetic sadness. Things which previously
had made her shriek with laughter now left her uninterested. Her
temper changed, became capricious and violent.”[36] Esquirol has
recorded the case of a magistrate, a very intelligent man, suffering
from a liver complaint. “Every affection seemed to be dead in him.
He showed neither perversion nor violence, but there was complete
absence of emotive reaction. If he went to the theatre (as he
continued to do from force of habit) he could find no pleasure
there. Thoughts of his house, his home, his wife, his absent
children, affected him no more, he said, than a theorem of Euclid.”
We have here a specimen of what we may call a purely intellectual
existence—that of the Wise Man of the Stoics.
Footnote 35:
Richet, _Recherches_, etc., p. 212.
Footnote 36:
Lewes, _Physical Basis of Mind_, p. 327.
These facts—and we shall find analogous ones in other chapters,
under other headings—show that, as we have seen in the case of pain,
pleasure does not depend simply on the _quantity_ of excitement. To
attribute all pleasures to excitements of medium energy is
equivalent to the formula: “Pain is due to an intense and prolonged
excitement.” In both cases intensity alone is emphasised; but there
are pleasures irreducible to medium energy and depending on the
_quality_ of the excitement and the nature of the sentient subject.
Will it be said that sexual pleasures are the concomitants of a
medium activity? The pleasure produced by harmonious chords is, for
a musical ear, a matter of quality, not of intensity. We find it
impossible, therefore, to reduce the objective conditions of
pleasure to a single formula.
Although general opinion has established a distinction between
sensory and spiritual pleasures, this distinction is purely
theoretical. Pleasure, as an affective state, always remains
identical with itself; its numerous varieties are determined only by
the intellectual condition originating it—sensation, image, concept.
It would be tedious to repeat in detail the analysis already given
of pain in order to apply it to pleasure; it will be sufficient to
indicate the principal points.
All forms of pleasure are accompanied by the organic modifications
previously enumerated. Primarily, it can only be physical—_i.e._,
combined with a sensation, such as the pleasure of a soft, warm
contact, the satisfaction of hunger and thirst in children and
animals. Then pleasure becomes an anticipation, as in the case of a
dog when his food is being brought to him; to employ the term used
by Herbert Spencer, it is a presentative-representative state. Then,
in this ascending evolution, pleasure appears attached to pure
representations. This—as in the case of pain—is the main group, that
of the varied and numerous joys which console humanity for its
sufferings; these, too, are divided into egoistic and sympathetic
pleasures. There remain the highest and rarest manifestations
attached to pure concepts—the pleasures of æsthetic creation, those
of the metaphysician or the man of science. We might further show
how the transition from pleasure, considered as strictly physical
(that of the thirsty man drinking a cool beverage in long draughts),
to the subtlest, most ethereal intellectual pleasures, may in fact
be gradually traced step by step; that the two elements—sensory and
representative—are always coexistent, and that we qualify any given
pleasure solely according to the preponderance of one or the other.
Finally, if we have found in hypochondriasis a composite form, which
might be classed with equal justice as a physical or moral pain, in
the domain of pleasure it is not difficult to discover analogous
forms. The æsthetic pleasure called forth by forms, by colours, and
especially by sounds, affords us an example. It is incontestable
that these three kinds of sensation can, unassisted, in and by
themselves, produce a sensory pleasure. Certain colours, certain
qualities of sound, certain chords, produce at once an agreeable
impression. Then the representations evoked by memory excite, in
their turn, a degree of pleasure quite distinct from the original
sensations. Fechner, in his _Vorschule der Æsthetik_, distinguishes,
in his analysis of the elements of the Beautiful, the direct factor,
_i.e._ sensation, and the indirect or associative factor, that is to
say, the associated ideas evoked. These two coexistent factors are
only separable by psychological analysis, and the position
established by Fechner for the intellectual elements has its
equivalent for the emotional states.[37]
Footnote 37:
For further details on this point see Chapter VII.
II.
The generally accepted formula connecting pleasure with medium
activities is supported by a commonly observed fact—viz., that
pleasure carried to excess or continued too long often transforms
itself into its opposite. The pleasures of eating may lead to
nausea, tickling soon becomes a torture, as well as heat and cold,
and one cannot endure even a favourite melody when played for two
consecutive hours. In a word, a sensation or representation at first
agreeable may, either gradually or suddenly, be found to have its
opposite associated with it. While the sensory or intellectual
element remains the same—at least in appearance—the affective state
is changed.
So familiar an occurrence, well known from the remotest antiquity,
from which various consequences have been deduced by philosophers,
would not in itself possess sufficient importance to arrest our
attention, did it not, for all its insignificant appearance, afford
us the opportunity of penetrating the depths of our subject.
We may remark that the same transformation takes place inversely—a
state in itself disagreeable may become agreeable. This
transmutation is to be found at the root of nearly all the pleasures
which we call _acquired_: a taste or smell at first repugnant may
become delightful.
The same thing happens with regard to certain physical exercises
connected with touch and the muscular sense. The use of alcoholic
drinks, of tobacco, of all sorts of narcotics, would furnish us with
abundance of examples. Pleasure is found in certain forms of
literature which were at first found revolting; the same thing may
be said of painting; and the history of music is one long piece of
evidence in favour of this transformation of tastes.
In the first place, we have to note that the hackneyed expression,
“transformation” of pleasure into pain, and _vice versâ_, is
inaccurate. Pain cannot be changed into pleasure or pleasure into
pain, any more than black can be changed into white. What is meant
is that the conditions of existence of the one disappear to give
place to the conditions of existence of the other. There is
succession, but not transformation; a symptom does not transform
itself into its opposite.
This succession, abrupt or gradual, leads us to ask whether there
might not be a common basis, a certain identity of nature, between
the two antagonistic phenomena. The question thus put may be
answered by one of two alternative hypotheses.
1. The admission that the difference is fundamental and irreducible,
that pain is as clearly to be distinguished from pleasure as the
visual sensation is from the auditory sensation: that these feelings
constitute an antinomy—an irreconcilable antagonism. The clearest
affirmation of this thesis is found in those writers who make
pleasure and pain “sensations” comparable to other sensations, and
having their own specific character.
2. The admission that the difference is one of degree, not of
nature; that the two contrary manifestations are only two _moments_
of the same process; that they differ from each other only as sound
differs from noise, or a very acute sound from a very deep one, both
resulting from the same cause—the number of vibrations in any given
space of time. I am myself inclined to maintain this second
hypothesis.
Let us take as an example a simple case where the process is
manifested in its totality. We have a person in a so-called
indifferent, neutral, or medium state, that is to say, one which
cannot be described as agreeable or painful; the individual is
simply alive, that is all. He is sensitive to the perfume of
flowers; some are placed in his room—pleasure is the result. At the
end of an hour all is changed; the subject is incommoded by the
smell of the flowers, and avoids them. Hence we have three
successive moments: indifference, pleasure, pain.
But these three moments in consciousness have their correlatives in
the modifications of the organism: circulation, respiration, motion,
the various phases of nutrition. The first answers to the average
vital formula of the individual; the second to an increase in the
vital functions, and, according to the usual formula (which we shall
examine later on), to an augmentation of energy; the third to a
lowering of the vital functions and a diminution of energy. Such are
the data of observation and experience. Féré’s researches on the
olfactory sensations (to mention no others) have shown that the
feelings accompanying them, pleasant or otherwise, show themselves
in an augmented or diminished pressure on the dynamometer. In a
subject whose dynamometric force is normally 50-55, a disagreeable
odour lowers the index to 45, an agreeable one raises it to 65. In
another (a hysterical patient) the odour of musk, at first very
pleasant, raises the dynamometer from 23 to 46; in three minutes it
becomes disagreeable, and the pressure sinks to 19.[38] We find,
therefore, that the organism is subject to perpetual fluctuations,
indicated in the consciousness by agreeable or disagreeable
feelings: the two opposites are connected with one and the same
cause, the vital functions forming their common basis; and I should
be inclined to propound the following hypothesis:—
Footnote 38:
Féré, _Sensation et Mouvement_, pp. 62, 63.
In most cases, if not in all, two contrary processes are going on
simultaneously—one of increase, the other of diminution; _what comes
into the consciousness is only the result of a difference_.
A difference between what? Between receipt and expenditure. Let us,
in order to show this clearly, take a point at which the destructive
and constructive activities exactly balance one another, a condition
corresponding to the neutral or indifferent state of psychologists,
and let us represent the same by the numerical formula 50 = 50. At a
subsequent point of time the destructive activities predominate; let
us suppose them equal to 60, while the value of the constructive
falls to 40. On comparing the second moment with the first, we find
a negative difference of -20, whose psychic equivalent is a painful
state of consciousness. Let us then suppose a third moment, when the
constructive activities are in the ascendent and equal 60, while the
destructive fall to 40; there will be a positive difference of +20,
whose psychic equivalent is a pleasant state of consciousness. I
must beg the reader to take all this only by way of illustration.
Thus understood, the “transformation” of pleasure into pain, and
pain into pleasure, is only the translation into the order of
affective psychology of the fundamental rhythm of life. The latter
reduces itself to the ultimate fact of nutrition, consisting of two
mutually interdependent processes, one of which implies the other,
assimilation and dissimilation. Except in extreme cases, such as
inanition and exhaustion on the one hand, and plethora on the other,
in which one of the two processes prevails almost without
counterpoise, they usually oscillate on either side of a medium, as
pleasure and pain do on either side of an alleged neutral state. In
physiology it happens that a very clear and easily verified
phenomenon covers and hides a contrary phenomenon, so that the
principal part of the occurrence is erroneously taken for the whole.
Thus one knows that a muscle is heated by exercise, which seems to
contravene the law of the transformation of energy, as the
mechanical work done ought to consume a part of that mode of motion
which we call heat. Béclard and several others after him have shown
that there is a real lowering of temperature at the beginning of
positive work, and that two opposite phenomena appear in the muscle
when in action: one physical, absorbing heat and determining a
cooling of the active muscle; the other chemical, producing a
heating of the muscle. The latter masks the former. In the same way,
the well-known experiments of Schiff have shown that the brain is
heated when it receives impressions and elaborates them; it ought to
grow cold, since it is doing work; but Tanzi’s experiments seem to
establish the existence of alternating oscillations of cold and heat
while the brain is at work. We recall these facts, though not in
direct relation to our subject, to show that the coexistence of two
opposite processes, the most apparent of which conceals the other,
is not a chimera. There are frequently two simultaneous phenomena,
of which the one is seen and not the other.
According to this hypothesis, then, the conditions of existence of
pleasure and pain are implied the one by the other, and always
coexistent. What is expressed by consciousness is a _surplus_, and
what is called their transformation is only a difference in favour
of one or the other.[39]
Footnote 39:
This also seems to be the view adopted by Rutgers Marshall (_op.
cit._). In the first place, he always considers “pleasure-pains”
as connected states, pleasure being experienced “whenever the
physical activity coincident with the psychic state to which the
pleasure is attached involves the use of surplus stored force—the
resolution of surplus potential into actual energy; or, in other
words, whenever the energy involved in the reaction to a stimulus
is greater in amount than the energy which the stimulus habitually
calls forth.”—P. 204.
I add some final remarks on the so-called transformation of pain
into pleasure. Being rarer than its opposite, it presents some
peculiarities to be noted.
Very acute pleasures exhaust quickly—a condition very favourable to
the rapid appearance of pain; I do not see that acute pain ever
changes into pleasure, except perhaps in a few cases to be examined
in the following chapter.
The “transformation” does not take place abruptly, but always by a
gradual transition.
Some have attempted to explain it by habit; but this is so general a
term as to require fresh definition in each individual case. It has
also been said that the painful sensation, being accompanied by
disorganisation and lowering of the vital power, produces, _ipso
facto_, an organic repair, a vital increase, which is the essential
condition of pleasure. But this does not prove that the period of
reintegration coexists with the first impression and imparts to it a
contrary affective sign. The novice in the use of tobacco is at
first incommoded by headache, nausea, etc.; then there follows a
period of repair, but it is not directly connected with the act of
smoking.
It seems to me preferable to admit, with Beaunis, that the agreeable
states we speak of are not simple but complex, consisting of a
certain number of elements. “It may happen that, among the elements
which compose sensation, some are agreeable and some painful; with
habit and exercise the painful element gradually disappears from the
consciousness, and only the agreeable elements of the sensation
remain. In this case there would not really be a transformation of
the pain into pleasure, but an extinction, a disappearance of the
disagreeable elements of the sensation, and a predominance of the
agreeable ones.”[40]
Footnote 40:
Beaunis, _Sensations internes_, pp. 246, 247.
The cause of this change seems to me to lie in the biological
function called adaptation, of whose true nature very little
is known, and which appears to reduce itself to nutritive
modifications. Experiment shows that its efficacy cannot be
depended on: it succeeds in some persons, but fails in others.
CHAPTER IV.
MORBID PLEASURES AND PAINS.
_Utility of the pathological method—Search for a criterion of
the morbid state; abnormal reaction through excess or
defect; apparent disproportion between cause and effect;
chronicity—I. Morbid pleasures, not peculiar to advanced
civilisation—Different attempts at explanation—This state cannot
be explained by normal psychology: it is the rudimentary form of
the suicidal tendency—Classification—Semi-pathological
pleasures: those destructive of the individual, those
destructive of the social order—II. Abnormal pains—Melancholic
type—Whence does the painful state arise in its permanent form?
from an organic disposition? or from a fixed idea?—Examples of
the two cases._
The title of this chapter may seem paradoxical, pleasure being as a
rule the expression of health, and even of exuberant life, and pain,
by its very definition, a diseased state. It must be admitted that,
for the latter, the expression _abnormal_ would be preferable.
However, the facts we are about to study are not rare, and deserve
separate examination, because the deviations and anomalies of
pleasure and pain serve to make the nature of each better
understood.
Taking our subject, for the first time, on the pathological side, a
proceeding to be applied later on to each of the simple or complex
emotions in turn, certain preliminary remarks are indispensable.
The application of the pathological method to psychology needs no
justification; its efficacy has been proved. The results obtained
are too numerous and too well known to need enumeration. This
method, in fact, has two principal advantages—(1) it is a magnifying
instrument, amplifying the normal phenomenon; hallucination explains
the part played by the image, and hypnotic suggestion throws light
on the suggestion met with in ordinary life; (2) it is a valuable
instrument of analysis. Pathology, it has justly been remarked, is
only physiology out of order, and nothing leads better to the
understanding of a machine than the elimination or the deviation of
one of its wheels. Aphasia produces a decomposition of memory and
its different signs, which the subtlest psychological analysis could
not attempt or even suspect.
The principal difficulty of this method lies in determining the
precise moment when it can be applied. The distinction between the
healthy and the morbid is often extremely difficult to establish. No
doubt there are cases where no hesitation is possible; but there are
also debatable zones lying between the territories of health and
disease. Claude Bernard ventured to write, “What is called the
normal state is purely a conception of the mind, a typical ideal
form entirely disengaged from the thousand divergences among which
the organism is incessantly floating, amid its alternating and
intermittent functions.” If this is the case with regard to bodily
health, we may expect to find it still more so with regard to
mental. The dilemma: Either this man is mad or he is not, is, in
many cases, says Griesinger, meaningless. The psychical organism,
being more complex and less stable than the physical, makes it still
more difficult to fix a norm. Finally, this difficulty attains its
maximum in our subject, because the emotional—the most mobile among
all the forms of psychic life—oscillates incessantly around one
point of equilibrium, always ready to sink too low or rise too high.
As, however, it is necessary to adopt some definite characteristics
which may serve as pathological signs, as criteria for
distinguishing the healthy from the morbid in the emotional order,
we shall accept those proposed by Féré. According to him, an emotion
may be considered as morbid—
1. When its physiological concomitants present themselves with
extraordinary intensity (I think we should add, or an extraordinary
depression).
2. When it takes place without sufficient determining cause.
3. When its effects are unreasonably prolonged.[41]
Footnote 41:
Féré, _Pathologie des Émotions_, p. 223.
These three signs, which I shall call respectively abnormal reaction
by excess or defect, disproportion (apparent) between cause and
effect, and chronicity, will frequently be of service to us in the
study of the emotions. For the moment we are only treating of
pleasure and pain.
I.
Beginning with pleasure, I shall first examine a typical case
studied by several physiologists, who have not furnished any, to me,
satisfactory explanation. I mean the special state which has been
called “the luxury of pity” (Spencer), pleasure in pain (Bouillier),
and which it would be more accurate to call “the pleasure of pain.”
It consists in being pleased with one’s own suffering and tasting it
like a pleasure.
This disposition of the mind is not, as one might think, peculiar to
_blasé_ persons and to epochs of refined civilisation; it seems
inherent in humanity the moment it emerges from barbarism.
Bouillier[42] has quoted from the ancient writers passages referring
to it, not only in Lucretius, Seneca, and other moralists, but in
the Homeric poems, which reflect a very primitive civilisation, yet
in which a man “rejoices in his tears.” Parallel passages might have
been found in the Bible, and also, I suppose, in the epics of
ancient India. We have not, therefore, to deal with a rare
phenomenon, though it becomes more frequent as we advance in
civilisation.
Footnote 42:
Bouillier, _Du plaisir et de la douleur_, chap. vii.
A few examples will be of greater value than any opinions I could
cite. They may be found of all sorts—pleasure in physical pain, and
pleasure in moral pain. Certain patients find intense enjoyment in
irritating their sores. Mantegazza[43] says: “I knew an old man who
acknowledged to me that he found an extraordinary pleasure, and one
which seemed to him equal to any other, in scratching the inflamed
surfaces surrounding a senile sore in his leg from which he had
suffered for some years.”
Footnote 43:
Mantegazza, _Fisiologia del piacere_, p. 26.
A celebrated man of the Renaissance, Cardan, says in his
autobiography that “he could not do without suffering, and when this
happened to him, he felt such an impulse arise in him, that every
other pain seemed a relief.” When in this state, he was in the habit
of torturing his own body till forced to shed tears by the pain.[44]
I might enumerate a long series of these pleasures of physical pain.
Of the pleasures of moral pain I will give but one example:
melancholy in the ordinary, non-medical sense-the melancholy of
lovers, poets, artists, etc. This state may be considered as typical
of the deliberate enjoyment of sadness. Any one may be sad, but
melancholy is not to be attained by every one. I may mention also,
in passing, the pleasures of ugliness in æsthetics, and the taste
for sanguinary spectacles and tortures which we shall have to
consider in another place.
Footnote 44:
A curious study of pathological psychology might be founded on the
_De Vila Propria_ of Cardan, who was evidently what would now be
called a neuropath and a _déséquilibré_.
If we leave the facts and come to the explanations proposed, we
shall find that they are not numerous. Bouillier (_op. cit._) seems
to adopt the opinion of a Cartesian, who said, “If the soul, in all
movements of the passions, even the most painful, is in some measure
tickled by a secret feeling of pleasure, if it takes pleasure in
pain, and does not wish to be consoled, it is because of a
consciousness that the state in which it finds itself is the state
of heart and mind best suited to its situation.” I fail to
understand this pretended explanation. I prefer that of Hamilton,
who places the principal cause in the increased activity imparted to
our whole being by the sense of our own sufferings. This, at least,
is logical, since pleasure is connected with its habitual
correlative—an increase of activity. Spencer has examined the
problem at greater length.[45] "Here I will draw attention only to
another egoistic sentiment, and I do this because of its mysterious
nature. It is a pleasurably painful sentiment, of which it is
difficult to identify the nature, and still more difficult to trace
the genesis. I refer to what is sometimes called ‘the luxury of
grief.’... It seems possible that this sentiment, which makes a
sufferer wish to be alone with his grief, and makes him resist all
distraction from it, may arise from dwelling on the contrast between
his own worth, as he estimates it, and the treatment he has
received—either from his fellow-beings or from a power which he is
prone to think of anthropomorphically. If he feels that he has
deserved much while he has received little, and still more if
instead of good there has come evil, the consciousness of this evil
is qualified by the consciousness of worth, made pleasurably
dominant by the contrast.... There is an idea of much withheld, and
a feeling of implied superiority to those who withhold it.... That
this explanation is the true one I feel by no means clear. I throw
it out simply as a suggestion, confessing that this peculiar emotion
is one which neither analysis nor synthesis enables me clearly to
understand."
Footnote 45:
_Principles of Psychology_, ii., § 518.
This explanation seems to me only a partial one, and not applicable
to all cases. In my opinion, no efforts of this kind can be
successful, because the authors remain on the ground of normal
psychology. This class of facts ought to be treated by the
pathological method. It may be said that this is only the
substitution of one word for another. By no means, as we shall see
by the result.
The mistake lies in attacking, in the first instance, phenomena of
too delicate a nature, and considering them as isolated facts. We
must proceed, not by synthesis or analysis, but by the cumulative
method—_i.e._, we must establish a chain of facts, of which the last
links, being of overwhelming importance, shall throw light on the
first. I indicate the principal stages of this gradation
thus—Æsthetic melancholy (transitory and intermittent); spleen,
melancholia (in the medical sense);[46] then, advancing a step
further, suicidal tendencies, and finally, suicide. This last term
makes all the others comprehensible. The first stages are only
embryonic, abortive, or modified forms of the tendency to
self-destruction, of the desire which makes it seem agreeable. The
weaker forms—checked in an immense majority of cases—approximate
more or less to destruction, and can only be explained if compared
with the extreme case.
Footnote 46:
Krafft-Ebing remarks: “An abnormal mode of feeling on the part of
melancholic patients is found in the enjoyment of pain
(_Leidseligkeit_). In these individuals, ideas which, in a healthy
slate, would be provocative of pain, awaken in the diseased
consciousness a faint feeling of satisfaction which represents the
corresponding affective tone.”
The evolutionists have stated the hypothesis that there must have
existed certain animals so constituted that, in them, pleasure was
connected with destructive acts, pain with useful ones, and that, as
every animal seeks pleasure and shuns pain, they must have perished
in virtue of their very constitution, since they sought the
destructive and shunned the preservative influences. There is
nothing chimerical in this supposition, for we see men find pleasure
in acts which, as they very well know, will speedily result in their
deaths. A being thus constituted is abnormal, illogical; he contains
within himself a contradiction of which he will perish.
But, one may say, if pain and hurtful acts on the one hand, pleasure
and serviceable acts on the other, form indissoluble pairs, of such
a kind that the painful state in consciousness is the equivalent of
destructive acts in the organism, and inversely, we should here have
an interversion—pleasure would express disorganisation; pain,
reorganisation. This hypothesis is not a very probable one, and
scarcely seems necessary. If we admit, as has been said in the
preceding chapter, that there always exist two simultaneous and
opposite processes whose difference is all that is perceptible to
the consciousness, it is sufficient for one of the processes to be
accelerated or the other retarded, in an abnormal manner, in order
to change the difference in favour of one or the other. No doubt the
final result contradicts the rule, since in the above cases the
surplus which ought to be negative (pain) is positive (pleasure).
But this is a new proof that we are confronted with a deviation, an
anomaly, a pathological case to be treated as such.
I have taken by itself and studied a typical case; it now remains,
not to enumerate, but to classify pathological pleasures in order to
show their frequency. Taking as a guide the excellent definition of
Mantegazza, “Morbid pleasure is that which is either the cause or
the effect of an evil,” I divide them into three classes.
1. Semi-pathological pleasures, which form the transition from the
healthy to the frankly morbid. These require an excessive or
prolonged expenditure of vital energy. We know that the pleasures of
taste, smell, sight, hearing, touch, muscular exercise, the sexual
relations, produce fatigue and exhaustion, or even suddenly become
painful. The pleasures of affection, of self-love, of possession,
when they become passions—that is to say, when they increase in
intensity and stability—cease to be pure pleasures; a painful
element is added to them. This phenomenon is natural and logical,
since every increase in activity entails losses, and consequently
conditions of pain. This class is scarcely morbid, since pain here
_succeeds_ pleasure. This is not the case with the other two, in
which pleasure rises from the midst of destruction, and dominates
the consciousness.
2. Pleasures destructive of the individual. I do not stop to discuss
certain anomalies of taste and smell which will be described
elsewhere; but the pleasures due to intoxication and narcotics are
so widespread that they seem inherent in humanity. At all times, in
all places, even in the savage state, man has found artificial means
of living—if only for a moment—in an enchanted world. He has himself
created this pleasure for his own destruction. But there are still
clearer cases—of tendencies not acquired or invented—when pleasure
makes and dominates the process of disorganisation. Thus, during a
certain period of the general paralysis of the insane, the patient
believes himself to possess the supreme degree of strength, health,
riches, and power; satisfaction and happiness are expressed in his
whole bearing. Thus in certain forms of acute mania, on one side
(which we shall pass over for the present) it shows itself in anger;
on another, in exuberant spirits, abounding joy—a feeling of energy
and vigour. Some patients say, after their recovery, that they never
felt so happy as during their illness (Krafft-Ebing). We may also
mention the case of consumptive patients, many of whom are never so
rich in hopes or so fertile in projects as when at the point of
death. Finally, we have the sense of well-being (“euphoria”) of the
dying. It has been attempted to explain this by analgesia, as if the
suppression of pain were identical with the appearance of joy. Féré,
who has examined the question in his _Pathologie des Emotions_,[47]
concludes that this exaltation is due to momentary but positive
conditions of the cerebral circulation.
Footnote 47:
Pp. 170 _et seq._
Must we admit that, in these cases, by an inconceivable derogation
from natural determinism, pleasure becomes the translation into
consciousness of a deep and incurable disorganisation? There is no
need of this. It is more rational to admit that this pleasure is
here, as elsewhere, connected with its natural cause, a
superabundance of vital activity. Every pathological pleasure is
accompanied by excitability; but the latter is not a normal
activity, or the fever-patient and the neuropath would enjoy an
excess of health. In reality, we are confronted with a complex case;
on the one hand, a perpetual and enormous loss, which goes on
rapidly, without becoming perceptible to the consciousness; on the
other, a superficial excitement, which is momentary and conscious.
The anomaly is in this psychic disproportion, or rather in the
short-sighted consciousness, which cannot pass its narrow limits and
penetrate into the region of the unconscious.
3. Destructive pleasures of a social character, which are connected,
not with the suffering of the individual himself, but with that of
others. Such is the pleasure felt in killing and seeing killed—in
sanguinary spectacles, bull-fights, fights between animals, and, in
a much feebler degree, in hearing or reading tales of bloodshed.
These pleasures can be explained; they denote the satisfaction of
tendencies to violence and destruction, which, strong or weak,
conscious or unconscious, exist in all men. They may be studied
under the heading of the pathology of tendencies, which I shall
treat later on; let me only remark in passing that these tendencies
involve a certain display of energy, which is one of the conditions
of active pleasure.
One question in conclusion. Can pleasure, and joy in particular, be
the cause of a grave catastrophe, such as madness or death? Some
alienists—Bucknill, Tuke, Guislain, etc.—quote cases of madness
which they attribute to sudden joy, such as an unforeseen
inheritance, or success in obtaining a long-wished-for situation.
The same thesis has been maintained in the case of death[48]
occurring suddenly, or after syncope. Griesinger maintains that it
is extremely rare—if it ever happens—for excessive joy _by itself_
to produce madness. Others absolutely deny the fact.[49] It is
certain that joy is seldom seen figuring in any enumeration of the
causes of madness. Joy, as a state of consciousness, could not have
such effects. The catastrophe can only be explained by sudden and
violent organic troubles, which cannot have this effect unless there
already exists a predisposition. It is not joy which maddens or
kills, but the shock received by a being in an abnormal state. It
would be more correct to say that an event which, in the generality
of men, _ought_ to cause joy, here produces a peculiar pathological
state ending in madness or death.
Footnote 48:
For some facts, which may or may not be well authenticated, see
Féré, _op. cit._, p. 234.
Footnote 49:
Féré, _Pathologie des Emotions_, pp. 293, 294.
II.
The other side of the subject may be briefly disposed of. We
occasionally, though rarely, meet with people who grieve over good
fortune when it comes to them; these have the pain of pleasure. I do
not think that any psychologist has dwelt on them, and it seems to
me useless to make a study of these cases. Though in form the
reverse of the pleasure of pain, it fundamentally resembles it. This
disposition of mind, found in certain pessimists, is rightly called
eccentric or bizarre—_i.e._, general opinion instinctively looks on
it as a deviation, an anomaly. This, moreover, is only a special
instance of a general state of mind—morbid or pathologic
sadness—which we are about to study. I have remarked above that, as
pain and sadness always involve a morbid element, the expression
_abnormal_ would be more accurate and less open to criticism.
In order to affirm that a physical or moral pain is outside the
usual law, and may be described as abnormal, we shall have recourse
to the three distinctive marks given at the opening of this chapter,
and we can take, as our one type, that of melancholia in the medical
sense. It presents the required characteristics: the long duration,
disproportion between the cause and effect experienced, and
excessive or insufficient reaction.
It is needless to give a description of the melancholic state; it
may be found in all treatises on mental disease. This affection
assumes many clinical forms, varying from _melancholia attonita_,
which simulates a stupid apathy, to the agitated form accompanied by
incessant groans, from the slight to the profound and incurable
forms. It will be sufficient to enumerate the most general features.
In comparing melancholy with ordinary sadness, we may follow the
cumulative method, because the morbid state is nothing but the
normal condition thrown into high relief.
1. We know that the physiological characteristics of normal sadness
are reducible to a single formula: lowering of the vital functions.
The same is the case with melancholia, where, however, the organic
depression is much more accentuated. Constriction of the vaso-motor
nerves, resulting in a diminished calibre of the arteries, anæmia,
and lowered temperature of the extremities; lowering of the cardiac
pressure, which may descend from an average of 800 grammes to 650
and even 600 grammes; a progressive slackening of nutrition, with
various resultant manifestations, such as digestive troubles,
checked secretions, etc.; slow and rare movements; a dislike of all
muscular effort, all work, all physical exercise, unless there are
(as sometimes happens in cases of agitated melancholia) moments of
disordered reflex movements and attacks of fury. Such is the general
condition. It is obvious that this represents pain carried to an
extreme degree, and that we find, here too, as well as in normal
melancholy, passive and active pains.
2. The psychic characteristics consist, in the first place, of an
emotional state varying from apathetic resignation to despair; some
patients are so crushed as to think themselves dead. It has been
noted that, in general, persons of a gloomy disposition are inclined
to melancholia, while those of a cheerful one rather tend towards
mania. In both cases there is an exaggeration of the normal
condition. The intellectual disposition consists in the slackening
of the association of ideas, in indolence of the mind. Ordinarily, a
fixed idea predominates, excluding from the consciousness all that
has no relation to it; thus the hypochondriac thinks only of his
health; the nostalgic, of his country; the religious melancholiac,
of his salvation. Voluntary activity is almost _nil_; aboulia, “the
consciousness of not willing, is the very essence of this disease”
(Schüle). Sometimes there are violent and unexpected reflex
impulses, which are a new proof of the annihilation of the will. To
sum up: while normal sadness has its moments of intermission, the
melancholiac is shut up in his grief as if by an impenetrable wall,
without the slightest fissure through which a ray of joy might reach
him.
Here arises a question we cannot neglect, because it is connected
with one of the principal theses of this work, the fundamental part
played by the feelings. Passive melancholia, being taken as the type
of the painful state under its extreme and permanent form, what is
its origin? There are two possible answers. We may admit that a
physical pain, or a certain representation, engenders a melancholic
disposition, and poisons the affective life. Or we may admit that a
vague and general state of depression and disorganisation becomes
concrete and fixes itself in an idea. On the first supposition the
intellectual state is primary, and the affective state resultant. On
the second the affective state is the first moment, and the
intellectual state results from it.
This problem, rather psychical than practical, has only occupied a
very small number of alienists. Schüle admits the twofold
origin.[50] Sometimes the patient, suffering from a painful and
causeless depression, which he cannot shake off, inquires no
further; but, most frequently, he connects the painful feeling with
some incident in his previous or present life. Sometimes, _much more
rarely_, the haunting idea is the first to appear, and forms the
pivot of the melancholic state and its consequences. Dr. Dumas,[51]
who has devoted a special work to this question, founded on his own
observation, comes to the same conclusions as Schüle. One of his
patients attributed her incurable sadness, in turn, and without
sufficient reason, to her husband, to her son, to expected loss of
work. In others, the melancholy is of intellectual origin: the loss
of fortune, the idea of irrevocable damnation, etc. He is thus led
to admit that a melancholia of organic origin is the most frequent,
one of intellectual origin the rarest.
Footnote 50:
Schüle, _Traité clinique des maladies mentales_, Art. “Mélancolie”
(French edition), pp. 21, 28.
Footnote 51:
G. Dumas, _Les états intellectuels dans la mélancolie_, where may
be found several detailed observations.
Can we trace back these two modes of manifestation to a common and
deeper cause? This is Krafft-Ebing’s[52] solution: “We must consider
psychic pain and the arrest of ideas as co-ordinate phenomena; and
there is reason to think of a common cause, of a nutritive trouble
of the brain (anæmia?), leading to a diminished expenditure of
nervous activity. Taken comprehensively, melancholia may be
considered as a morbid condition of the psychic organism founded on
nutritive troubles, and characterised on the one hand by the feeling
of pain and a particular mode of reaction on the part of the whole
consciousness (psychic neuralgia), on the other by the difficulty of
psychic movements (instinct, ideas), and finally, by their arrest.”
Footnote 52:
Krafft-Ebing, _op. cit._, vol. ii., sec. 1, chap. i.
I am unwilling to incur the reproach of inferring more from facts
than they contain, and of insisting on unity at any price; but it
follows from the preceding that if the element of feeling is not
everywhere and always primary, at least it is so in the majority of
cases. Besides, it is closely connected with fundamental trophic
troubles, so that we arrive at the same conclusion by another road.
Dumas (_op. cit._, pp. 133 _et seq._) has insisted on the depressing
influences of marshy soil, on the stagnation, the physical and moral
apathy of the inhabitants of Sologne, the Dombes, the Maremma, and
other regions infested by _malaria_, a condition which may be summed
up in two words, sadness and resignation. These facts are quite in
favour of the organic origin of melancholia.
The special study of the anomalies of pleasure and pain is not
important for itself alone. The formula generally admitted since
Aristotle, which couples pleasure with utility, pain with what is
injurious, admits of many exceptions in practice. Perhaps the
constitution of a pathological group in the study of pleasure and
pain may permit us to solve some difficulties, to prevent the rule
and the exceptions being placed on the same plane, and unduly
assimilated to one another. We shall see that this is so in one of
the following chapters.
CHAPTER V.
THE NEUTRAL STATES.
_Two methods of study—Affirmative thesis founded on observation,
deduction, and psycho-physics—Negative thesis: the
psychological trinity; confusion between consciousness and
introspection—Diversity of temperaments._
Up to the present, pleasure and pain have been studied first
separately, as two perfectly distinct states, pure, by hypothesis,
from every admixture. We then examined those singular cases where
pain becomes the material or occasion of pleasure, and _vice
versâ_. We have still to speak of those cases where the agreeable
and the painful _coexist_ in varying proportions in the
consciousness—_e.g._, in the mountain-climber who feels at the
same time fatigue, the fear of the precipices, the beauty of the
landscape, and the pleasure of difficulty vanquished. Nothing is
more frequent than these mixed forms; they would even be the rule
if one could admit, with certain authors, that there are no
unmixed pleasures or pains; but by their complex and composite
nature they are, in fact, emotions, and we shall come to them
again later on.
The subject of this chapter is quite different. It is the
much-discussed, still unsolved, and perhaps insoluble problem of
neutral states, states of indifference, free from any accompaniment,
either pleasurable or painful. Do such exist? Both the affirmative
and negative are maintained by good authorities; there is even a
psychologist who seems to me to have adopted each thesis in
turn.[53]
Footnote 53:
For a short historical summary of the question up to the middle of
the nineteenth century, see Bouillier, _Du plaisir et de la
douleur_, chap. xi.
The question can only be entered on in two ways—by observation and
by argument. Let us examine the results of these two methods.
1. Does the state of indifference exist as an _observable fact_?
Bain is, among contemporary writers, the principal champion of this
thesis, which has excited a lengthy discussion.[54] He does not
pretend to affirm that there is a single state of feeling free from
every agreeable or disagreeable element; but if these elements only
exist as infinitesimal quantities, psychology need take no account
of them. Pleasure and pain are clearly defined generic states; yet
there is a practical interest in knowing whether any neutral
conditions exist. Bain finds the type of these in cases of simple
excitement, which may be accompanied either by pleasure or by pain,
but remain distinct from either. The sensation of burning, the smell
of asafœtida, the taste of aloes, these are modes of excitement
which we call pain, because in them pain predominates. The noise of
a mill, the confused murmur of a great city, are modes of excitement
which may be called agreeable or disagreeable; but the excitement is
the essential fact, the pleasure and pain are accidental.
Footnote 54:
See _Mind_, Oct. 1887, Jan. and April 1888, Jan. 1889; and J.
Sully, _The Human Mind_, vol. ii. pp. 4, 5.
Bain does not appear to me happy in most of the examples he has
chosen. I quote some of them. The shock produced by surprise—but
surprise is only a mitigated form of fear, and in nearly all cases
instantaneously assumes a painful or pleasurable character. The
state of expectation: “The intense objectivity of one’s looks when
following a race, or a great surgical operation, is not, strictly
speaking, unconsciousness, but a maximum of energy with a minimum of
consciousness. It is rather a mode of indifference—more of an
excitement than an affective state.” Here we may make the same
comment; moreover, there is in expectation a feeling of effort which
soon becomes fatigue, and, in most instances, expectation involves
the anticipation of some event either desired or dreaded.
Those who do not attempt to prove the existence of neutral states by
direct observation deduce them from general principles. Thus Sergi
considers them as the necessary effect of determinate biological
conditions. Pleasure and pain being the two fundamental forms—the
two poles of the life of feeling, there must exist between them a
neutral zone corresponding to a state of perfect adaptation. Pain is
a state of consciousness revealing a conflict of the organism with
exterior forces—a want of adaptation of one to the other; whence a
loss of energy. Pleasure is a state of consciousness which makes it
evident that the reaction of the organism is connected with external
excitations, whence arises, by synergy, a heightening of vital
activity. Indifference is the neutral state of consciousness showing
a perfect adaptation of the organism to constant and variable
intensities—in other words, excitations which neither increase nor
diminish vital activity, but preserve it, produce a state of
equilibrium and appeal to the consciousness neither as pleasure nor
pain.[55] This hypothesis—viz., that at certain moments the sentient
being neither loses nor gains, and that such is the substratum of
the psychic state called neutral, seems to me extremely probable,
but remains no more than a hypothesis.
Footnote 55:
_Psychologie physiologique_, iv., ch. i., pp. 309 _et seq._
(French edition.)
Now let us question the psycho-physicists who have treated this
subject according to their own special method, while coming to
different conclusions. It is difficult to adopt a procedure more
theoretical than theirs, or one better adapted to show the
insufficiency of the intellectualist method in this domain of
psychology. In truth, the subject treated by them is a special
aspect of the problem, not its totality; they are inquiring whether,
in the “transformation” of pleasure into pain, and _vice versâ_,
there is, in the passage from one contrary to the other, a point of
neutrality or indifference. Wundt graphically represents the
phenomenon by a curve: the portion of this curve above the line of
the abscissa has a positive value, and corresponds to the
development of pleasure; the portion below corresponds to the
development of pain, and has a negative value; the precise point
where the curve cuts the line of the abscissa (to rise in the
direction of pleasure or descend in that of pain) corresponds to
neutrality or indifference. Lehmann, who, however, admits that weak
sensations are neutral states, gives a curve rather different from
that of Wundt. From an observation first made by Horwicz, and
experiments conducted by Lehmann himself, it appears that, if one
dips one’s finger into water whose temperature gradually rises from
35° to 50° Centigrade during a space of 2 minutes and 20 seconds,
one feels first an agreeable warmth, then some slight, unpleasant
prickings, then oscillations of intense prickings with moments of
rest, and lastly, pain. His conclusion is contrary to Wundt’s, for
he finds that the passage from pleasure to pain does not take place
in a neutral state.[56]
Footnote 56:
Wundt, _Grundzüge der physiol. Psychologie_ (4th German ed.), vol.
i. pp. 557 _et seq._; Lehmann, _Hauptgesetze_, etc., §§ 236-241.
One of Wundt’s most distinguished pupils, Külpe, in his _Umriss
der Psychologie_ (1895), considers the existence of a state of
indifference “can hardly be doubted in the face of a long series
of observations which support it.” (English edition, p. 242.)
Experiments are not to be despised; but as for the figure supposed
to illustrate the phenomenon, it is merely misleading; this
mathematical conception explains nothing. The assimilation of
pleasure to a positive, and pain to a negative value, is quite
arbitrary. Moreover, the passage from _plus_ to _minus_ quantities
through zero is an operation which has its base in our faculty of
abstraction, and for its materials abstract and homogeneous
quantities. The different degrees of pleasure and pain are nothing
of this sort. We do not even know if these two phenomena have a
common foundation, if there is a common measure between the two, if
they are not both irreducible, and we have no right to place,
theoretically, a _Nullpunkt_ at the point of transition from one to
the other. The problem is one of a concrete order; it is a question
of fact, whether soluble or not, which is put before us.
2. Let us now listen to those who refuse to admit states of
indifference.
Every state of consciousness is a trinity in the theological sense:
it is the knowledge of some exterior or interior event; it includes
motor elements; it has a certain tone of feeling. We describe it as
intellectual, motor, or emotional, according to the preponderance of
one of these elements, not its exclusive existence. It is a
well-known fact that the clearer a perception, the weaker is its
tone of feeling, and the more intense an emotion, the more
attenuated the intellectual element which has evoked it; but
diminution is not equivalent to disappearance. If neutral states
existed, one of the fundamental elements of psychic life would exist
only in an intermittent form, and at some moments even cease to be.
Besides this, let us observe ourselves and interrogate our own
consciousness. “Let us consider ourselves at one of those moments of
calm and apparent indifference, when it seems as if nothing could
move us, and our numbed sensibility remains, as it were, suspended
between pleasure and pain. This deceptive appearance of
insensibility and aridity always masks some more or less feeble
sensations of ease or uneasiness, some more or less slight and
confused sentiments of joy or grief which are none the less real for
being in nowise vivid or exciting. Moreover, how could our
sensibility fail to be, constantly, more or less impressed by so
many general causes which, independent of particular causes, so
constantly act upon us, at every instant of our life, and which, so
to speak, ceaselessly besiege us, from within and from without?”
Bouillier, the author of this passage (_op. cit._, chap. xi.),
supports his assertions by citing the innumerable impressions which
come from the internal organs, from the state of the air and sky,
from light, from the most trivial incidents of common life.
It is certain that the domain of the indifferent states, if existent
at all, is very scanty. Yet, however skilfully Bouillier may support
his thesis, there is one irrefragable objection to be urged against
it: the testimony of the consciousness, always doubtful, is here
more so than elsewhere. What he proposes to us is, in fact, to
_observe_ ourselves. From the moment when we begin to do this, we no
longer have to deal with the natural consciousness, in its raw
state, but with that somewhat artificial consciousness which is
created by attention. We look, not with our eyes, but through a
microscope; we amplify, we enlarge the phenomenon; and here the
method of enlargement is not to be trusted. It causes certain
subconscious states to cross the threshold of the consciousness; it
makes them pass out of the penumbra into full light, and disposes us
to believe that such is their normal condition. We know that some
individuals, by fixing the attention firmly on some particular part
of the body, can bring about in it a sensation of weight, of
irritation, of arterial pulsation, etc. Do these modifications
always exist, unperceived only so long as the attention is not
directed to them? or does attention produce them by means of an
increased vascular activity, increasing, but not creating? The
latter supposition is the more probable. The hypochondriac who
obstinately and patiently watches the details of his organic life
feels within himself the motion of the vital mechanism which escapes
most men. It would be easy to give other examples, proving that we
must distinguish between consciousness pure and simple and internal
observation, and that it is the less allowable to argue from one to
the other, since in practice the problem is reduced to a difference
of intensity.
This question well deserves to be called, as it has been by J.
Sully, “one of the _cruces_ of psychology.” Those who wish to take
sides in it can only guide their decision by probabilities and
preferences. I am inclined to favour the thesis of indifferent
states. I find it difficult to admit that certain perceptions or
representations, incessantly repeated, imply anything more than the
fact of knowledge. The sight of my furniture, arranged in its usual
order, causes me no appreciable degree of pleasure or displeasure;
or if these exist as infinitesimal quantities, psychology, as Bain
justly says, has no concern with them. Fouillée also points out that
the feeling of indifference is not primary, but due to an
effacement.[57]
Footnote 57:
Fouillée, _Psychologie des idées-forces_, i. 68.
The repugnance of certain psychologists to admit indifferent states
arises from the fact that this thesis appears to them to introduce
discontinuity into the affective life. The mobile and incessantly
alternating series of pleasurable or painful modifications would, in
that case, have moments of interruption, gaps, and vacant spaces. I
yield to no one in asserting the continuity of the affective life;
but it must be sought elsewhere. It is in the appetites, the
tendencies—conscious or unconscious—the desires and aversions,
which, for their part, are always at work, permanent and
indestructible. Here, again, we find the mistake of considering
pleasure and pain, which are only symptoms, as essential and
fundamental elements.
I find it strange, moreover, that, in a subject so much studied and
discussed, no one should have contributed an observation which seems
to me of some importance. Each author supposes the formula adopted
by himself to be applicable to all men. This is to state the
question in a philosophical, not in a psychological form—_i.e._,
without taking into account individual variations of temperament and
character, an element by no means to be neglected. It is to suppose,
without the least proof, that all cases are reducible to unity. On
the contrary, there are presumptions that the solution adopted,
whatever it is, may be true for some men and false for others. A
nervous, excitable temperament, in a perpetual state of vibration,
constantly kept on the alert by the workings of passion or thought,
may, by its very constitution, leave no moment accessible to an
intermission of the incessantly renewed states of pain and pleasure.
A lymphatic temperament, on the other hand, a cold disposition, a
limited intelligence, poor in ideas, constitute a soil perfectly
suited to the frequent appearance and long continuance of
indifferent states.[58]
Footnote 58:
I give an instance of a similar character, narrated by a
historian, from Arabic sources. "The Emir Mohammed (at Granada, in
1408), finding himself dying, and anxious to secure the throne to
his son, sent orders for his brother Yussuf, whom he was keeping
in captivity at Salobreña, to be put to death. The alcalde, when
he received this order, was playing at chess with his prisoner,
whose gentleness had gained the heart of his gaolers. On reading
the fatal despatch he was troubled, and did not dare to
communicate its contents to the prince. But Yussuf guessed from
his confusion what was the matter, and said to the alcalde, ‘Is it
my head that is asked of thee?’ The latter, for all answer, handed
to him his brother’s letter. Yussuf asked only for a few hours’
delay, in order to take leave of his wife; but the messenger of
death declared that the execution must take place at once, the
hour of his return being fixed beforehand. ‘Well,’ replied Yussuf,
‘let us at least finish the game.’ But the alcalde was so
distressed that he advanced his pawns at random, and Yussuf was
obliged to inform him of his mistakes. However, the game was never
finished. Some knights, riding from Granada at full gallop,
saluted Yussuf as Emir, and announced to him the death of his
brother. When thus passing from the scaffold to the throne the
Mussulman prince remained master of himself, as he had been in the
face of death. Still doubting his good fortune, he set out for
Granada, where he was received by the people with cries of joy."
(Rosseuw St.-Hilaire, _Histoire d’Espagne_, vol. v., p. 227.)
Analogous traits are recorded of various historic personages.
These differences, which are matter of common observation, show the
necessity of distrusting an over-simple solution.
CHAPTER VI.
CONCLUSIONS ON PLEASURE AND PAIN.
_The beginning of life—I. Conditions of existence of pleasure and
pain; lowering and heightening of vital energy—Féré’s
experiments—Meynert’s theory—II. Finality of pleasure and
pain—Exceptions: explicable cases; irreducible cases._
I shall not delay long over the question, as much debated as the one
we have just quitted and still less accessible: Which first makes
its appearance in consciousness, pleasure or pain? In our own day,
especially, optimists and pessimists have contested this point at
great length, although, in my opinion, they have no concern with it.
Their doctrines are two antithetical conceptions of the world,
depending solely on temperament and character, which could neither
be confirmed nor invalidated by the solution of this problem. It is
clear that it is a question of origin, of psychogenesis, foreign to
experimental psychology, and admitting only of probable solutions.
Descartes expressed the singular opinion that “joy was the first
passion of the soul, since it is not credible that the soul should
have been placed in the body, except when the latter was well
disposed; hence the natural result would be joy.” Others, following
theoretic views less strange in character, maintain that, pleasure
having for its cause the free play of our activity, pain is
connected with the arrest of pleasure, and hence is posterior to
it.[59] The majority of writers appear to me to favour the contrary
hypothesis; the impressions of cold, of contact, the beginning of
pulmonary respiration, etc., are cited as proving the priority of
pain; still more so, the cries of infants and of the new-born young
of animals. Yet Preyer, in two passages which have not excited much
remark, refuses all significance to the cry, and sees in it nothing
but a reflex action.[60] It does not seem doubtful that psychic
life, in its first or intra-uterine and earlier extra-uterine phases
may almost be reduced to a series of pleasurable and painful
impressions. Do they resemble those of the adult? It is probable
that they do; but it must not be forgotten that to assimilate the
plastic forms of the primitive epoch to the fixed and rigid ones of
adult life is a mode of reasoning conducive to numerous errors.
Footnote 59:
For the historical summary, see Bouillier, _op. cit._, chap. xii.
Footnote 60:
"The first cry of the new-born infant was formerly considered
anything rather than a reflex action. It is, however, very
probable that this first vocal manifestation, accompanying an
expiration, is a reflex pure and simple. Kant wrote (without,
indeed, having himself observed new-born children or animals):
‘The cry uttered by the child just after birth has not the
intonation of fear, but that of irritation or anger. It is not
because it is suffering, but because something displeases it. No
doubt it would like to move and feels its impotence, as it might
feel a chain restricting its liberty. What could have been the
object of Nature in making the infant born into the world utter
cries which are in the highest degree dangerous? Yet no animal
save man announces its existence, at the time of birth, by similar
cries.’
"This remarkable conception has been much commented on, and widely
adopted. At the present time many people still think that the
crying of new-born infants has considerable psychic significance.
But all comments of this kind are met by the objection that a
totally anencephalous infant cries at birth, and that many healthy
infants do not cry, but sneeze, on their entry into the world, as
noted by Darwin....
"The reflexes of pains which, in later life, show themselves in
the acutest manner, are those best developed in early life.
Gunzmer’s observations on about sixty infants showed him that,
during the first few days, they are almost insensible, and during
the first week, very slightly sensitive, to the pricking of a
needle.
“New-born infants have been, in the course of their first day,
pricked with fine needles, on the nose, the upper lip, and the
hand, deeply enough to draw a drop of blood; yet the child
manifested no symptom of consciousness, and did not start
once.”—Preyer, _Seele des Kindes_, pp. 177, 193.
Leaving aside this question of origin, it is impossible to close the
study of pleasure and pain without a summary recapitulation of the
general theories forming the philosophy of our subject. These may be
classified under two heads: the _how_ and the _why_; what are the
conditions of existence of pleasure and pain? and what is their
utility?
I.
On the first point there has been, from antiquity to the present
day, an almost universal and very rare agreement between different
schools: pleasure has, as its condition, an increased, pain a
diminished activity. I employ this vague formula designedly, because
it covers all special formulas. Of these it would be idle to
enumerate even the chief. At bottom, in language varying according
to the era and the doctrine, all authors say the same thing,
employing, according to their cast of intellect, a metaphysical,
physical (Léon Dumont), physiological, or psychological formula. The
intellectualists themselves agree with the others; considering
sensibility as a confused form of intelligence, they say that
pleasure is a confused judgment of perfection, and pain a confused
judgment of imperfection. In short, if each formula is stripped of
the variations adapting it to the particular philosophy of each
author, there is a common residue, which, in all alike, is the
essential.
The history of these variations on the same theme would be
monotonous and unprofitable; it is as well, however, to note that,
as our own century advances, the theoretic conception of the
ancients tends to grow more precise, to rely more on the support of
experience and be justified thereby. We have already seen the two
formulas—augmentation, diminution—taking definite shape, showing
themselves in the objective and observable changes of nutrition, of
the secretions, the movements, the circulation, and the breathing.
Féré’s experiments, he says, “agree perfectly, in showing that
pleasurable sensations are accompanied by an increase of energy, and
disagreeable ones by a diminution. The sensation of pleasure
resolves itself, therefore, into a feeling of power, that of
displeasure into a feeling of impotence. We have thus reached the
material demonstration of the theoretic ideas propounded by Bain,
Darwin, Spencer, Dumont, and others.”[61] I may remind the reader
that Féré has applied his dynamometric researches to all kinds of
sensations: to smell, to taste, to vision modified by glasses of the
principal colours of the spectrum, red giving a dynamometric
pressure of 42, which progressively descends to 20-17 for violet.
For auditory sensations, he finds that the dynamic equivalent is in
proportion to the amplitude and number of the vibrations. The same
results are found to follow motion, the movements of the upper or
lower limb exercising a dynamogenic influence on the corresponding
member. Still further: an excitation _imperceptible to the
consciousness_, a latent perception, determines a dynamic effect
just as much as a conscious impression. Suggested hallucinations,
agreeable or the reverse, are equally accompanied by an increase or
diminution of pressure on the dynamometer.
Footnote 61:
Féré, _Sensation et Mouvement_, p. 64. This work is to be
consulted for the details of the experiments about to be
summarised.
If the formula, “diminution of vital energy,” of which we have
found that melancholia is an extreme instance, can give rise to no
ambiguity, this is not the case with the opposite formula; and
certain authors have, for this reason, thought—and rightly so—that
it ought to be stated in precise terms. Pleasure corresponds to an
increase of activity; but if we understand by this expression a
large quantity of work done, the pleasure would result from a
_diminution_ of the potential energy of the organism, as Léon
Dumont has pointed out—_i.e._, from an impoverishment, which is
contradicted by experience. We must therefore understand this
increase of activity in the sense that the work done does not
expend more energy than the nutritive actions; or, to employ Grant
Allen’s formula, “Pleasure is the concomitant of the healthy
action of any or all of the organs or members supplied with
afferent cerebro-spinal nerves, to an extent not exceeding the
ordinary powers of reparation possessed by the system.”[62]
Footnote 62:
_Physiological Æsthetics_, p. 21. This point has been well
discussed by Lehmann (_op. cit._, pp. 205-208).
Finally, we must remark that, if every external or internal
sensation, whatever its nature, is a transmission of movements
coming from without, a new acquisition for the nervous system and
the brain, _every_ sensation ought at first to produce at least a
momentary increase of energy. Féré, who has foreseen the possibility
of this objection, admits in all cases a primary excitement. “If
there appear to be cases in which phenomena of depression arise
suddenly and subsist by themselves, it is only because they have
been insufficiently observed.”[63] There would then be a very short
phase of increase, immediately masked, according to him, by the
phase of diminution. The physiologists, as we have seen, are always
inclined to explain pain by intensity of sensation; but, if we take
into account its nature, its quality, and the susceptibility of the
nervous system to certain modes of motion received, nothing prevents
the loss being immediate.
Footnote 63:
_Pathologie des émotions_, p. 226.
Meynert, in his _Psychiatrie_, is the only writer who has attempted
to advance any nearer to an explanation, and to determine the
_mechanism_ which produces pleasure and pain. His hypothesis, in its
principal points, is as follows:—
As far as pain is concerned, his theory may be summed up as an
arrestive action of two categories of reflex movements, motor and
vascular. The painful state is the translation into consciousness of
this physiological mechanism.
1. _Motor reflexes._—Let us suppose the head of a sleeping child to
be slightly tickled. As the child’s sleep is sound, and there is no
pain, nothing takes place but a slight withdrawal of the hand. If we
suppose a slight prick, there will be few movements, and these
limited to a small part of the body. But if we suppose some severe
pain, such as the extraction of a tooth, or a burn extending over a
large portion of the skin, the result will be prolonged and terrible
reflex movements in _all_ parts of the body, which (in our opinion)
may be considered as defensive. So much for external facts; what is
taking place internally?
We know that vibrations are conducted slowly in the grey matter
(twelve times as slowly, according to Helmholtz, as in the white).
When an excitation increases, as we have seen, the number of
muscular groups set in motion, resistance to transmission increases
in the same proportion. “The sensation of pain presupposes a reflex
movement and an arrest of nervous conduction in the grey substance
of the spinal marrow.” It is this process of inhibition, in varying
degrees, which is felt by the consciousness as pain.
2. _Vascular reflexes._—Peripheral excitation also has reflex
effects on the vaso-motor system; it produces contraction of the
spinal arteries, of the carotids, and of the cerebral arteries.
Hence the syncope which frequently accompanies acute pain, and the
sleep (the result of anæmia) which has more than once been recorded
in the case of prisoners undergoing torture. This constriction of
the arteries produces a chemical change, a deficit of oxygen and
nutritive elements in the cells of the cortex; the respiration of
the tissues is interfered with, and the distressed state of the
organism is psychologically rendered by pain.
Conversely, the excitations contributing to the wellbeing of the
individual are accompanied by a free transmission of nervous force,
by vaso-motor dilatation, by hyperæmia of the nervous centres, and,
in the motor series, by “aggressive movements,” such as the singing
of birds, the joyous barking of dogs, and other analogous
manifestations in the human subject.
Meynert—vaguely enough, and relying for support on the association
of ideas—has applied his explanation to the case of moral pain. It
would not be difficult to adapt this hypothesis to the different
forms of vexation and sadness; but with a more complicated
mechanism. The point of departure is no longer a perception, but a
representation. The phenomenon is no longer of peripheral, but of
central origin; so that it starts from the brain and returns to it,
or, in psychological terms, begins in a purely intellectual state of
consciousness and ends in a state that is primarily one of feeling.
If, reading by chance a list of deaths in a newspaper, I find, with
no possible opening for doubt, the name of a friend, what takes
place in me is this: the other unknown names pass through my
consciousness like empty words, or a simple visual percept; suddenly
everything is changed; the reflex and vascular movements above
described are produced, then the arrest of the medullary and
cerebral centres, whose expression in consciousness will be grief.
But these reflex actions are only possible if the word read suggests
the recollection of former deaths, that is to say, of a sum of
privations, negations, and checked desires, the result of a mass of
accumulated experiences rising up together and acting, whether
consciously, subconsciously, or unconsciously.
An English alienist, Clouston, who has published a critical analysis
of this hypothesis of Meynert’s, considers it as the best in the
present state of the science of nervous physiology, although full of
lacunæ, and, after all, rather theoretical than experimental. It is
not in accordance with several facts; _e.g._, in anger, which is a
painful state, there is an afflux of blood, combined with aggressive
movements.[64] On the other hand, it harmonises with a great number
of manifestations observed in mental disease; thus, at the third
stage of general paralysis, a puncture causes a painless reflex
action, because the grey substance, being disorganised, no longer
has any inhibitive power. In the evolution of melancholia, the
patients sometimes at first suffer from purely physical pains
(neuralgia, headache, etc.), which disappear to make way for the
melancholic state, which, in its turn, disappears with the return of
the physical pain. Everyday experience shows that physical and moral
pain cannot coexist in any degree of intensity; a burn may for a
time arrest the progress of melancholy, and we all know what happens
to many persons as soon as they arrive at the dentist’s. It seems as
though the organism had but a limited capacity for either pleasure
or pain, and that neither feeling can exist at the same time in its
double (physical and moral) form.
-----
Footnote 64:
_British Medical Journal_, August 14, 1886, pp. 319 _et seq._ We
shall see, later on, that the mechanism of anger is not so simple
as Clouston seems to admit.
-----
II.
Much has been written on the finality of pleasure and pain, though
two entirely distinct methods of procedure have been adopted.
The first, that of theologians and moralists, is an extrinsic
explanation; pleasure is an attraction, the charm of life; pain is a
vigilant monitor warning us of our disorganisation. They exist in us
by the beneficent grace of Providence or Nature; they have a
transcendental cause.
The second, which has only found complete expression in the
evolutionist school, is an intrinsic explanation. It keeps to the
analysis of facts, and shows that pleasure and pain have their _why_
in the animal’s conditions of existence, and that consequently their
causality is immanent. Thus understood, the problem of _why_ is
pretty nearly identical with that of _how_, mechanism and finality
being very nearly confounded.
Herbert Spencer (followed by Grant Allen, Schneider, and others) has
clearly shown that the connection between pleasure and utility, pain
and injury, is an almost necessary relation, having its root in the
nature of things, and that it has been an important factor in the
survival of the fittest. Every animal as a rule persists in actions
which cause it pleasure—that is, in a mode of activity which tends
to its preservation; while it usually avoids what causes it pain,
that being the correlative of injurious actions. The animal has thus
two useful guides in the course of its life, to enable it to survive
and perpetuate its species.
If this rule were without exception,—if pleasure universally
accompanied utility, and _vice versâ_,—it would be sufficient to
state the law of the conditions of existence and nothing more. But
the exceptions to the rule are numerous, and require critical study.
Some can be explained, others seem to me irreducible to any law.
1. Herbert Spencer relieves us of a large number of exceptions,
which are, in fact, only the result of civilisation. Prehistoric
man, according to this author, was well adapted to his environment
and to a predatory life; but when, under pressure of want, the
transition to a sedentary and civilised existence took place, the
human being found itself ill-adapted to its surroundings. The
conditions of social existence have been superposed on those of
natural existence, constituting a new _milieu_, and requiring other
forms of activity. In consequence of this, frequent discordances
have arisen which he has enumerated at great length: the survival of
predatory tendencies difficult to satisfy, the necessity of
repugnant and monotonous labour, excess of labour compensated for by
excess of pleasure, as so frequently happens in great cities,
etc.[65] All these interversions are the work of man, the result of
his irrational struggle against nature, of his will, of his
artificial activities. “In the case of mankind, there has arisen,
and must long continue, a deep and involved derangement of the
natural connections between pleasures and beneficial actions, and
between pains and detrimental actions—a derangement which so
obscures their natural connections that even the reverse connections
are supposed to obtain.” Spencer thinks that a readjustment will
take place in the long run; I leave this consolation—without sharing
it—to the optimists.
-----
Footnote 65:
_Principles of Psychology_, vol. i., §§ 125, 126.
-----
2. Besides these exceptions, due to the intercurrence of social
causes, there are others of an individual character, which also can
be explained. Certain poisons are agreeable to the taste, and cause
death; a surgical operation is painful, but beneficial; many persons
intensely enjoy a _far niente_ which leads them to ruin; it is
pleasant to live in the world of pure fancy, but the reaction leaves
one enervated and unable to fulfil one’s daily task. Many other
cases of this kind may be met with in ordinary life. All these
exceptions to the rule are only apparent ones. Consciousness reveals
only the _momentary_ phenomenon, and, within these limits, its
verdict is accurate; it expresses the processes actually going on in
the organism at the moment, as we have seen in the euphoria of the
dying; it cannot tell us what will follow. The explanation reduces
itself to Grant Allen’s saying, “Neither pleasure nor pain is
prophetic.”[66]
-----
Footnote 66:
See Lehmann, _op. cit._, § 201; Höffding, _Psychologie in
Umrissen_ (2nd ed.), p. 380.
-----
3. There are other facts which the partisans of final causes
prudently pass over in silence, and which certain evolutionists have
attempted to explain.
Spencer remarks (_loc. cit._, § 127) that, “while the individual is
young and not yet fertile, its welfare and the welfare of the race
go together; but when the reproductive age is reached, the welfare
of the individual and of the race cease to be the same, and may be
diametrically opposed.... Very frequently, among invertebrate
animals, the death of the parents is a normal result of propagation.
In the great class Insects, the species of which outnumber all other
animal species, the rule is that the male lives only until a new
generation has been begotten, and that the female dies as soon as
the eggs are deposited.” There is, therefore, says the English
author, a qualification to be made.
Schneider, in his interesting work _Freud und Leid_, inspired by the
transformist hypothesis and the ideas of Spencer, gets rid of the
difficulty by connecting pleasure and pain with the conditions of
existence, not of the _individual_, but of the _species_: pleasure
corresponding to specific utility and pain to specific injury. This
statement of the problem is ingenious, but arbitrary. Pleasure and
pain are essentially subjective, individual states. They can only
assume a specific character by means of generalisation—_i.e._, as a
conception of our minds, which has no reality or value, except so
far as abstracted from particular cases.
Restricting our attention to man, and not occupying ourselves with
the antagonism between the individual and the race, we shall find
that there are cases very difficult to bring under the law. A grain
of sand in the eye, an attack of dental neuralgia cause a degree of
pain enormously out of proportion with the amount of organic injury
sustained. On the other hand, the dissolution of certain organs
essential to life is frequently almost painless. The brain may be
cut and cauterised almost without suffering; a cavity may be formed
in the lung, a cancer in the liver, without the slightest warning of
danger. Pain, that “vigilant sentinel” of the advocates of final
causes, remains dumb, or only warns us when the evil is already of
long standing and irremediable. Nay, more, it often misleads us as
to the actual seat of the disease. Examples of false localisation
abound; an irritation in the nose is due to intestinal worms, a
headache to a morbid condition of the stomach, a pain in the right
shoulder to liver complaint. Many other instances of this kind have
been studied by physicians under the names of painful synæsthesia,
or synalgia.
Schneider is, I believe, the only one who has attempted to explain
these deviations from the generally admitted formula,[67] by
reducing the problem to the two following questions:—First, whether
the development of an acute sensibility of the internal
organs—_i.e._, a relation of causality between their lesions and the
feeling of pain—is, in general, possible; secondly, whether, such
development having taken place, this faculty of feeling, as pain,
any lesion of the internal organs could be a means of protection, as
it is found to be in the case of the skin. The internal organs are
only in contact with an interior surface, which is tolerably
uniform; if an opposite state of things arises, _i.e._, if they are
laid bare by some profound lesion, death ordinarily ensues, at least
in animals and in primitive man. Only the slow progress of surgery
has made it possible to remedy such accidents. If, through
spontaneous variation, a case of sensibility of the internal organs
had ever occurred, it would be useless; it could neither become
permanent nor be transmitted to descendants, since the lesion,
resulting in death, would render the further evolution of this
quality impossible. Besides, had this sensitive faculty of the
internal organs existed, it must have remained useless, since it
could only become efficacious when combined with protective and
retractile movements of the organs, which, by the very constitution
of the animal, cannot take place. In fact, the whole of the
sensibility has been concentrated in the exterior parts of the body,
which, by protecting themselves, also protect, in the degree to
which this is possible, the internal organs.
-----
Footnote 67:
_Freud und Leid des Menschengeschlechts_ (1883), pp. 35 _et seq._
-----
I have insisted on the exceptions (certainly they are not without a
cause, whether we accept that alleged by Schneider, or prefer those
of other authorities), because they are only too readily forgotten.
The connection of pleasure and utility, pain and injury, is a
formula which originated with the philosophers—that is, with
intellects which always, and before all things, demand unity.
Psychology must proceed otherwise, must incessantly confront the
formula with facts, check it by experience, note the exceptions; it
is content with empirical laws, embracing the generality, but never
the totality of cases.
CHAPTER VII.
THE NATURE OF EMOTION.
_Analogy between perception and emotion—Constituent elements of
emotion—Summary of the theory of James and Lange—Application of
this theory to the higher emotions (religious, moral, æsthetic,
intellectual)—Illegitimate confusion between the quality and
intensity of emotion—Examination of a typical case: musical
emotion—The most emotional of all the arts is the most dependent
on physiological conditions—Proofs: its action on animals, on
primitive man, on civilised man; its therapeutic action—Why
certain sensations, images, and ideas awaken organic and motor
states, and, consequently, emotion—They are connected either
with natural or social conditions of existence—Differences and
resemblances between the two cases—Antecedents of the
physiological theory of emotion—Dualist position, or that of the
relation between cause and effect—Unitary position; its
advantages._
I.
In entering on the subject indicated by the title of this chapter,
we pass from the general manifestations of feeling (pleasures and
pains) to its special manifestations; we descend from the surface to
the deeper strata, in order to arrive at the fundamental and
irreducible fact at the root of all emotion: attraction or
repulsion, desire or aversion, in short, motion, or arrest of
motion.
Already, in the Introduction, we have marked the place of emotion in
the development of the life of the feelings, and, later on, in the
second part of this book, we shall examine separately each of the
primitive emotions, with its special determining characters. For the
moment, we have only to do with the general characters common to all
emotions.
This term, in the language of contemporary psychology, has replaced
the words “passions,” “affections of the soul” (_passiones_,
_affectus animi_), in use during the seventeenth century. Besides
being consecrated by use, it has the advantage of emphasising the
motor element included in every emotion (_motus_, _Gemütsbewegung_).
Maudsley says that this word is an induction, summing up the
experience of the human race, and the term “commotion,” formerly
used to designate the same phenomena, expresses the fact still more
clearly.
At first sight, and without entering into any analysis, every
emotion, even of slight intensity, appears to us as affecting the
entire individual, and expressing, in its complete form, what Bain
has called the law of diffusion. Its external symptoms are movements
of the face, the trunk, and the limbs; its internal, numerous
organic modifications caused and dominated by the circulation—the
organic function _par excellence_. The experiments of Lombard,
Broca, Bert, Gley, Mosso, Tanzi, etc., have shown that any and every
form of mental activity is connected with an increase in the
circulation; but the latter is always above the average when an
emotion is manifested. Emotional activity of a given kind, says
Lombard, produces an increase of temperature in all parts of the
body; it is, in general, more rapid and stronger than that which
comes from intellectual activity. Mosso, who, by some well-known
experiments, has been enabled to study even the slightest
modifications of the circulation, concludes that “the action of the
emotions on the cerebral circulation is much more evident than that
of intellectual work, whatever its energy.” Emotion not only
presents these vague and different characteristics, but every
separate emotion is a complexus. Let us take the simplest and
commonest—fear, anger, tenderness, sexual love; each one of them is
a complete state in itself, a psycho-physiological fascicule
constituted by a grouping of simple elements, differing with each
emotion, but always comprising a particular state of consciousness,
particular modifications of the functions of organic life, movements
or tendencies to movement, arrest or tendencies to the arrest of
particular movements. Every primary emotion is an innate complexus
expressing directly the constitution of the individual; the emotions
are _organised_ manifestations of the life of the feelings; they are
the reactions of the individual on everything which touches the
course of his life, or his amelioration, his being, or his better
being. In a certain manner, the primary emotions are analogous to
the perceptions, which require a psycho-physiological organism
adapted to a special function in relation to the external world;
with this difference, that sight, hearing, smell, etc., have their
own special and inalienable organs, while fear, anger, etc., have a
diffused organism, the elements of which, combined in another
manner, become the organism of another emotion.
It follows that the study of the emotions, from the point of view of
pure psychology, can come to no definite conclusion. Internal
observation, however subtle, can only describe the internal fact and
note its gradations; regarding the conditions and the genesis of
emotion, it can give no answer; it can only seize a bodiless
emotion, an abstraction. There is no manifestation of psychic life,
not excepting the perceptions, which depends more immediately on
biological conditions. The great merit of James and Lange is that
both of them, simultaneously and independently, have demonstrated
the capital importance of physiological factors in emotion.
It is not my intention to explain at length the thesis of these two
authors, though it is the most important contribution made to the
psychology of the emotions for some time. It is becoming very well
known, and, in any case, is easily accessible.[68] Reduced to its
essence, it may be summed up in two principal propositions:—
1. Emotion is only the consciousness of all the organic phenomena
(external and internal) which accompany it, and are usually
considered as its effects; in other words, that which common sense
treats as the effect of emotion is its cause.
2. One emotion differs from another according to the quantity and
quality of these organic states and their various combinations,
being only the subjective expression of these different modes of
grouping.
Footnote 68:
Lange’s book _On the Emotions_ first appeared in Danish, and has
been translated into German (1887) by Dr. Kurella, and into French
(1895) by Dr. G. Dumas. W. James first explained his theory in an
article in _Mind_ (1884), and subsequently in his _Principles of
Psychology_ (1890), vol. ii. chap. xxv.
In order to treat a subject scientifically, says Lange, we must fix
our attention on objective marks; the study of colours only became
scientific on the day when Newton discovered an objective
character—the difference of refrangibility in coloured rays. Let us
do the same with the emotions, for we shall find it possible. Each
one of them shows itself by gestures, attitudes, organic phenomena,
which are often, though very erroneously, considered secondary,
accessory, consecutive. Let us study them, and so substitute for
introspection an objective process of research. As it is best to
begin with simple things, the author has confined himself “to some
of the most definite and best characterised emotions: joy, fear,
sorrow, anger, timidity, expectation,” and abstained from
considering “those in which the physical facts were not very marked,
and not easily accessible.”
This is followed by a minute description of the emotions already
enumerated, and their physical symptoms, for which I refer the
reader to the work itself. If we generalise, we shall see that the
phenomena described can be classed in two groups—(1) modifications
of muscular innervation: it diminishes in fear or sorrow, but
increases in joy, anger, impatience; (2) vaso-motor modifications:
constriction in fear and sadness, dilatation in joy and anger. Are
these two groups of equal importance?—are they both primary? or is
one subordinated to the other? As far as the actual state of our
knowledge permits us to answer the question, says Lange, the
vascular changes must be assumed as primary, since the slightest
circulatory variations profoundly modify the functions of the brain
and spinal marrow.
What is the significance of all this as regards the emotions?
According to the current psychology, an emotional state subjected to
analysis yields the following result:—(1) an intellectual state,
perception, or idea, as a starting-point (_e.g._, a piece of bad
news, a terrifying apparition, an injury received); (2) a state of
feeling—the emotion: sorrow, anger, fear; (3) the organic states and
movements resulting from this emotion. But the second point—the
emotion conceived as such—is only an abstract entity, a mere
hypothesis. Now, to be admissible, a hypothesis ought to explain all
the facts and be necessary to their explanation. This is not the
case here. We find, both in normal and in pathological life,
emotions which are derived from no ideas, but, on the contrary,
engender them: wine gives rise to joy, alcohol to courage;
ipecacuanha causes a depression akin to fear, haschisch produces
exaltation, and shower-baths calm it. Asylums are full of patients
whose irritability, melancholy, and anguish are “causeless”—_i.e._,
result from no perception or image. Here, we seize the true cause at
its source; it lies in the physical influences. Let us therefore get
rid of the useless hypothesis of a psychic entity called emotion,
supposed to be intercalated between the perception or idea, and the
physiological occurrences. Reversing the order admitted by common
sense, we say: First an intellectual state, then organic and motor
disturbances, and then the consciousness of these disturbances,
which is the psychic state we call emotion.
W. James, in another way, and with other arguments, maintains the
same thesis: “The bodily changes follow directly the _perception_ of
the exciting fact, and our feeling of the same changes as they occur
_is_ the emotion.” Reversing what is usually accepted as common
sense, we must say that it is because we weep that we are sad,
because we strike that we feel anger, because we tremble that we are
afraid. In fear, suppress the palpitation of the heart, the hurrying
breath, the trembling of the limbs, the widening of the muscles, the
peculiar state of the viscera; in anger, the heaving of the chest,
the congestion of the face, the dilatation of the nostrils, the
clenching of the teeth, the _staccato_ voice, the impulsive
tendencies; in sorrow, get rid of tears, sighs, sobs, suffocation,
anguish—what will remain?—a purely intellectual state, pale,
colourless, cold. A disembodied emotion is a non-existent one.
This, no doubt, is a hypothesis without decisive proof. The
_crucial_ experiment could only be furnished by a man affected by
total anæsthesia, external and internal, but without paralysis.
Could such an one still experience any emotion? The case is
absolutely unrealisable; James has only been able to find three
individuals at all approaching it—one of whom (Strümpell’s case) is
well known: the subjects are apathetic, but the emotional life is
not entirely absent; Strümpell had on several occasions noted
surprise, fear, and anger.[69]
-----
Footnote 69:
Since the publication of James’s book, Dr. Berkeley has reported,
in _Brain_ (iv. 1892), two cases of general anæsthesia, cutaneous
and sensory: the subjects are apathetic, but the presence of
shame, sorrow, surprise, fear, and repulsion (the last-named as a
substitute for anger) has been observed. Dr. Sollier, in an
article in the _Revue Philosophique_ (March, 1894), has reported
some experiments made on subjects in a profoundly hypnotic state,
in whom the peripheral and visceral sensibility had been abolished
by suggestion. He comes to the same conclusions as James and
Lange.
-----
We shall have to give up all hope of a positive and decisive
experiment. The thesis in itself has so paradoxical a character that
many objections may be raised against it.
1. Are there any real proofs that certain perceptions produce, by
immediate physical influence, corporeal effects preceding the
appearance of emotion? Assuredly. The reading of a poem—the recital
of heroic deeds—music—may instantaneously cause a shudder of the
whole body, cardiac palpitations, tears. If you scrape one piece of
steel against another the whole nervous system is exasperated. Is it
not well known that the mere sight of blood will cause syncope in
certain persons? Finally, James alleges the pathological cases
mentioned above by Lange, where “emotion is without object”—_i.e._,
evidently dependent on a purely physical cause.
2. If the theory is true, we ought to be able to awaken the emotion
itself, by voluntarily producing the manifestations of a special
emotion. In the majority of cases, this criterion is inapplicable,
for the majority of the organic phenomena manifesting emotion cannot
be produced at will; the experiment therefore remains a partial one.
However, so far as it is possible, it rather corroborates than
invalidates the hypothesis. If you remain seated for a long time in
a melancholy attitude, you will be overcome by sadness. If you are
sad assume a cheerful attitude, join a merry company, and you will
gradually leave your sadness behind. It is objected that many
actors, while playing their parts, present the perfect appearance of
an emotion which they do not feel. James gives the results of a
remarkable census taken in America on this point; the answers do not
all agree, some saying that they act with the brain, others with the
heart; some feel the emotions of the character, others do not. I
think that James might have mentioned what takes place with certain
hypnotised subjects; if their limbs are placed in the attitude of
prayer, anger, menace, or affection (which amounts to a suggestion
conveyed by the muscular sense), the corresponding emotion is
produced.
3. The manifestation of an emotion, instead of increasing, causes it
to disappear; thus, a violent burst of tears relieves sorrow. This
objection does not discriminate between the feelings _during_ the
manifestation and those _after_ it. Emotion is always experienced
while the manifestation persists; but, when the nervous centres are
exhausted, calm naturally follows. Is it not said of certain men
that they would feel more if they were less “demonstrative”? This is
because the exuberance of their mode of expression rapidly exhausts
them, and does not permit the emotion to be a lasting one, while a
bilious temperament, which does not spend itself, remains like a
quiescent volcano.
I have only quoted from James and Lange what was strictly necessary
in order to understand their theory. I declare my acceptance of it
in the main, but without admitting the dualist position which they
seem to have adopted. I shall explain myself on this point in
subsequent parts of this chapter; for the moment, we have to show
that the physiological theory applies to the whole region of the
emotions.
II.
We have seen, in fact, that Lange expressly confines himself to some
simple emotions, and refuses to venture further. W. James
concentrates his efforts on the “coarse emotions,” the others (“the
subtler emotions”) he only refers to in passing, limiting himself to
some remarks on æsthetic emotion. However, I think it necessary to
treat this subject otherwise than by merely passing it by. Indeed,
the very numerous advocates of the opposite view have maintained
that the physiological theory, while it may be accepted, for want of
a better, for the inferior forms of emotion, becomes insufficient as
we rise to the higher, and that every attempt to apply it to the
superior forms would result in failure.
We must first come to a clear understanding of the value of the
terms inferior and superior, coarse and subtle; they can only denote
degrees in evolution. The inferior or coarse emotions have also been
called “animal,” because common to man and the greater number of
animals. The superior or subtle emotions are properly “human,”
though their germs are to be found in the higher animals.
The first are connected with sensations and perceptions, or with
their immediate representations; they are in close and direct
relation with the preservation of the individual or the species. The
second are connected with images of a less and less concrete
character, or with concepts; they are related in a more vague and
indirect manner to the conditions of existence of the individual or
the species.
We may also say that “inferior” is synonymous with “primary,
simple”; “superior” with “derivative, complex.” How is the
transition from inferior to superior forms produced? For the moment,
it is of no importance to know—it is sufficient to observe that it
has taken place.[70]
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Footnote 70:
_Vide infra_, part ii. chap. vii.
-----
Thus, just as, in the intellectual order, there is an ascending
scale, leading from the concrete, successively, to the lower,
medium, and higher forms of abstraction, so in the affective order
there is a scale ascending from fear or anger to the most ideal
emotions. And in the same way as the highest conception retains the
characteristics of the concrete whence it sprang, on pain of being
merely an empty word, so the most ethereal sentiments cannot
entirely lose the characters which constitute them emotions, on pain
of disappearing as such.
I shall not insist on these theoretic remarks; the direct
observation of facts is preferable, and gives a clearer answer.
The superior and truly human forms of emotion are reducible to four
principal groups: the religious, moral, æsthetic, and intellectual
sentiments. Although the somatic characters accompanying each of
these will be noted with the greatest care in the second part of
this work, it will be necessary, even at present, to enumerate the
principal in advance. We must more especially be on our guard
against the common error which insists in seeking emotion where
nothing remains of it save a mere survival and shadow. If, _e.g._,
we take the most intellectualised forms of the religious or the
æsthetic sentiment, we shall have much trouble in recovering the
physiological conditions of its existence. There is nothing
surprising in this, all we have in this case being an abstract or
extract of emotion, a simple mark, an emotional scheme, an affective
substitute equivalent to those intellectual substitutes which take
the place of the concrete. What we must study is true emotion, felt
and expressed, not inadequately recalled to memory, a pale remnant
of what once was an emotion.
1. The religious sentiment is attached—perhaps more than any
other—to physiological conditions, because closely connected with
the instinct of self-preservation, with the saving of the soul,
under whatever form the believer may conceive it. The _intensity_ of
the emotion alone is what concerns us; its quality is a matter for
critical appreciation. We take the observable fact in the rough,
whether legitimate or not. Now, does not the believer, whatever his
degree of culture, whatever his religion, at the moment when he
feels the emotion, tremble, turn pale, exhibit the _sacer horror_,
the overwhelming awe which may end in unconsciousness, the prostrate
attitude? Have not the mystics over and over again described the
violent disturbances which agitate them, the internal tempest which
ravages them, till, calm being re-established, they express
themselves in language frequently recalling that of sexual love? The
designation “hysterical,” bestowed, rightly or wrongly, on many of
them, is based on the physical symptoms described by themselves. And
have not the methods employed to excite, revive, or strengthen
religious emotion, from the wine of the ancient Bacchanals to the
noisy concerts of the Salvation Army, a direct physiological
influence on the organs? What of the action of the rites which are
only the fixed expression of a particular form of belief? and the
miracles which happen in all religions to those who have “the faith
which saves”—do they not take place in the organism? We might fill
many pages with the mere enumeration of the material conditions
surrounding, sustaining, evoking the religious sentiment, as we find
it _in fact_ in contemporary life, or in history. Nothing is more
chimerical than to conceive religious emotion as an unmixed act, a
psychological entity existing in and by itself, independently of its
physiological concomitants. Suppress all these, and what remains?—a
pure idea, cold and colourless. It is very evident that the
physiological factors which show themselves so vividly in intense
emotion, are attenuated by the effect of temperament, of repetition,
and of custom; but in the same measure also, emotion is enfeebled
and attenuated; a lofty religious _conception_ and a profound
religious _emotion_ are two exceedingly different psychical
phenomena. We shall come back to this point later on.
2. Moral emotion, also, must not be confounded with the moral idea.
The abstract notion of justice, duty, categoric imperative, acts on
some, and is without influence on others. Moral emotion, not
factitious and conventional, but really felt and experienced, is a
shock and an impulse that carries one away; it always shows itself
by internal and external movements; it acts like an instinct.
Sympathy, which places us in unison with others, making us feel
their happiness and misery, is (as we shall see later) a property of
animal life which imperatively requires physiological conditions,
and cannot exist without them; now the part played by sympathy in
the genesis of the moral emotions is quite clear. Is not the man who
runs to arrest a thief or a murderer, being merely a witness, and
not himself robbed or assaulted, subjected to a disturbance which is
really physiological? In explosions of maternal love, in acts of
sudden self-devotion, is there not a _raptus_ which shakes the whole
individual from head to foot? If these facts, among so many others,
are not sufficient, let us consider what takes place in masses of
people under strong excitement, in certain cases of the psychology
of crowds. “If into the term morality we import the momentary
appearance of certain qualities, such as abnegation, devotion,
disinterestedness, self-sacrifice, the sense of justice, we may say
that crowds are sometimes accessible to a very lofty morality ... a
much loftier one, indeed, than that of which the isolated individual
is capable. Only collectively is humanity capable of great acts of
disinterestedness and devotion.”[71] But in this state of enormously
magnified moral emotion, is it conceivable that the physiological
factors are negligible? Are they not the natural and necessary
vehicles of moral contagion?
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Footnote 71:
G. Le Bon, _Psychologie des foules_, pp. 46 _et seq._
-----
3. I shall be very brief in treating of intellectual emotion, since
it is rare, and usually temperate in character; however, when it
springs up with the true characteristics of intense emotion, it does
not deviate from the rule. Most human beings are not passionately
eager for the search after or the discovery of pure truth, any more
than they are afflicted by privation of it; but those possessed by
this demon are given up to him, body and soul. Their emotion is no
more independent of physiological conditions than any other. The
biographies of learned men furnish us with innumerable examples: the
perpetual physical sufferings of Pascal, Malebranche nearly
suffocated by the palpitations of his heart when reading Descartes,
Humphrey Davy dancing in his laboratory after having made the
discovery of potassium, Hamilton suddenly feeling something “like
the closing of a galvanic circuit” at the moment of discovering the
method of quaternions, etc. There is no need to extend our search so
far; everyday life provides us moment by moment with examples which,
though prosaic, are none the less valuable as proofs. The instinct
of curiosity is at the root of all intellectual emotion, whether
lofty or commonplace. Does not the man who perpetually watches his
neighbour’s conduct and the thousand petty details of his life, feel
when his puerile curiosity is baffled, all the physical anguish of
unsatisfied desire?
4. If we are to believe certain over-subtle critics, æsthetic
emotion would have the privilege of moving in the region of pure
contemplation. This assertion is founded on the error pointed out
above, which consists in taking into account only the _quality_ of
the emotion, not its intensity. They put a critical emotion,
purified, sublimated, stripped as far as possible of its somatic
resonance, in the place of the true, primitive emotion, whence all
the others have issued, and which they, like the rest of men, have
begun by experiencing; for even the most refined cannot begin at the
end. It is an abstract mode of feeling substituted for the concrete.
W. James makes, on this point, some excellent remarks, to which we
refer the reader (_op. cit._, pp. 428 _et seq._). Complete æsthetic
emotion, without regard to its quality, does not always require
advanced culture. The savage who, along with his companions, excites
himself over his dance and song, becomes intoxicated with sound and
motion; the naïve spectator quite carried away by the interest of a
crude melodrama; the Spanish peasant, contemplating his church
crammed with _rococo_ ornaments and strangely-dressed saints: all
these experience the concrete emotion which shakes the frame, makes
the heart beat, produces tears, laughter, or gestures.
Besides, it is enough to recall the researches inaugurated by
Fechner in his _Vorschule der Æsthetik_, and since continued,
especially in Germany, under the name of elementary æsthetics,[72]
which so greatly emphasise the part played by the sensory element
in the genesis of æsthetic pleasure and pain. We may thus briefly
summarise them: There are two constituent factors in the æsthetic
sentiment—one direct, connected with sensations and perceptions;
the other indirect, connected with representations (images and
associations of ideas). One or the other predominates, according
to the particular art: the direct factor in music and the plastic
arts, the indirect in poetry. The direct factor, by its very
definition, depends on the organism. The colours are not simple
sensations, they have an affective tone proper to themselves.
According to Wundt, white suggests gaiety; green, a quiet joy;
while red corresponds to energy, strength, etc. We may or may not
admit these correspondences; Scripture gives others, and they
probably vary from one individual to another; but the principle is
unassailable. Féré’s previously quoted experiments, on exciting
and depressing colours, tend in the same direction. It is the same
with sounds:—according as they are high, deep, or medium, they
induce a special mood. If from simple sensation we pass to
perceptions, direct physical action is not doubtful; we find it in
the arrangement of colours, in the phenomena of contrasts, in the
outlines and forms of certain lines, in the innate pleasure of
symmetry and regularity, in rhythm, measure, cadence, in the
perception of harmony and dissonance, etc. In truth, the authors
cited, have insisted rather on the sensory action than on the
organic and motor modifications accompanying it. But it always
remains indisputable that the æsthetic sentiment is necessarily
connected with physiological conditions.
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Footnote 72:
Wundt, _Physiologische Psychologie_, 4th (German) ed., chap. xx.;
Külpe, _Grundriss der Psychologie_, p. 250 (English edition), §
38; Sully, _Sensation and Intuition_, Part II.; Grant Allen,
_Mind_, July 1879 (“The Origin of the Sense of Symmetry”).
-----
Since we are maintaining the proposition that the intensity of even
the superior emotions is in direct ratio to the quantity of the
physiological occurrences accompanying them, I propose in the
following paragraphs to examine a single one separately, and in some
detail.
Which is the most emotional of all arts? Music. There is no possible
doubt as to the answer—eliminating, of course, those persons on whom
it has no effect, and who must be rejected for the purposes of this
argument. No art has a deeper power of penetration, no other can
render shades of feeling so delicate as to escape every other medium
of expression. So much is unanimously admitted.
Is the most emotional art also—as required by our thesis—the most
dependent on physiological conditions? Yes, and if we wish to
demonstrate this, facts are so numerous that the only difficulty is
to choose between them. Let us leave aside every intellectual
element, all representations, either vague or distinct, evoked by
music; let us, further, avoid all metaphysical dissertations on its
nature and its revelation of the Infinite, or its origin in the
human species, in order to confine ourselves to its physical and
affective aspect, and to grasp the connection.
In the first place, we shall find that music has an effect on many
animals. Although on this point many nursery tales and marvellous
anecdotes have been handed down from antiquity, yet—having made
deduction of all apocryphal stories—we find a large number of
observations and experiments which must be considered accurate. They
are to be found in the writings of various musicians or historians
of music (Grétry, Fétis, etc.). Dogs, cats, horses, lizards,
serpents, spiders, not to mention many birds, are the examples most
frequently quoted. Experiments made at the Jardin des Plantes,
Paris, particularly on the elephants, at the beginning of this
century, have been many times referred to, and are both varied and
conclusive.[73] Are we to conclude from them that these animals are
melomaniacs? Some authors appear to have no doubt on this point,
having a natural inclination to neglect the physical side of the
phenomenon, and to interpret it in a quasi-human sense. It is much
more probable that the sensations of sound and movement (animals
being very sensitive to rhythm) act directly on the organism, and
indirectly on the vital functions, and produce a physical state of
pleasure or pain; perhaps in the highest, such as the elephant, a
certain affective state approximating to emotion. In short, music
acts like a burn, like heat, cold, or a caressing contact. I have on
this point consulted writers of recognised competence in musical
psychology. M. Dauriac writes to me: “Relative consonances and
dissonances, composed of major or minor thirds, produce pleasurable
or painful effects on the organism, independently of any impression
or æsthetic judgment.” M. Stumpf has been kind enough to reply by a
long letter, amply furnished with quotations from original
authorities, whence he concludes that “der Grund hiervon dürfte ein
rein physiologischer sein.”
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Footnote 73:
They will be found in Beauquier, _Philosophie de la musique_, p.
65.
-----
Let us turn to primitive man. The question becomes less simple; but
the physical element still preponderates. Music consists only of
rhythm, marked by clumsy and noisy instruments, whose principal
effect is to increase the vibration of the nervous system. The
aborigines of America are able, during four consecutive hours, to
intoxicate themselves with rhythmic sounds having no melodic
significance. Among certain tribes, diviners and sorcerers employ
the drum in order to produce in themselves a sort of ecstasy;[74] it
is a true intoxication through sound, and especially through
motion—_i.e._, an affective state excited directly by external and
internal sensations. We have here before us the genesis of emotion.
-----
Footnote 74:
For details on this point, Wallaschek’s interesting work on
_Primitive Music_ should be consulted.
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