degrees, from the peasant or artisan, who, like the savage, prefers
tunes with a well-marked rhythm, to the most cultivated amateur. But
for all states the primary effect is a physical one. “Musical
vibration is only one particular mode of perceiving that universal
vibration—that music of life which animates all beings and all
bodies, from the lowest to the highest. From this point of view,
musical art may be called the art of sensibility _par excellence_,
since it regulates the great phenomenon of vibration, into which all
external perceptions resolve themselves, and transfers it from the
region of the unconscious, in which it was hidden, to that of
consciousness.”[75] Music acts on the muscular system, on the
circulation, the respiration, and the parts dependent on them.
Intense sounds (the big drum, kettledrum, etc.) give the whole body
a shock, over-acute sounds cause muscular contractions. I know a
musician who is thrown into convulsions by too marked a discord. Let
us add to these the well-known effects of horripilation, of thrills
passing down the back or over the scalp, of sudden sweats, of
tickling, of epigastric constriction. Grétry had already noted that
the pulse is sensitive to rhythm; and he has recorded several
observations made on himself, showing that the pulsations are
accelerated or retarded according to the rhythm of a chant heard
internally. It would be an interminable task to enumerate the purely
physical effects of the musical impression. The conclusion to be
drawn is, that while certain arts at once awaken ideas which give a
determination to the feelings, this of music acts inversely. It
creates dispositions depending on the organic state and on nervous
activity, which we translate by the vague terms—joy, sadness,
tenderness, serenity, tranquillity, uneasiness. On this canvas the
intellect embroiders its designs at pleasure, varying according to
individual peculiarities.
-----
Footnote 75:
Beauquier, _op. cit._, p. 56.
-----
We might go further, and pass from the general to the particular. If
music, by its effect on the organism, creates dispositions,
momentary affective situations, the differences in voice,
instrument, _timbre_, must produce different and special
dispositions, which is indisputable. The tonality of a piece must
act in the same way, which is also admitted by many composers. It is
true that they are not agreed on the definition and the significance
of every tone, and that many amusing discrepancies might be selected
from their writings. (So the key of E flat minor, which, for
Gevaert, is powerful and majestic, indicates, according to Grétry,
an imminent catastrophe.) Here, more than elsewhere, over-precise
definition is injurious.
Let me add a remark on the therapeutic action of music. We have
abundant evidence that this was known in the most ancient times.
From the Greek physicians to Leuret, who employed it in his moral
treatment of insanity, a long series of cures have been attributed
to it. A well-known Russian physiologist, Tarchanoff, has recently
lauded and recommended its rational employment in disorders of the
nervous system; but it does not act through occult, mysterious,
spiritual influences; it acts physically, as a kind of vibratory
medicine. The researches of Boudet de Paris, Mortimer Granville,
Buccola, Morselli, Vigouroux, furnish proofs of this.
Although we might say much more on this subject, the above will be
sufficient to show that the most emotional of the arts is also that
most intimately dependent on the modifications of the organism. This
has seemed to me an argument not to be neglected in favour of the
physiological theory of emotion.[76]
-----
Footnote 76:
Gurney, in a criticism of James’s hypothesis (_Mind_, ix. 425),
says: “There is plenty of music from which I have received as much
emotion in silent representation” [_i.e._, by purely internal
audition, or merely reading the notes] “as when presented by the
finest orchestra; but it is with the latter condition that I
almost exclusively associate the cutaneous tingling and
hair-stirring.” Professor James has, in my opinion, answered this
objection (_Psychology_, ii. pp. 469, 470), which I should be
inclined to refer to the problem of the “revivability of
impressions,” to be examined later on.
-----
III.
We have just shown that the so-called higher forms of emotion do not
escape from the necessity of physiological conditions; but there is
yet another question, still in obscurity and suspense, which, by
reason of its importance, ought to be elucidated. It is this: Why
have certain internal or external states, certain images, certain
ideas, the privilege of exciting certain organic and motor states,
and, in consequence, emotion? How is this connection, this _nexus_,
established? for experience teaches us that it is not necessary: in
the same individual the same perception or idea may awaken an
emotion, whereas in another case it may produce nothing. In other
words, there are perceptions, images, and concepts which remain
purely intellectual states without affective accompaniment, at least
with none accessible to consciousness. There are others which are
immediately enveloped and, as it were, submerged in the emotion
which they produce. Let us note that the question comes before us,
whatever opinion we may adopt as to the genesis of emotion. As
usually accepted, the order is this: intellectual state, affective
state, organic states. According to the physiological hypothesis,
the order is as follows: intellectual state, organic states,
affective state. Passing from one thesis to the other, the problem
is subject to but one variation: Why is a certain intellectual state
sometimes coupled with an intellectual state, and sometimes not?
This is on the first hypothesis. Why is a certain intellectual state
sometimes accompanied by organic and motor modifications, sometimes
not? This is on the second hypothesis.
The answer is the same in both cases: the intellectual state is
accompanied by an affective state whenever there is a direct
relation with the conditions of existence, natural or social, of the
individual. In order to justify this proposition we must examine in
succession these two forms of the conditions of existence.
1st Period.—_Sensations or images connected with the natural
conditions of existence._
We have here to do with a question of genesis; we must therefore
begin with the humblest phenomena. The primordial sense, the only
one in certain animals, is touch combined with internal sensations.
Let us remark that, in its origin, the “knowledge” which we take in
its lowest degree has only a _practical_ value; sensation is a
monitor, an aid, an instrument, a weapon with only one aim—the
preservation of the individual,—and completely subordinated to that
end; otherwise, it is nothing but a useless manifestation, a luxury.
The _nexus_ between the sensations and the organic and motor
reactions is therefore innate—_i.e._, it results from the very
constitution of the animal. If it fails, the conditions of existence
are at fault. The primordial tissue, says Spencer, must be
differently affected, according as it is in contact with nutritive
matter (ordinarily soluble) or with innutritive matter (ordinarily
insoluble). The contraction by which the tactual surface of a
rhizopod absorbs a fragment of assimilable matter is caused by a
commencing absorption of this matter, _i.e._, contact and absorption
are the same thing. The action of certain agents is followed by a
retractile movement, or, on the contrary, by movements of a
character to assure the continuance of the impression. These two
kinds of movement are, in this writer’s view, respectively the
phenomena and the signs of pleasure and pain. The tissue, therefore,
acts in such a manner as to assure pleasure and avoid pain, by a law
as physical and natural as that by which a magnet turns towards the
pole, or a tree to the light. Without inquiring whether pleasure and
pain exist in this case—a purely hypothetical assumption—there are,
at least, objective phenomena denoting a _nexus_ of utility between
the sensation and the expansive or retractile movements.
Passing from these inferior organisms to those provided with several
senses, we find no change. Each order of sensation acts in the same
way. The animal is better informed, and consequently better
protected and armed—that is all. Finally, when certain images
(_i.e._, recollections of pleasures and pains experienced) excite an
emotional state, the mechanism remains the same, and tends towards
the same end. It is therefore not without reason that we have above
assimilated every form of primary emotion to a psycho-physiological
organism adapted to a particular end.
It is needless to review the primary emotions and to show that the
sensation, the perception, or the image only produces organic or
motor troubles when the preservation of the individual or the
species is at stake. The intellectual state (sensation,
perception, or image) can instinctively—_i.e._, through an innate
mechanism—produce immobility, oppression, withdrawing into one’s
self, flight (fear); or, on the contrary, aggressive movements,
attack (anger), or movements of attraction, accompanied by
phenomena peculiar to each species (sexual love).
To sum up, every event of this kind, reduced to its simplest
expression, consists in (1) an intellectual fact, analogous to a
spring moving the whole machine, (2) an unconscious, half-conscious,
or conscious reaction of the instinct of self-preservation; this
being by no means an entity, as we have already said, but the
organism itself under its dynamic aspect.
2nd Period.—_Perceptions, images, or ideas connected with social
conditions of existence._
Up to the present, we have only considered emotional reaction in its
relations with nature—_i.e._, with the physical environment. Its
domain is much more extensive; in man, and in many animals, it is
adapted to the social environment. At bottom, the mechanism remains
the same. A perception, an image, or an idea excites an emotion,
because related, directly or indirectly (in the latter case the
relation is conceived, inductively or deductively), to the social
conditions of the individual. The natural _ego_ has its needs and
tendencies; the same is true of the social _ego_, grafted on the
other, or rather, one with it; consequently, the mechanism comes
very frequently into play; the circumference is extended, but the
centre remains the same.
Let us note the differences between the two periods. In the latter
we have (1) a preponderance of representations and concepts—_i.e._,
the superior forms of knowledge; (2) instead of a natural, innate
association between certain perceptions and certain emotional
reactions—associations which may be called anatomical, because fixed
in the individual organism—there are secondary, acquired
associations, less solidly fixed, sometimes entirely artificial,
which result from experience, from education, from habit, from
imitation. I give some examples, by way of elucidation, and in order
to avoid repetition.
The feeling of property is derived from a natural condition of
existence—nutrition. It is first manifested—in the form of a
prevision—in some animals who store up a reserve of food for the
future. In primitive man this instinct extends to clothes, weapons,
the cave or hut which he inhabits; later on, with the nomadic life,
to herds and flocks; then to agricultural products, silver, gold,
paper money; finally to that impalpable thing called credit, which
has merely an imaginary existence. Thus it gradually takes on a
social character. The knowledge of any loss or any gain, actual or
possible, produces an emotion in the individual, because it shows
him that his adaptation to social conditions is diminished or
augmented.
The sentiment of “self-feeling” is innate, primary. Let us imagine
ourselves in a society where the questions of rank, precedence,
etiquette, are of capital importance—in an aristocratic monarchy
like that of Louis XIV.—and we shall see what a ferment of emotions
may be raised by an occurrence which, to our eyes, seems futile and
irrelevant. If we read Saint-Simon’s _Mémoires_, we see him boiling
over with indignation when a courtier is unduly accorded the
privileges of a duke and peer, and his wife is granted a stool in
the Queen’s presence. He spends his time in incessant visits, forms
coalitions, does all in his power to move the ministers or the
Parliament, and finally exults in his victory. However factitious
and puerile this agitation may seem, it results from the same
physiological mechanism as the simplest emotions: from the instinct
of personal preservation—not of his natural _ego_, but of his _ego
qua_ courtier of the Grand Monarque. If he fails, he is injured,
depreciated, lessened in his conditions of social existence.
The case already cited, of Malebranche, to whom Descartes’ _Traité
de l’homme_ “caused such violent palpitations of the heart that he
was obliged continually to leave his book in order to breathe,”
called forth Fontenelle’s remark that “Truth, which is invisible and
of no practical utility, is not wont to find so much sensibility
among men.” No doubt; but to the true man of science the pursuit of
truth is one of the necessary conditions of existence. For others it
is a mere luxury, to the loss of which they are quite indifferent.
I think we have thus replied to the question previously put—why
certain sensations, images, ideas, have the privilege of producing
organic and motor changes which, translated into the language of
consciousness, constitute the emotional state—and justified our
answer. The sensation, the image, the idea, are only occasional
causes, incapable by themselves of producing any emotion: it
springs from the inmost personality of the individual—from his
_organisation_—expresses it directly, and participates in its
stability and its instability.
IV.
The hypothesis of James and Lange—considered, at first, as a
paradox—has suggested so many remarks, criticisms, objections,
answers, and arguments for and against, that I find it impossible to
give a summary of them.[77] Yet it is not without precedent. Lange,
in his _Addenda_, mentions as his precursors, Malebranche, Spinoza,
and some other less celebrated authors. The legitimate claims of
Descartes, in his treatise _Sur les Passions de l’Âme_, have also
since been vindicated.[78] The physiologists, too, ought not to be
forgotten: Maudsley indicated the same view, without insisting on
it.[79] The superiority of James and Lange consists in having put it
clearly and endeavoured to support it by experimental proofs. I have
already said that it seems to me the most probable explanation for
those who do not represent the emotions to themselves as
psychological entities. The only point in which I differ from these
authors relates to their way of putting the proposition, not to its
substance.
-----
Footnote 77:
I may indicate, somewhat at random, the principal documents for
this controversy: Wundt, _Philosophische Studien_, vi. 3, p. 349
(he criticises Lange only); Gurney, _Mind_, July 1884; Marshall,
_ib._, October 1884; Stanley, _ib._, January 1886; Worcester,
_Monist_, January 1893; _Psychological Review_, September and
November 1894, January 1895, etc.
Footnote 78:
“Though written in the earliest days of modern science, this work
will bear comparison with anything that has been produced in
recent years. It will be difficult, indeed, to find any treatment
of the emotions much superior to it in originality, thoroughness,
and suggestiveness. The position maintained is similar to that now
held by Professor James, but Descartes does not content himself
with defending in a general way the assertion that emotion is
caused by physical change. After coming to the conclusion that
there are six passions from which all the others are derived, he
attempts to show that a special set of organic effects is
concerned in the production of each of these primary states.”—D.
Irons in _Philosophical Review_, May 1895, p. 291.
Footnote 79:
“When any great passion causes all the physical and moral
troubles which it will cause, what I conceive to happen is that
a physical impression made on the sense of sight or of hearing
is propagated along a physical path to the brain, and arouses a
physical commotion in its molecules; that from this centre of
commotion the liberated energy is propagated by physical paths
to other parts of the brain; and that it is finally discharged
outwardly through proper physical paths, either in movements or
in modifications of secretion and nutrition. The passion that is
felt is the subjective side of the cerebral commotion—its
_motion_ out from the physical basis, as it were (_e-motion_),
into consciousness.”—_Pathology of Mind_, 1879, p. 222.
-----
It is evident that our two authors, whether consciously or not,
share the dualist point of view with the common opinion which they
are combating; the only difference being in the interversion of
cause and effect. Emotion is a cause of which the physical
manifestations are the effect, says one party; the physical
manifestations are the cause of which emotion is the effect, says
the other. In my view, there would be a great advantage in
eliminating from the question every notion of cause and effect,
every relation of causality, and in substituting for the dualistic
position a unitary or monistic one. The Aristotelian formula of
matter and form seems to me to meet the case better, if we
understand by “matter” the corporeal facts, and by “form” the
corresponding psychical state: the two terms, by-the-bye, only
existing in connection with each other and being inseparable except
as abstract conceptions. It was traditional in ancient psychology to
study the relations of “the soul and the body”—the new psychology
does not speak of them. In fact, if the question takes a
metaphysical form, it is no longer psychology; if it takes an
experimental form, there is no reason to treat it separately,
because it is treated in connection with everything. No state of
consciousness can be dissociated from its physical conditions: they
constitute a natural whole, which must be studied as such. Every
kind of emotion ought to be considered in this way: all that is
objectively expressed by movements of the face and body, by
vaso-motor, respiratory, and secretory disturbances, is expressed
subjectively by correlative states of consciousness, classed by
external observation according to their qualities. It is a single
occurrence expressed in two languages. We have previously
assimilated the emotions to psycho-physiological organisms; this
unitary point of view, being more conformable to the nature of
things and to the present tendencies of psychology, seems to me, in
practice, to eliminate many objections and difficulties.
Whether we adopt this theory or not, we have in any case acquired
the certainty that the organic and motor manifestations are not
accessories, that the study of them is part of the study of emotion.
We shall therefore have to speak of them in some detail.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE INTERNAL CONDITIONS OF EMOTION.
_Confused state of this question—Popular versus Medical
Psychology—Part played by the brain, the centre of psychic
life—Hypotheses on the “seat” of the emotions—Part played by the
heart, the centre of vegetative life—Popular metaphors and their
physiological interpretation—Are the internal sensations
reducible to a single process?—Part played by chemical action in
the genesis of emotion—Cases of the introduction of toxic
substances—Auto-intoxication—Modifications in the course of
mental maladies._
As the physiological substratum of emotion, or its material (the
reader may use which expression he prefers), comprises the organic
or internal functions, and the motor functions showing themselves
outwardly, we shall follow this division. Although it may seem
artificial, it is not altogether so; the internal manifestations
are, for the most part, outside the action of the will; the external
manifestations are, in many cases, subject to that action. In any
case, this somewhat arbitrary distinction is desirable for the sake
of clearness in exposition.
I.
The relation of different emotions to the internal functions is a
subject yet in its infancy. Our knowledge of it is still in a vague
and confused state. It is at the same point where the problem of the
expression of the emotions was before Charles Bell and Darwin;
_i.e._, we have before us a purely empiric set of observed facts
without suggested explanation. No doubt it is well known that
vaso-motor and respiratory disturbances vary according to the
emotions, but the reasons for the differences between one case and
another are often unknown and even unexplored. Although Lange has
done much in this direction, we cannot congratulate ourselves on
having a complete presentation of all the organic and functional
manifestations which accompany the simple emotions, not to speak of
the complex forms. Still less do we know, clearly and positively,
why these and not other manifestations are produced. Thus Hack Tuke
asserts it to be a matter of common observation that while the blush
of shame begins in the cheeks and the ears, that of anger begins
with the eyes, and that of love with the forehead. Supposing this
fact to be firmly established, we should still have to find out why,
in each case, that particular vascular region should be affected by
preference. In short, the study of the external conditions of
emotion remains at the present time fragmentary and descriptive.
The part played by the viscera in the emotions and passions is so
evident that in all ages it has arrested the attention of mankind.
On this point, for a period of several centuries, we find, on the
one hand, a popular psychology,—which in all languages has become
fixed in the form of metaphors,—full of errors and prejudices, but
also of very sound observations; on the other hand, scientific
attempts at explanation, varying with the physiology of the period,
and expressed in terms of the current medical doctrine. During this
long period we can distinguish two principal directions of thought:
one tending to localise the passions exclusively in the viscera,
especially the heart, the other to place them in the brain. Without
distorting facts, we might find in these two tendencies the
incomplete and unconscious form of the two reigning theories in
affective psychology, the organic and the intellectualist.
It would be of no interest to retrace this long history, to remind
the reader that Plato placed courage in the breast and the sensual
appetites in the abdomen, that the School of Salerno attributed
anger to the gall, joy to the spleen, love to the liver. The organic
or visceral theory long had an overwhelming preponderance, and
Bichat, at the beginning of the century (1800), did not hesitate to
write, “The brain is not affected by the passions which have for
their _exclusive_ seat the organs of internal life—the liver, lungs,
heart, spleen, etc.” From the seventeenth century downwards, the
cerebral theory becomes more accentuated; with Gall and Charles Bell
the heart is quite dispossessed, and, by way of reaction, the part
played by the viscera was almost forgotten.
At the present day no one maintains that the heart or any other
organ is the seat of an emotion in the sense of feeling it; the
consciousness of the affective life only exists through the brain,
in which the internal sensations coming from the viscera are
represented as external sensations; it is an echo. The brain, says
Hunter, knows perfectly well that the body has a liver and a
stomach, or, as Carus expressed it, each organ has its _psychische
Signatur_. The ideal would be to determine, by means of a complete
and well-conducted elementary analysis, the part contributed by each
internal organ and function to the constitution of a particular
emotion. Nothing of this sort can be attempted: there exist, on this
point, only scattered materials and conjectures supported chiefly by
the phenomena of morbid states. We shall return to this later on.
(See Part II.) Let us at this moment confine our attention to the
two predominant organs—the brain, the centre of psychic life; the
heart, the centre of vegetative life.
1. The brain is not merely the echo of internal sensations; it
receives and reacts according to its disposition; it centralises,
but while taking its own part in the concert; it puts its mark on
the impressions it receives. Already (Chap. I., § 1) we have seen
the theories propounded as to the “seat” or “centre” of pain or
pleasure: bulb, protuberance, temporal lobe, occipital lobe, etc.
Naturally, each author has extended his hypothesis to the emotions
properly so called. However, the search for “emotional centres”
appears still more chimerical. A particular emotion has no
determinate centre, is not localised in a restricted area of the
encephalon. Not only does neither observation nor experience
indicate anything of the sort, but if we consider the complexity of
any emotion whatever, we shall understand that it requires the
activity of several cerebral and infra-cerebral centres: (1) the
sensory centres of sight, hearing, smell, etc.; (2) the centres
scattered through the motor zone and regulating the movements of
different parts of the body; (3) and lastly, the centres
corresponding to the phenomena of organic life. These constitute
several stages: in the spinal cord, the respiratory centre, that
which accelerates the movements of the heart, the genito-spinal, the
vesico-spinal (it is well known that the bladder is as good an
æsthesiometer as the iris), etc.; in the bulb, the respiratory and
vaso-motor centres, and those of cardiac and thermic inhibition. As
regards the cortical layer, there are many open questions as to the
position of the vascular, thermic, trophic, glandular centres, of
the organic movements which determine the contraction of the
intestines, the bladder, the spleen, etc. This very incomplete and
confused enumeration is sufficient for our purpose—viz., to show
that we must speak, not of a centre, but of the synergic action of
several centres, differently grouped according to the cases.[80]
Footnote 80:
In his lectures on Hysteria (Vol. i., Lecture 21), Pitres
incidentally inquires into the existence of encephalic centres of
the affective states, and concludes that “the molecular changes
corresponding to the activity of the cellular elements shaken by
the passions, radiate in every direction, stimulate or depress the
excitability of adjacent elements, rebound on the motor and
sensitive centres, and on the originatory nuclei of the visceral
nerves, and finally determine the state of emotion, _i.e._, the
psycho-physiological state which is the special expression of the
reaction of the nervous centres to psychic excitations.”
It is well known that the vaso-motor nerves of the head, the upper
limbs, the lower limbs, the viscera, are furnished in part by the
nerve-reticulations of the sympathetic system, in part by the
rachidian nerves issuing from different parts of the spinal cord.
Now, an experiment of Claude Bernard’s, made as far back as 1852,
shows that the section of the great sympathetic in the neck produces
on the same side an expansion of the vessels, and an increase in the
temperature, nutrition, muscular tonicity, and sensibility. On the
contrary, galvanism applied to the same nerve produces constriction
of the vessels and the contrary phenomena to the preceding. Féré
points out that the manifestations of the first case are, in
general, those of the sthenic emotions, as those of the second are
of the asthenic emotions.[81]
Footnote 81:
_Op. cit._, pp. 490, 491.
Whatever we may think of this comparison, the incontestable and so
often recorded characteristic of emotion—diffusion—shows us that it
is everywhere; that, if we could see with our eyes the cerebral
mechanism supporting it, we should be spectators of the co-ordinated
work of the multiple centres; that, consequently, the hypothesis of
a localisation, of a seat in the limited sense, is in no way
justified.
2. It is needless to remind the reader that the majority of idioms
make the heart the incarnation of affective life, and that the
antithesis of reason and passion is, in current speech, that of the
brain and the heart. This opinion is not entirely a prejudice, as
contemporary physiologists have shown.
Why is the heart, an unconscious muscle, promoted to the position of
an essential and central organ of the emotions and the passions? It
is so in accordance with the well-known physiological law which
makes us transfer our psychic states to the peripheral organ which
communicates them to our consciousness. It feels the rebound of all
the impulses which strike us; it reflects the most fugitive
impressions; in the order of the sentiments, no manifestation takes
place outside it, nothing escapes it; it vibrates incessantly,
though in different manners.
Claude Bernard, and after him, Cyon, have undertaken to justify the
popular expressions regarding the heart, to show that they are not
mere metaphors, but the result of accurate observation, and that
they can be translated into physiological language. I here summarise
their principal remarks.
The heart, the centre of organic life, and the brain, the centre of
animal life, the two culminating organs of the living machine, are
in an incessant relation of action and reaction which shows itself
in two principal states,—syncope and emotion; the first due to the
momentary cessation of the cerebral functions through intermission
in the arrival of the arterial blood; the second due to the
transmission to the heart of a circulatory modification. There is
always an initial impression which slightly arrests this organ
(according to Claude Bernard), whence a passing paleness, then a
reaction which the heart, by reason of its extreme sensibility, is
the first to feel; for, as the brain is the most delicate of the
organs of the animal life, the heart is the most sensitive of the
vegetative vital organs.
When it is said that the heart is _broken_ by grief, this expression
corresponds to actual phenomena. The heart has been arrested by a
sudden impression, whence, sometimes, syncope and nervous attacks.
The heart’s being “big,” answers to a prolongation of the diastole,
which causes a feeling of fulness and oppression in the præcordial
region. The “palpitation” of the heart is not merely a poetic
formula, but a physiological reality; the beats being rapid and
without intensity. The facility with which the heart is emptied, the
regularity of the circulation being kept up by slight pressure,
corresponds to the “light” heart. Two hearts beat “in unison,” under
the influence of the same impressions. In the “cold heart” the beats
are slow and quiet, as if under the influence of cold; in the “warm”
heart, the contrary is the case. When we tell a person that we love
him “with all our heart,” this expression signifies, physiologically
speaking, that his presence, or the recollection of him, awakens in
us a nervous impression, which, transmitted to the heart by the
pneumogastric nerve, causes in our heart a reaction of such a kind
as to produce in the brain a sentiment or an emotion. In man, the
brain, in order to express its feelings, is obliged to take the
heart into its service.[82]
Footnote 82:
For further details see Claude Bernard, _La science expérimentale,
Étude sur la physiologie du cœur_, 1865, and Cyon’s Address to the
Academy of St. Petersburg, “The Heart and the Brain,” translated
in the _Revue Scientifique_, November 22nd, 1873. Also, Mosso,
_Sulla circolazione del sangue nel cervello_ (1880), and _La
Paura_ (Fear, English translation, 1896).
Let us further recall the well-known observations of Mosso, who was
able directly to study the circulation of the blood in the brain in
three patients, in whom the cranium had been destroyed by various
accidents. He ascertained that the mere fact of looking attentively
at one of his patients, the entrance of a stranger, or any other
occurrence of slight importance, immediately quickened the cerebral
pulse. In one, a woman, the height of the pulsations suddenly
increased, without apparent cause; she had just perceived in the
room a death’s-head, which somewhat frightened her. The same thing
took place with another patient when he heard the clock strike
twelve; this was because he did not feel able to say his noon
prayers. I do not dwell on his researches by means of the
plethysmograph, which have special relation to intellectual work.
It will therefore be understood how popular opinion has come to look
upon the heart as the seat, or the generator, of emotions. This is
the instinctive expression of a quite correct view: the supreme
importance to the affective life of the visceral action summed up in
a fundamental organ.
II.
Since, for the moment, we are eliminating movements in order to
confine our attention to the _internal_ conditions of emotion, it is
easy to see that these conditions reduce themselves to that which we
designate by the name of internal, organic, vital sensations. This
is not the place to enumerate the modifications of each in the case
of each special emotion (for which the reader is referred to Part
II.); the question, taken for the present in its generality, is put
thus: Are the internal sensations reducible to a single and
fundamental process? If the answer is in the affirmative, the
internal conditions of emotion would find themselves simultaneously
determined under their most general form. We can, at any rate, try.
The first difficulty consists in our not having a complete
enumeration, on which all authors are agreed, of the internal
sensations, as we have in the case of the special sensations.
Beaunis gives a very detailed classification in eight groups; Kröner
adopts a somewhat different one; both include pleasure, pain, and
the emotions. Let us eliminate this last group (the affective
manifestations) and confine ourselves to the vital sensations
properly so called, connected with purely physiological needs, with
the organs and functions indispensable to life: the different
sensations of the alimentary canal (hunger, thirst, _malaise_,
nausea, etc.); those of the respiratory apparatus (the need of fresh
air, dyspnœa, asphyxia), of the circulatory apparatus, of the
excretions and secretions; of the sexual organs in the normal state
or in transitory phases (puberty, menstruation, pregnancy,
menopause); the need of muscular movement, of rest, of sleep; the
sensation of fatigue;—we have nearly all, if not all, the elements
of cœnæsthesia, _i.e._, the consciousness of the body as living and
acting.
Have these multiplied sensations a common cause? Are they different
modes of one and the same process? Do they imply, at their origin,
the same stimulus, the same kind of excitement, as all the varieties
of visual sensations suppose luminous vibrations, and the varieties
of auditive sensations, sonorous vibrations? Kröner maintains that,
for all internal sensations, the initial excitation is of a
_chemical_ nature. “Every organic sensation is based on a chemical
process, and arises according to the laws of diffusion and
osmosis.”[83] The author justifies his assertion by the enumeration
of a large number of facts, for which I refer the reader to his
book. Chemical action, according to him, either takes place under
the gaseous form (a person passes from the open air into a room full
of deleterious miasma) or under the liquid (alcohol, toxic
substances in solution in the fluids of the organism and introduced
into the circulatory current).
-----
Footnote 83:
Kröner, _Das körperliche Gefühl_ (Breslau, 1887), pp. 102-112.
-----
It is not very certain, _pace_ Kröner, that _all_ internal
sensations are caused by chemical action, under one or other of the
forms we have mentioned, and that their vague localisation is due to
this cause alone, and not, as generally admitted, by their arising
in organs incapable of movement. Thus tickling, giddiness, the
muscular sensations (which Kröner and Beaunis include in this group)
appear to depend on mechanical excitations rather than on chemical
causes. At any rate, one cannot deny that the internal fundamental
sensations—connected with nutrition and its immediate conditions,
with fatigue and sleep, both of which result from a poisoning of the
muscles and the nervous centres, with sexual life—are due to
chemically caused excitations. This granted, we may go one step
further in the track of James and Lange, and say that the emotions
depend not only on physiological conditions, but still more
intimately on the chemical action going on in the tissues and fluids
of the organism.
In support of this extreme condition of the genesis of the emotions,
we can only offer some fragmentary remarks, which, however, show how
closely they depend on the variations of the intra-organic
environment.
1. We have, in the first place, the group of exciting, tonic,
depressing, toxic substances: wine and the various alcoholic
beverages, haschisch, opium, coca, the aphrodisiacs, etc. Although
they are artificial products, introduced from without, not
engendered in and by the organism, we know how far they modify the
interior environment, and consequently the temper, character,
intensity, and direction of the passions.
2. But there are also the substances which the living body compounds
or modifies for itself. It has been said that the organism is the
receptacle and laboratory of poisons; in the state of emotion, the
only one with which we are concerned at present, the function of
this chemical process is manifested at every instant. We are always
speaking of the weakening or the increase of the circulation of the
blood; yet the emotional dispositions or modifications are
connected, not only with variations of quantity, but also with those
of _quality_ in the blood (anæmia, aglobulia, malarial poisoning,
etc.). The popular expression regarding the emotions which “curdle
the blood” is not so ridiculous as it might seem. Anger, fear,
fatigue are often accompanied by changes in the intimate
constitution of the sanguinary fluid. We may incidentally note the
ascertained relations between certain cardiac affections and
affective dispositions: in aortic affections, anæmia, excitement,
irritability; in cases of mitral insufficiency, congestion, and a
taciturn and melancholy humour. We shall elsewhere have occasion to
enumerate the facts which show the correlation of certain emotions
with toxic changes in the saliva and the lacteal secretion.
Perspiration may, in certain affective states, be coloured red,
yellow, green, or blue, not to mention the varieties of odour, which
are assuredly of chemical origin. Even apart from mental disease,
the urinary secretion could furnish a long list of chemical changes
(azoturia, oxaluria, phosphaturia) coinciding with variations of the
affective order, such as apprehension, melancholy, irritability. In
gouty and rheumatic patients, the modifications of temper, depending
much more on general nutrition than on active suffering, have often
been pointed out. We know the relations between the secretion of the
gastric juice and pleasurable or painful states; dyspeptics have a
well-established reputation for being neither cheerful nor
comfortable to live with. Beaumont ascertained, in the case of his
famous Canadian, that under the influence of anger or other very
strong emotions, the lining of the stomach was irritated, became
red, dry, and very sensitive, and an attack of indigestion was the
result. The rutting time (that of sexual excitement) is, in many
animals, accompanied by deep-seated chemical changes, showing
themselves externally by modifications of colour and odour, and,
internally, not limited to the sexual organs, but extending to the
whole of the body. It is known that the flesh of game is uneatable
during this period, and that many fish, at spawning-time, become
poisonous. It should not be forgotten that, during the same period,
the animal becomes vicious, violent, aggressive, and dangerous. It
would be easy to develop this point further, even as regards man
(puberty, gestation, lactation, menstruation).
3. It has long been observed that, in the great majority of cases,
mental disease begins by affective disturbances and that the
intellectual aberrations only make their appearance later. Much more
recently, a doctrine has been propounded which tends to
seek the primary cause of these affective disturbances in a
self-intoxication—_i.e._, in “the disorders produced in the interior
of the organism by the excessive formation or the morbid retention
of normal poisons; in particular, by those originating in the
digestive canal and the urine.” Nutritive troubles through
acceleration, retardation, or perversion, are assigned as the most
general cause. In support of this, we are referred to the relations
between melancholia, hypochondria, a pessimistic disposition, with
hyperchlorhydria of the stomach, and the good results of purgative
medicines; the numerous mental modifications coinciding with organic
chemical modifications—_e.g._, certain attacks of mania in arthritic
subjects. “One characteristic of the mental state of diabetic
patients is the way in which the fluctuations of the mental state
correspond with those of the sugar, and the barometric (if one may
so call it) influence of the composition of the urine on the moral
disposition.” This liquid, in mania, loses, to a great extent, its
toxic character, in consequence of the morbid retention of normal
poisons which are no longer eliminated.[84]
-----
Footnote 84:
Bouchard, _Leçons sur les auto-intoxications_; _Leçons sur les
maladies par ralentissement de nutrition_. Régis, _Traité des
maladies mentales_, pp. 112, 415, 423, etc. Féré, _Pathologie des
émotions_, pp. 264, 495 _et seq._
-----
A long enumeration of facts bearing on this as yet insufficiently
studied question would be here out of place. Besides, it could only
be of real value if systematic—_i.e._, if under the heading of each
emotion were grouped the physiological facts invariably accompanying
it, and all the chemical modifications exclusively peculiar to it.
We have only included the chemical conditions in our study, in order
to penetrate as far as possible into the most general conditions of
affective life, and show once more why it betrays the inmost
constitution of the individual.
When treating of pleasure and pain, we remarked that they were too
exclusively attributed to intensity of excitation (excessive, it was
said, for pain; moderate, for pleasure), and that its _quality_ was
forgotten. Since we have to do with hypotheses as to the part played
by chemical conditions in affective life, since they are the most
general, and since pleasure and pain also have this character of
generality, it may be permitted to hazard a conjecture. This would
consist in admitting that pleasure arises either when excitement
increases chemical activity in the organism, without producing
toxines, or when this augmentation of activity brings about the
disintegration of the normal poisons; and that pain arises either
when excitement creates an environment appropriate to the formation
of toxines, or when, directly and at once, it promotes their
formation, either generally or locally. But I would not insist on a
simple _obiter dictum_, for which I can offer no proof, thrown out
merely as a suggestion with regard to a question not as yet fully
examined.
We have spoken throughout of the chemical modifications as
coinciding with emotional changes. Are they effects or causes, or
both, according to circumstances? It is clear that this question is
not new to us. It is the antithesis between the psychological and
physiological theories of emotion, presenting itself under another
aspect; there is no occasion for discussing it a second time.
CHAPTER IX.
THE EXTERNAL CONDITIONS OF EMOTION
_Empiric period—Pre-Darwinian period of scientific
research—Examination of Darwin’s three principles—Wundt and his
explanatory formulas: Innervation directly modified, Association
of analogous sensations, Relations of motion with sensory
representations._
The movements of the eyes, mouth, face, the upper and lower limbs
and trunk, and the modifications of the voice constitute the
external expression of emotion which is principally reducible to
muscular action. For the last half-century this subject has been
studied in works so well known that it behoves us to be very brief.
I shall confine myself to indicating the actual state of the
question.
For some thousands of years this question remained in the stage of
pure empiricism, or of so-called scientific speculations which had
scarcely a better reputation than alchemy, astrology, or chiromancy.
J. Müller, in the name of physiology, declared the expression of the
emotions completely inexplicable. However, the researches were
already beginning which were to prove him mistaken—those of Lavater
with his rare talent of personal observation, and those of Charles
Bell by a more objective method. After this, Duchenne, of Boulogne,
went still further, substituting experiment for mere observation. It
is well known that, in the case of an old man suffering from facial
anæsthesia, he caused the contraction of an isolated muscle, by the
aid of electricity, and thus produced certain modes of expression in
the countenance. He concluded from this that the contraction of a
single muscle often suffices to express a passion; and that every
emotion has, so to speak, its accurate, precise, and unique note,
produced by a unique local modification. Thus, the frontal is for
him the muscle of attention, the upper orbicular of the lips the
muscle of reflection, the pyramidal (inter-superciliary) expresses
threats; the great zygomatic, laughter; the lesser zygomatic,
weeping; the triangular muscle of the lips, disdain, etc. In spite
of the somewhat artificial nature of the experiments, and the too
sweeping character of the conclusions, this was a great step in
advance.[85]
Footnote 85:
Lavater (1741-1801), _Essai sur la physionomie destiné à
faire connaître l’homme et à le faire aimer_; Charles Bell
(1806), _Anatomy and Philosophy of Expression_; Duchenne
(1862), _Mécanisme de la physionomie humaine, ou analyse
électro-physiologique de l’expression des passions_. For
ancient works on physiognomy, consult Mantegazza’s book on
_Physiognomy and Expression_ (Contemporary Science Series).
At last appeared Darwin’s epoch-making work. Supported by the
results of a long series of experiments on adults, children,
lunatics, animals, members of the different human races, Darwin was
the first to put, and to attempt to answer, the fundamental and only
question—Why and how is such and such an emotion connected with such
and such a movement and not with another? He stated the problem
under its scientific form.[86]
Footnote 86:
Duchenne has the following curious passage:—"The Creator, not
being obliged to study mechanical requirements, was able,
according to His wisdom or (if I may be pardoned for using this
form of expression) by a Divine fantasy, to put in action this or
that muscle—a single one, or several at once, when it was His will
that the signs of the passions, even the most evanescent, should
be temporarily inscribed on the human countenance. This
physiognomic language once created, it was sufficient, in order to
render it universal and immutable, to give to every human being
the instinctive faculty of always expressing his feelings by the
contraction of the same muscles." Thus, for this writer, the
question remains within the region of first causes. He has
ascertained a relation of coexistence between a determinate
emotion and certain movements of the muscles, but without seeking
the reason and the natural explanation of this _nexus_. We know
that certain philosophers hold the theory of the Divine
institution of language; this is its equivalent, being a theory of
a divinely instituted gesture-language.
In Darwin’s works we find two elements: a detailed and complete
description of each individual emotion or affective state—by which
we shall profit later on—and the exposition of the general laws of
expression, as reduced to three well-known principles. What remains
of these three principles after the criticism to which they have
been subjected? This is the only point we have, for the moment, to
examine.
1. The principle of the association of serviceable habits remains
the most firmly established. It consists in admitting that movements
which are of service in satisfying a desire, or getting rid of a
disagreeable sensation, become habitual, and continue to take place,
even when their utility becomes _nil_, or at any rate doubtful. In
other words, there are attitudes, gestures, movements, which can be
directly explained, because they are nothing but emotions
actualised, objectivised, or embodied, such as the movements of
contact in tenderness, of aggression in anger, of erection and
swelling in pride. But there are others, of which the explanation is
less direct and obvious. How are the contraction of the eyebrows in
perplexity, tears in sorrow, the showing of the teeth in anger, to
be explained as serviceable to us? According to Darwin, these acts,
formerly serviceable, have continued to exist as survivals. Here
Darwin’s successors have rightly reproached him with not being
enough of a psychologist, and have found a better explanation: the
important fact is not the survival of serviceable movements, but the
transference of a primitive mode of expression to an analogous
emotion.
2. The principle of antithesis has been definitively abandoned; it
is purely hypothetical, and explains nothing. According to Darwin,
there is a primitive and general tendency to associate with feelings
the contrary gestures to those expressing the opposite feeling. Léon
Dumont has subjected this assertion to a very close and cogent
criticism. Taking, one by one, the facts quoted by Darwin, which,
besides, are not very numerous, he has shown that they may be quite
otherwise explained.[87]
Footnote 87:
L. Dumont, _Théorie scientifique de la sensibilité_, chap. vi. p.
236. Fouillée, _Psychologie des idées-forces_, i. 467, admits
Darwin’s principle, but interprets it in another way.
3. The principle of the direct action of the nervous system cannot
be placed in line with the other two, because it far surpasses them
in generality, and, in relation to it, they are subordinate and not
co-ordinate. Before Darwin, Spencer (_Principles of Psychology_, ii.
§§ 495, 502) had stated an analogous principle, to which he reduced
the expression of the emotions. He calls it the Law of Nervous
Discharge. It may show itself in two forms—the diffused and the
restricted. The former depends on the quantity or intensity of the
emotion, and serves as its measure. It follows, in its propagation,
an invariable course: it affects the muscles in an inverse ratio to
their mass and to the weight of the parts they have to move. In man,
it acts first on the delicate muscles of the voice and the small
facial muscles; then it invades, in succession, the arms, the legs,
the trunk. The movements of the tail in dogs and cats, of the ear in
horses, and many analogous ones in other animals, are illustrations
of this law. The restricted discharge depends on the quality or the
nature of the emotion; it is due “to the relations established in
the course of evolution between particular feelings and particular
sets of muscles habitually brought into play for the satisfaction of
them.”[88] This scarcely seems to me to differ from Darwin’s
principle of “useful habits.”
Footnote 88:
_Principles of Psychology_, vol. ii. p. 545.
The _Expression of the Emotions_ gave rise to other publications of
the same kind, those of Piderit, Mantegazza, and Warner, who, in his
_Physical Expression_ (1885), has attempted a purely objective, and
consequently extra-psychological study of the subject. But among all
the attempts to trace back expression to its fundamental principles,
and find a substitute for Darwin’s (already greatly shaken) theory,
that of Wundt seems to me the best.[89] Like his predecessor, he
admits three principles (though different from Darwin’s) which can
act simultaneously and concur in the production of an isolated
movement.
Footnote 89:
_Physiologische Psychologie_, vol. ii. chap. xxii. He has also
treated the question in a special collection of articles entitled
_Essays_.
1. The principle of direct modification of innervation—that is to
say, that the intensity of the muscular and vasomotor movements
depends on the intensity of the emotions; the movements which most
escape the control of the will more especially depend on this
principle. This is the equivalent to Darwin’s third principle,
placed first, which is, in fact, its right position.
2. The principle of the association of analogous sensations consists
in those dispositions of the mind which are analogous to certain
sensory impressions, manifesting themselves in the same manner. At
the outset, we have only pleasures, pains, and needs of the physical
order, whose mode of expression is innate, and, so to speak,
anatomical. Later on come the pleasures, pains, and desires of the
moral order, which make use of the pre-existent modes of expression
in order to show themselves outwardly. It is a language turned aside
from its primary signification, which in the order of gestures is
the equivalent of a metaphor. This principle explains much more
easily than Darwin’s a number of apparently very perplexing modes of
expression. If a man, when puzzled, scratches his head, coughs, rubs
his eyes, it is because a slight _malaise_ of physical origin and a
slight embarrassment of psychical origin have a deep-seated analogy,
betraying themselves by the same expressive movements. Wundt has
well described the mimicry of the mouth in the tasting of sweet,
acid, or bitter substances; as soon as an emotion arises which has
some affinity with these gustatory sensations (sweet joy, bitter
grief, sharp reproaches), the expression of the mouth, the nose, the
face reappears. This is because, in both cases, the state of the
feelings, the emotional tone are the same, the expressive movements
identical. As Mantegazza has rightly said, there are such things as
mimic synonyms.
3. The principle of the relation between movements and sensory
representations lies in the fact that the muscular movements of
expression relate to imaginary objects. Wundt considers as chiefly
amenable to this principle the mimicry of the eyes, the arms, and
the hands. We represent something large by raising the hand, a small
object by lowering it; the future by a forward movement, the past by
a backward one. It might be objected that these gestures indicate
intellectual rather than affective states; but it is certain that
many emotions have a mimicry addressed to absent objects. Gratiolet
(1857) collected a tolerably large number. The indignant man, even
if alone, clenches his fist against an absent adversary. We shut our
eyes, or turn aside our face, to escape the sight of a disagreeable
object; we do the same when disapproving of an opinion. When we
approve, we incline the head forward, as if in contemplation. In
negation, we turn the head to right and left, exactly as is done by
children and animals, when an unattractive object is placed in front
of the mouth. The expression of disdain, contempt, disgust,
reproduces the physiognomy of a man rejecting nauseating food.
I am not quite sure that Wundt’s third principle is of the same
importance as the other two, or that it cannot be reduced to a still
simpler form. But the theory I have just summarised, with a few
examples borrowed elsewhere, presents itself as the one most
calculated to bring out the importance of the physiological factors,
unduly neglected by the pioneers of the science.
All the work relating to this question, whatever may be its _lacunæ_
at present, has demonstrated that the expression of the emotions is
not an adventitious, purely external, extra-physiological fact,
whose study is only incumbent, as science, on the physiologist, and,
as art, on the physiognomist, but emotion itself objectivised, its
inseparable embodiment. In my opinion, we have to distinguish two
strata in the very numerous modes of muscular movement which express
the emotions. One is primary, depending on the anatomical and
physiological constitution; the other, secondary, depending on the
psychological constitution. The relation between them is that which
in every developed language exists between the primary and the
derived sense of words. Analogy is the great artisan of intellectual
language; its action is more restricted as regards emotional
language. But when, to the emotion of the first hour, having already
its fixed mode of expression, there succeeds a new emotion, which
the consciousness, rightly or wrongly, has felt as analogous, the
pre-established expressive mechanism has served a new purpose, like
an old word whose meaning is extended and modified. In both cases
the mind proceeds in the same way, obeying the guidance of one and
the same unconscious law.
CHAPTER X.
CLASSIFICATIONS.
_Their discrepancies—Reduced to three types: (1) Classification
of pleasures and pains—(2) Classification of emotions: two
forms, empiric and analytico-comparative—(3) Classification
of representations, intellectualist form—Critical
remarks—Impossibility of any classification._
The confusion of that department of psychology which deals with the
feelings and the vagueness of its terminology appear in all their
fulness with the problem of classification. Although, for reasons
which will be given at the end of the chapter, a complete and
satisfactory classification seems to me impossible, there has been
no lack of attempts, and it must be admitted that they are not
illegitimate, at any rate as approximative efforts towards a
provisional order.
Within the last fifty years, in spite of the very moderate amount of
zeal with which psychologists have studied the feelings, we find
about twenty treatises signed by well-known names, not to mention
minor variants.[90] They are far from being in agreement, except on
some few points, and when they are compared, in order, if possible,
to reconcile them, the first impression is one of inextricable
confusion and hopeless divergence. If we examine them a little more
carefully, we begin to see light. We see that the differences are
only in the objects classed and the methods followed; in one word,
it is possible to attempt a classification of these classifications;
and when this is done, we find, if I am not mistaken, that they can
all be reduced to three types. (1) Some writers, virtually, classify
only pleasures and pains, tracing back the whole of affective life
to their modalities. (2) Others classify the emotions properly so
called; and here we must distinguish two groups, according as the
method employed is purely empiric, and founded on current
observation, or has recourse to analysis and genetic research, after
the manner of the so-called natural classifications. (3) Lastly,
others classify intellectual states pure and simple, and,
conversely, the affective states which accompany them: this is the
intellectualist method.
Footnote 90:
For a historical summary of these classifications, consult
especially Sully, _The Human Mind_, vol. ii., Appendix F, p. 357,
and Bain, _Emotions_, Appendix B.
In order to justify our distinction, we shall successively examine
these three types. This excursion on an ungrateful soil will not be
altogether without, at least, a negative utility.
I.
As many writers show a common tendency to reduce the whole of the
affective life to pleasures and pains, considered as essential and
fundamental phenomena, it is natural that one category of
classifications should have been based upon these.
“In the science of pleasure and pain,” says Léon Dumont, “we no
longer find ourselves, as in other sciences, in presence of separate
organs and functions; for pleasure, like pain, belongs to all organs
and all functions. Thus, we think that to recapitulate in this
science the classification of the perceptive and intelligent
faculties, and of the will, is to give way to a psychological
tautology, which, though it causes no serious inconvenience, in any
case throws little light on the analysis” (_op. cit._, Pt. II., p.
1). No more could be said than this. Yet, to classify, we require a
directing principle, and where shall we find it? “This basis is
supplied to us by our own definition of pleasure and pain: pleasure
being the augmentation of force in the whole of the conscious
individuality, pain its diminution.” Thence, Dumont deduces the
divisions found in many authors: pain is positive when it results
from an increased expenditure, negative when it depends on absence
of excitement; pleasure is positive when there is increased
excitement, negative when the expenditure is diminished. In other
terms, if we compare the total “force” to a continually renewed
capital, we have, in the one case, either more expenditure or less
receipts, in the other either more receipts or less expenditure.
But Dumont does not stop there; he passes on to details; he insists
on classifying the species under those four generic headings, and
thus we have—Positive pains: effort, fatigue, the ugly, the hideous,
the immoral, the false. Negative pains: weakness, exhaustion,
inanition, physical pain properly so called, _ennui_, perplexity,
doubt, impatience, expectation, sorrow, fear, sadness, pity.
Negative pleasures: rest, cheerfulness. Positive pleasures: those of
the senses, those of activity, such as games, dreaming, amusements,
æsthetic and intellectual pleasures, sublimity, admiration, beauty,
and their varieties.
I have transcribed this classification as Dumont gives it. I shall
raise no objection, either to a division so arbitrary as to include
physical pains among the negative pains, or to the abuse of a vague
word, “force,” which he shows a marked inclination to take in a
transcendental sense. I will only consider one point, the transition
which is _surreptitiously_ made from a classification of pleasures
and pains to a classification of the emotions or something
analogous. The writer does not keep his promise of not classing “the
perceptive and intelligent faculties, and the will;” and it is not
in his power to keep it. In fact, what he has followed is the old
classic division (pleasures and pains of the senses, the heart, the
mind), which may possibly serve for a didactic exposition, but for
no other purpose.
Beaunis has proposed a classification of pleasures and pains which
also has as its basis a single principle: the various modes of
motion. He discriminates three classes of pains: the nervous centres
may be inactive through insufficiency of motion; their activity may
be in excess through exaggerated motion; or their activity may be
suddenly checked by arrest of motion. The same classification is
adopted for pleasures: inaction, activity, arrest. I am inclined to
think this division preferable to the other. He has also attempted a
detailed classification of physical (p. 176) and moral (p. 235)
pains; but he gives none for pleasures.[91]
Footnote 91:
Beaunis, _Sensations internes_, chap. xxi.
For my part, I am inclined to believe that a classification (in the
exact sense of the word) of pleasures and pains is an impossible
task. As these characters are very general, one can only establish
exceedingly general divisions. As soon as we go beyond this, we are,
in reality, classing internal or external sensations, percepts,
images, concepts, modes of action, accompanied by a pleasurable or
painful state, positive or negative, due to activity, overactivity,
or arrest; but the modalities of the pleasurable and painful, which,
besides, are infinite, are not classed in and for themselves. The
varieties of physical pain, the simplest, commonest, and best
studied kind, the easiest to isolate, and the most free from
concomitant representation, have never yet been subject to a fixed
classification, from Hahnemann, who reckoned them as 73 in number,
to Beaunis, who enumerates 83.
In short, the “science of pleasure and pain,” as L. Dumont somewhat
emphatically calls it, belongs to the category of sciences which do
not proceed by way of classification, since they do not as yet
possess the material. We can only lay down extremely general
divisions, and then proceed by _incomplete enumeration_.
II.
The emotions, at least the simplest and best defined, present
themselves as psychic states having their own specific
characteristics. They differ among themselves, not as one mode of
pleasure or pain differs from another mode, but as one thing differs
from another thing; in this way, they appear as _objects_
susceptible to classification. We have already said that two methods
have been adopted.
(1) The first strongly resembles the so-called artificial
classifications, which might also be called concrete or synthetic.
It takes the emotions as realities and places itself before them as
the zoologist and the botanist place themselves before the varieties
of animals and plants. It is empirical—_i.e._, it has no guiding
principle; it classifies according to observation only, following
external resemblances and differences.
Bain may be cited as one of the principal representatives of this
method. I will not insist on a piece of work unworthy of such a
psychologist; yet he has done it twice over, without arriving at an
agreement with himself.
His earlier classification gives as fundamental the emotion of
relativity (surprise, astonishment), terror, tenderness,
self-esteem, anger, the sense of power, of activity, of mental
exercise, æsthetic emotion, moral emotion.
The later includes eleven groups: love, anger, fear, the sentiment
of property, the pleasure of power and its correlative pain of
subjection, pride, vanity, activity (“plot-interest”), knowledge
(the intellectual feeling), æsthetic emotion (beauty), moral
sentiment. Three of these are “simple”—anger, love, and fear; but we
find, a little later on, that love and anger are called “the giants
of the group, the commanding and indispensable members of the
emotional scheme;” so that fear would seem to be eliminated.
The incoherence and inconsistency of this attempt are sufficiently
obvious, and I need not insist on them. (It should be noted that, in
both cases, the religious sentiment is omitted.) I can find only one
valuable remark—viz., that “pleasures and pains are contained in
every one of the classes to be described, just as the natural orders
of plants may each contain food and poison, sweet aromas and
nauseating stinks.”[92] I have only referred to this classification
in order to show how, by its very nature, it is condemned to
failure. Floating at haphazard, without fixed principle, when not
contradictory, it can only be arbitrary.
Footnote 92:
Bain, _The Emotions and the Will_, p. 76.
Herbert Spencer has criticised it in a well-known passage, which I
will briefly recapitulate, since it serves as a transition to the
second form of classification, and throws some light on the
latter.[93] Bain has overlooked the fact that in confining his
attention to the most obvious characteristics of the emotions, he is
following the method of the ancient naturalists, who classed the
cetacea among fishes. Every classification should be preceded by a
rigorous analysis. For this purpose it would be necessary, as a
preliminary, to study the ascending evolution of the emotions
through the animal kingdom, to find out which of them are the first
to appear, coexisting with the lowest forms of organisation and
intelligence, and to note the existing differences, as regards
emotion, between the higher and lower human races. Those common to
all may be considered as simple, and those peculiar to the civilised
races as ulterior and derivative.
-----
Footnote 93:
H. Spencer, _Essays_, vol. i. (Library Ed., 1891), pp. 241-264.
-----
2. Inspired by the above observations, Dr. Mercier has worked out a
classification which I shall give as an example of the analytic and
comparative method. It is in any case the most recent and the most
detailed.[94] Proceeding after the manner of zoologists and
botanists, he divides into classes, sub-classes, genera, and
species, forming seventeen tables. We gather from these that there
are 6 classes and 23 genera, under which may be ranged (after
deducting all repetitions and duplicate entries) 128 manifestations
of feeling, such as are to be found in common experience and
rendered in current language. It is not possible, nor would it serve
any useful purpose, to present this classification here in detail; I
shall only indicate the 6 great classes with some sub-divisions,
which will enable us to understand their nature.
Footnote 94:
_The Nervous System and the Mind_ (1888), pp. 279-364.
The first class includes the feelings primarily affecting the
conservation of the physical or mental organism. It comprises 2
sub-classes (according as the primary excitation is initiated by the
environment, or within the organism itself), 2 orders, and 9 genera.
The second is that of the feelings primarily affecting the
perpetuation of the race, considered as simple wants. Two
sub-classes: primary (sexual emotion and its varieties) and
secondary (paternal, maternal, filial, etc., feelings).
With the third class we leave behind the region of the primitive and
fundamental feelings. It includes those which relate to the common
welfare (community, family, etc.). It comprises 2 orders, each of
which is further divided into several genera—viz., the patriotic and
the ethical emotions.
The fourth class (only vaguely differentiated from the preceding) is
that of the feelings relating to the welfare of others: sympathy,
benevolence, pity, and their opposites.
The fifth class comprises the feelings which are neither
conservative nor destructive, so that here we pass beyond the region
of pure utility, whether individual or social. It is divided into 2
orders and 5 genera—viz., admiration, surprise, the æsthetic
feeling, the religious feeling, and the “feeling of recreation.”
The sixth and last class is that of the feelings which correspond to
abstract relations (in ordinary nomenclature designated as
intellectual feelings)—conviction, belief, doubt, perplexity,
scepticism. It has no sub-divisions.
Even when all details are omitted, the general drift of this work
must be sufficiently apparent to the reader. Although conducted
according to a fixed method, it does not escape the difficulties
inherent in _every_ classification of the emotions. In the first
place, the order of filiation is not always very well marked. The
author himself recognises that an arrangement in series is not
possible, but this difficulty has also presented itself in zoology
and botany. We meet with repetitions, _i.e._, forms of sentiment
figuring several times over in different categories. This, too, is
inevitable. The complex emotions (or some of them, at least) are
formed by anastomoses: they are rivers formed by converging streams
coming from various sources lying in different directions. One may
legitimately refer them to one or other of these origins; but the
attribution will be partial and arbitrary. The religious sentiment,
for instance, is included in the class of intellectual emotions. But
its social character is undeniable (a point we shall return to in
the proper place); let us recall, in passing, the worship of
ancestors and deified heroes, and the strictly national religions of
antiquity, the communities, orders, confraternities, corporations,
the missionary work carried on in modern times, and, above all, the
contagious character of religious emotion in general. It is false,
moreover, to say that this emotion “tends neither to the
preservation nor the destruction of the individual.” It might
therefore be just as well—or just as ill—placed in the third class.
As soon as we pass from simple to complex emotions, it is of more
importance to determine their composition than their filiation. Now,
this procedure belongs rather to chemical than to zoological
classification.
III.
A third type of classification, peculiar to the intellectualists,
consists in classing according to the intellectual states, in so far
as these are accompanied by affective elements. This system sprang
from the psychology of Herbart, is based on it, and is met with in
the works of the principal representatives of his school, Waitz,
Drobisch, and especially Nahlowsky in _Das Gefühlsleben_ (pp. 44 _et
seq._). This method is peculiar to Germany, and its influence is
still perceptible even in Wundt, and more recently in Lehmann’s book
(_op. cit._, pp. 338 _et seq._). In England, Shadworth Hodgson
approaches this type.
Apart from the procedure common to all, these classifications agree
still less in detail than those of the first two types. Taken
broadly, they have an academic aspect; they are frittered away in
divisions, sub-divisions, distinctions, whence there arises more
darkness than light. There is, however, a dichotomy peculiar to them
corresponding to a reality which is not met with in the two
previously-mentioned types, and, on this account, deserves notice.
This kind of classification, in the first place, establishes two
great categories of emotions—those depending on the _contents_ of
the representations, and those depending on the _course_ of the
representations. Let us compare the flux of the states of
consciousness to that of a river, which, according to the nature of
the soil and the state of the sky, runs, sometimes clear, sometimes
muddy, sometimes blue or green, sometimes greyish. Besides these
various aspects, there is yet another kind, depending on the
movement of the water, sometimes slow, sometimes rapid, here
stagnant, there broken by the abrupt windings of the banks. One of
these corresponds to the course, the other to the contents of the
representations on which the affective states are based.
The first class (the contents) comprises the qualitative emotions,
which are generally divided into inferior or sensory, and superior,
which are intellectual, æsthetic, moral, or religious, according as
the ideas exciting their feelings are those of the true, the
beautiful, the good, or the absolute.
The second class (the course of the representations) comprises the
_formal_ emotions—_i.e._, those depending on the different forms of
the course of ideas, on the relations existing between them.
Nahlowsky distinguishes four species—(1) the feeling of expectation
and impatience; (2) that of hope, anxiety, surprise, doubt; (3) of
_ennui_; (4) of refreshment and work.
The only merit of this classification is its showing that there are
affective manifestations depending only on relations—transitions
from one intellectual state to another. This merit, however, depends
on the essential defect of the system, which consists in dealing
with perceptions, representations, and ideas only—not with affective
states taken in themselves, and directly. As this method of
procedure is, definitively, an intellectual classification, it ought
not to omit any form of knowledge, not even those blurred and
evanescent states—the relations—which unite, disjoin, exclude, draw
together, eliminate, subordinate, in short, indicate the _movements_
of thought, and which students have often made the mistake of
forgetting. It remains to be known whether many relations are not
states of an affective rather than an intellectual nature; this is a
point which I shall examine later on.
We may console ourselves for this multiplicity and divergence of
classifications by saying that the naturalists have not been more
successful. It will be granted without difficulty that it is easier
to classify animals than affective states; yet, to take our own
century only, how many systems!—from Lamarck, Cuvier, Oken, to
Blanville, Geoffroy St. Hilaire, Siebold, Ehrenberg, Richard Owen,
Von Baer, Vogt, Agassiz, and finally to Häckel—if we cite only the
principal names!
I have indicated in passing why a true classification of the
emotions—_i.e._, a distribution into orders, genera, species,
according to the dominant and subordinate characters—is impossible.
Every classification, if not purely empirical, expresses a general
theory of affective life, a “system,” and, consequently, a
hypothesis. More than this, it can never congratulate itself on
having exhausted its matter, for every emotion, simple or compound,
admits of innumerable varieties determined by the individual, the
race, the epoch, and the course of civilisation; some are extinct,
others, again, of recent origin. Lastly, the existence of mixed
emotions—which are numerous—is a fatal objection to every attempt at
distribution into a linear series. The only track to follow is that
of genetic filiation—viz., to state first the simple, primary
emotions, then to find out by what mental processes, conscious or
unconscious, the composite and derived emotions have arisen from
them. We shall attempt to define these in a future chapter.[95] But
this work is no longer a classification.
Footnote 95:
See Part II., chap. vii.
CHAPTER XI.
THE MEMORY OF FEELINGS.
_Can emotional images be revived, spontaneously or
voluntarily?—Summary of scattered facts relating to this
subject—Inquiry into this question, and method
followed—Emotional and gustative images—Internal sensations
(hunger, thirst, fatigue, disgust, etc.)—Pleasures and pains;
observations—Emotions: three distinct forms of revivability
according to observations—Reduction of the images to three
groups: revivability direct and easy, indirect and comparatively
easy, difficult and sometimes direct, sometimes indirect.—The
revivability of a representation is in proportion to its
complexity and the motor elements included in it.—Reservations
to be made on this last point—Is there such a thing as a real
emotional memory?—Two cases: false or abstract, and true or
concrete memory—Peculiar characters and differences of each
case—Change of the emotional into an intellectual
recollection—Emotional amnesia: its practical consequences—There
exists a general emotional type and partial emotional
types—Confirmatory observations—Comparative revivability of
agreeable and disagreeable states—To feel acutely and to recall
an acute impression of the feeling are two different
operations._
I.
After the numerous researches made, during the last twenty years,
into the nature and the revivability of visual, auditory,
tactile-motor, and verbal images, it seems paradoxical to maintain
that there is still an unexplored region in the domain of memory. As
a matter of fact, however, we find at most a few scattered remarks
on the images derived from smell, taste, internal sensations,
pleasure, pain, and emotion in general. The question of the
emotional memory remains nearly, if not quite, untouched.[96] The
object of this chapter is to begin its study.
-----
Footnote 96:
I see no reason for mentioning any authorities except H. Spencer,
_Principles of Psychology_, i., §§ 69 and 96; Bain, _Emotions_,
ch. v.; W. James, _Psychology_, ii. pp. 474, 475; Fouillée,
_Psychologie des Idées-forces_; Höffding, _Psychologie_ (3rd
German edition), vi., B. 3; Lehmann, _Hauptgesetze_, pp. 261-263.
-----
The impressions of smell and taste, our visceral sensations, our
pleasant or painful states, our emotions and passions, like the
perceptions of sight and hearing, can leave memories behind them.
This is a matter of common experience on which it is needless to
insist. These residua, fixed in an organisation, may return into the
consciousness; and it is known that images may be revived in two
ways—by provocation, or spontaneously.
Revivability on provocation is the simplest of all. It consists in
an actual occurrence awakening the images of similar occurrences at
some former time, and takes place, beyond possibility of doubt, in
the class of images which occupies us just now. The actual sensation
of fatigue, of the smell of a lily, of the taste of pepper, of pain
in a certain tooth, appear to me as the repetition of sensations
formerly experienced, similar to the present one, or at least
apparently identical, so that, consequently, it revives them.
But can the images of olfactory and gustatory sensations, of
internal sensations, of past pains and pleasures, of emotions
formerly experienced, be revived in the consciousness spontaneously,
or at will, independently of any actual occurrence which might
provoke them? We know that, in some painters, the inner vision is so
clear that they can draw a portrait from memory; that, in some
musicians, the inner hearing is so perfect that they can, like
Habeneck, ideally hear a symphony just played, recalling all the
details of the execution, and the slightest variations in the time.
Are there in the order of emotional representations any cases
analogous to these? Such is, in its precise form, the question which
we shall examine in detail. We shall subsequently see that it has a
practical bearing, and is not a mere psychological curiosity.
Before entering on the subject, I will summarise the principal facts
relating to this question to be found scattered through the works of
various authors. I divide them into four groups:—
1. We may take taste and smell together. This last sense is much
more extensive, much richer and more varied than the other; common
speech often confounds them, enriching taste at the expense of
smell. Although unscientific, this confusion does not greatly
concern us.
Every one knows that professional tasters, cooks, certain chemists
and perfumers, can distinguish the most delicate gradations and
correctly identify them with previous sensations; but this is a
provoked recollection. Does a spontaneous or voluntary relation
exist between these two groups of images? Examining the fullest
monographs drawn up by physiologists[97] we find scarcely any
information on this point. Cloquet, Müller, Valentin have reported
cases of subjective sensations attributed by them to internal
causes; but other physiologists, such as Ludwig, without denying
these, are of opinion that sapid particles in the mouth, and
odoriferous molecules on the mucous membrane of the nose, may act in
a similar manner; so that the alleged images would, in fact, be
sensations.
-----
Footnote 97:
See Von Vintschgau, art. “Geruch” and “Geschmack” in Hermann’s
_Handbuch der Physiologie_, vol. iii.; Gley, art. “Gustation”;
François-Franck, art. “Olfaction” in the _Dictionnaire
encyclopédique des sciences médicales_.
-----
Dreams may afford us a better starting-point. Among the numerous
writers who have treated of this subject, some resolutely deny the
existence of representations of taste and smell. It is impossible to
accept this opinion. Though they are comparatively rare, examples
may be found which are proof against all criticism. A person who,
for hygienic reasons, has abstained from wine for several years,
assures us that he has had a very clear impression of its taste in
the course of a dream. We may recall the hypnagogic hallucinations
so well described by A. Maury, who was subject to them; he mentions
the taste of rancid oil, and the smell of burning as occurring apart
from any objective cause.
Among hallucinations properly so called, it is known that those of
smell are of very frequent occurrence. Many authorities hesitate to
admit those of taste, which they reduce to the status of mere
illusions; but we know that the distinction formerly maintained
between these two pathological manifestations has been, in our day,
much disputed.
2. Internal sensations play a prominent part in the emotional life.
Are these susceptible, in the normal condition, of spontaneous or
voluntary revival? I have not been able to find any precise
information on this point. In the pathological condition we can find
numerous examples in hypochondriacs, hysterics, and neuropaths, in
insane patients who complain of the suppression of some of their
organs, of inversion of the stomach. In any case it would be
necessary to determine the part played by the organ itself, and its
actual state in the majority of these cases of revival, which is
extremely difficult.
3. As for pleasures and pains, under their double (physical and
mental) form, there is no doubt. The recollection of a blinding
light, of a discord or a strident sound, of the extraction of a
tooth, or some more serious operation; the prospect of a good dinner
to an epicure, of the approaching holidays to a schoolboy—all the
states of psychic life generally included under the designation of
imaginary pleasures and pains, show how frequent is the revival of
impressions on the feelings. And, in fact, the difficulty is not to
establish their existence, but to determine their nature.
We may also recall the facility with which, in hypnotised subjects,
pleasant or painful conditions of all sorts may be induced by
suggestion.
Finally, in certain cases, the impression may even become
completely hallucinatory—_i.e._, equal in intensity to the reality
itself. “A student,” says Gratiolet, “playfully struck his
companion’s out-stretched finger with the handle of a scalpel. The
latter felt a pain so acute that he thought the instrument had
pierced his finger to the bone.” During a popular tumult in the
reign of Louis-Philippe, a combatant received a slight contusion
from a spent bullet on his shoulder. The skin was not even
scratched, but “he felt a torrent of blood flowing from the wound
over his breast.” Bennett relates that a butcher remained hanging
by one arm from a hook. He was taken down by the terrified
bystanders, uttered frightful cries, and complained that he was
suffering cruelly, while all the time the hook had only penetrated
his clothes, and the arm was uninjured.[98] This condition might
be termed a _hallucination of the feelings_.
-----
Footnote 98:
Hack Tuke, _Influence of Mind upon the Body_, p. 181, where other
facts of the same kind may be found.
-----
4. The supply of observations and documents relating to the
revivability of the emotions and passions is a very scanty one. In
fact, we may admit that what has already been said as to pleasures
and pains is also applicable to this last group. But it is not on
the question of fact that the attention of psychologists has been
concentrated. They are occupied entirely with theory, and in
determining the nature of emotional memory. The majority consider
the recollection to be merely that of the accompanying circumstances
of emotion. Others hold it to be a recollection of the emotion
itself, as such. As this is the principal point of my subject, and
will have subsequently to be discussed in detail, I must limit
myself, for the moment, to the mere indication of the two opinions.
In short,—confining ourselves to the normal, and setting aside the
pathological states,—the facts collected seem to me utterly
inadequate for answering the question stated above.
II.
It was for this reason that I proposed to myself the task of
collecting fresh documents, and of inquiring whether there are not
great differences between one individual and another as regards the
memory of impressions. This would explain the want of harmony among
authorities on this point.
Having eliminated all vague and doubtful answers, and those which
are not to the point, I have collected about sixty _dossiers_. Each
person (all being adults, of both sexes, and various stages of
culture) was directly questioned by myself, and the answers
immediately noted. Besides these, I have received several long
written communications, which I reckon among my best material. The
nature of the questions asked will be sufficiently evident from the
following summary, which contains the principal results of my
inquiry. I shall confine myself to a bare statement of the facts;
the interpretation will come later.
1. _Images of taste and smell._—I was disposed to admit that they
are not subject to any spontaneous revivability, and still less to a
voluntary one, being, for my own part, quite incapable of recalling
a single one, even in the faintest degree. The answers have put me
completely in the wrong—the negatives being 40 per cent., the
positives 60 per cent. More accurately, 40 per cent. persons revive
no image, 48 per cent. revive some, 12 per cent. declare themselves
capable of reviving all, or nearly all, at pleasure.
The majority of cases, therefore, allows of the spontaneous revival
of some odours only. Those most frequently mentioned are pinks,
musk, violets, heliotrope, carbolic acid, the smell of the country,
of grass, etc. The conditions under which the image appears are
various. For some persons this is unaccompanied by any visual,
tactile, or other representation. With the majority, the imaginary
odour ultimately excites the corresponding visual image (that of a
flower, a bottle of scent, etc.). Many have first to evoke the
visual image, and, in time, succeed in exciting the olfactory one.
Two individuals affirm that, on reading the description of a
landscape, they immediately perceive the characteristic odours. Here
the sign is sufficient. One of them, a novelist, is sometimes
conscious of thirst under the same conditions.
In the two following cases the “olfactory image” only exists in a
single instance, and appears to be produced by the combined
operation of concomitant circumstances.
Case 1. “I had been to the hospital, to see my friend B., who was
suffering from a cancer in the face.... When he spoke it was
necessary to come quite close in order to hear what he said, and
thus, in spite of the antiseptic dressings, an acrid, fetid odour
forced itself on one’s nostrils.... I was to go again to see him—I
had promised to do so; but this prospect was intensely repugnant
to me. While walking in a part of Paris, where neither space nor
fresh air was wanting, I reproached myself silently for not having
gone to see the poor patient.... At this very moment I perceived,
as though I had been close to him, the same acrid odour,
recognisable as that of a cancerous tumour—so suddenly that I
instinctively held my sleeve to my nose in order to see whether I
had not brought away the smell in my clothes. This, however, was
immediately succeeded by the reflection that I had not been to the
hospital for five days, and that, moreover, I was not wearing the
same overcoat as on the occasion of my visit.”
Case 2. "I can only recall two odours: one inextricably connected
with the memory of a sick-room—a stale smell of drugs and vitiated
air, truly disagreeable when it recurs, as at the present
moment....
“It has happened to me to discover a very peculiar and indefinable
odour in the presence of a hypnotiser (M. R——) when he was putting
me to sleep, and I had not quite reached the lethargic state. I
have since noticed that very often (not always) the memory of this
curious odour accompanies the recollection of the hypnotiser. This
seems to me all the more convincing, because, the odour being very
subtle when M. R—— is near me, the revival must be absolute to
allow of the return of the sensation, in however slight a degree.”
I should hesitate to admit the spontaneous or voluntary revival of
almost all odours, if this fact had not been affirmed to me, in
perfect good faith, by educated and competent witnesses. I give some
extracts from these declarations: “I can perceive nearly all
characteristic odours, and can call them up at will; at this moment
I am thinking of the country of the Rhine, and am fully conscious of
its odour.” “I can recall the greater number of odours (but not all)
either spontaneously or voluntarily. (In the latter case time is
required.)—Can you perceive, _here_ and _now_, the scent of roses,
and, if so, of what kind?—I perceive it _in genere_; but, on further
persevering, I find it to be the scent of withered roses. The visual
representation occurs afterwards.” The only person who has told me
that he finds all odours perceptible at will always finds a
preliminary visual representation necessary.[99]
-----
Footnote 99:
Galton, in a note entitled “Arithmetic by Smell,” has described an
arrangement by means of which he convinced himself that some
arithmetical operations can be carried out by the help of
olfactory images, as is done by means of visual and auditory
representations. He trains himself to regard two whiffs of
peppermint as equivalent to one of camphor, and three of
peppermint with one of carbolic acid; he performs small additions,
and, later on, operates with images only (visual and auditory
representations being excluded). For details, see _Psychological
Review_, January 1894.
-----
As to the recollections of tastes, by themselves, the answers are
very vague. One remembers “easily, and at will, the taste of salt,
with a very clear visual impression,” but less easily the other
three fundamental tastes. Another, who uses for his throat three
different kinds of lozenges, “feels the taste of them beforehand, as
soon as he needs them, on either seeing or touching them.” In
general, the revivability of tastes appears to me especially
connected with that of ordinary food, and with the state of the
alimentary canal (hunger).
2. _Internal sensations._—My inquiry does not include the whole of
these, but only the commonest and most easily observed.[100]
-----
Footnote 100:
The memory of internal sensations, though distinct from that of
states of feeling properly so called, approximates so closely to
it that the two subjects appear to me inseparable.
-----
As regards hunger, I have received 51 definite answers, 24 persons
saying they can distinctly recall it, 27 that they cannot. (The
question has always been put at an hour when the real sensation did
not exist, and some have told me that in their normal condition they
never feel either hunger or thirst.) It is usually described as a
tactile sensation in the œsophagus, or a twitching pain in the
stomach, etc. One person only affirms that he can, “at will, feel
hunger and thirst, even after having eaten and drunk.”
Thirst is imagined much more frequently than hunger, and, as it
seems, more clearly (36 affirmative to 15 negative answers). It is
described as dryness in the throat, heat, etc.
As regards the representation of fatigue, the answers have without
exception been affirmative. The modes of representation are various.
Some feel it (ideally) in the muscles; others under a cerebral form.
Here are some examples: “muscular twitchings in the calves of the
legs, the back, and the shoulders; the eyes feeling swollen, but no
heaviness in the head;” “a feeling of relaxation, of a weight,
localised in the shoulders, because, in a normal state, I find
stooping very difficult;” “slowness of movement, with a feeling of
weight in the head;” “general lassitude, of a diffused kind,
especially a feeling of weight in the head, and mental weariness;”
“pains in the joints, and a heavy feeling in the brain.” Although
all my correspondents can revive the feeling of fatigue, three or
four can only succeed in doing so “with difficulty and to a slight
extent.”
We find the same results with regard to the representation of
disgust. I find only three negative answers, all accompanied by the
remark, “I have a good digestion.” One of these cases is the more
singular because the subject has suffered from sea-sickness. In its
acute form the representation is described as “like the beginning of
nausea.” For others, it is “a pain in the stomach, with a retractile
movement, connected with the idea of cod-liver oil, or of tainted
meat.” Among those who have experienced the sensation of
sea-sickness, I have not met with one who cannot easily revive it
(giddiness, feelings of a rocking motion, which disinclines them to
persist in reviving the impression). M. X—— (a very competent
observer in psychological questions) says: “I have a pretty good
visual memory, but no auditive, either musical or linguistic; I
cannot spell a foreign language. Except for muscular memory, which
in me is _nil_ (so that I have never succeeded in acquiring any
physical exercise, or playing on any instrument), I can revive all
internal sensations: hunger, thirst, disgust, fatigue, giddiness,
difficulty in breathing; I prefer not to insist upon this last
state, as were I to think of it any longer I should actually bring
it on.”[101]
-----
Footnote 101:
A great swimmer has had feelings of suffocation which he can
recall with much vividness.
-----
3. _Pains and Pleasures._—To the question, “Can you revive in
yourself the memory of a given physical pain, a sorrow, a pleasure,
or a pity?” the answer is nearly always in the affirmative. But, put
in this bald way, it teaches us nothing. We require more detailed
information. We here return to the main point of our subject, and I
am obliged slightly to anticipate my conclusions. The observations,
carefully taken, show that there are two distinct forms of emotional
memory, one _abstract_, the other _concrete_. Later on, I shall
insist on their differences; for the moment, I shall confine myself
to the enumeration of facts.
_Painful States._—Toothache, being very common, has supplied me with
many answers. I note in nearly all of these the predominance of the
motor elements: shooting and throbbing pains, contortions of the
jaw, etc. When the extraction of a tooth is recalled there is a
jarring of the whole head, a feeling of twisting, snapping, noises,
etc. In many cases the painful element seems to be scarcely revived,
or not at all; in many others it reappears with the utmost
clearness.
Case 3. “I send you a personal observation made during the last
few days. I had suffered from toothache, which was very acute, and
certainly intenser than the unpleasant feeling experienced when
the dentist operates on your teeth with his revolving machine. Yet
when I think of it now, and try to recall, on the one hand the
pain, on the other the rubbing of the teeth by the machine, it is
the latter which seems to me, in my recollection, the most
disagreeable. I explain this by the fact that this rubbing is
accompanied by a noise which I can recall most vividly, and this
auditive representation is by itself sufficient to evoke a
disagreeable feeling. The pain in the teeth is also connected with
different accessories: inclination of the head, closing of the eye
on the side affected, movement of the hand to the corresponding
cheek, etc., but these accessories have no great influence on me;
they are not so characteristic of toothache as the peculiar noise
of the machine. This last representation is very vivid; when I
think of it I feel a chill run down my back and a slight trembling
in the arms. The representation of the actual pain is, in my case,
much more vague; it is diffused, I have to eke it out with verbal
descriptions, and it does not act on me so disagreeably as the
first.”
Cuts, burns, etc., are remembered tolerably well. “In my youth I was
wounded by a pistol-shot; I have a perfect recollection of the
shock, which first produced a tactile sensation radiating from a
centre, and afterwards pain, but I have a difficulty in recalling
the painful element in the sensation.” Another can well remember the
vesical contractions of a cystitis; but not without the help of the
motor elements, as in the case of toothache. M. B——, who appears to
belong to the affective type (I shall explain later on what I mean
by this), feels the beginnings of a lancinating neuralgia in the
eye, a cramp in the stomach, a smarting of the anus, a bite on the
tongue. Another (same type) says, “If I were to try, I could recall
the feeling of neuralgia, but I cannot represent to myself the pain
of a boil.” Another: “There are some pains which I can feel at will;
I either feel nothing at all, or the representation is so vivid that
it almost amounts to actual pain. This is true especially of cardiac
pains.”
It was my intention to question those who had undergone important
operations; but, from the very general use of anæsthetics, there was
little to be hoped for from such an experiment. There remains a case
of frequent occurrence—the pains of childbirth. The answers are
contradictory. One woman, who has had five confinements, declares
that “as soon as it is over, there is nothing more.” This is a woman
of vigorous health and unshaken optimism. Another says, “As soon as
the pain is over, I can forget it at once.” The physician of a
lying-in hospital told me that “nearly all, during their
confinement, say that nothing would induce them to undergo such
suffering again; yet nearly all return to the hospital.” Others say
that they have, afterwards, a very clear and precise recollection of
the labour-pains. Though these answers are so contradictory, we
shall see, further on, how they are to be reconciled with one
another.
Case 4. No revivability of the impression of labour-pains. Nervous
subject. Good visual memory; no auditive memory; cannot recall
either a taste or a smell; has made observations on herself in view
of the subject in hand, and has sent me the following notes:—
"The first acute pains appeared about every fifteen or twenty
minutes; during these intervals of repose they vanished, leaving
no trace. During the intervals between the crises, the patient
tried to represent to herself the pain she had just passed
through, and found it absolutely impossible to do so. She could
describe the pain in words,—pains in the back, the side, etc.,—and
it was this verbal description which came back to her whenever she
tried to recall her feelings at the time. Afterwards the pains
became more and more frequent, and she could make no more
observations. When they were extremely acute, she screamed and
talked the whole time. It is curious to note that she did not
pronounce her words as usual, but uttered each syllable several
times, as thus: ‘_ça, ça, ça, ça, fait, fait, fait, fait, très,
très, maaaaal_.’ She entreated her husband to kill her, to cut her
into small pieces, to tear her asunder, if only there might be an
end of it. After five hours of suffering, the doctor declared that
all these pains had in nowise advanced the situation—that
everything was as at the beginning. This declaration produced an
acute feeling of despair, added to the pain. Five hours later all
was over. Next day, when she tried to represent the pain to
herself, there came into her mind only the verbal description, and
afterwards the sum of her utterances during labour; she remembered
that she had been unable to contain herself, that she understood
the absurdity of what she had been saying to her husband, but
thought, at the same time, ‘People sometimes do absurd things—why
should he not do what I ask him?’ She remembered clearly that,
after the doctor’s declaration, she had a feeling of despair; but
she recalled it in words, not as a feeling."
In conclusion, I will quote from Fouillée, in connection with
physical pain, an interesting observation made on himself:—
“If I want to recall any given attack of toothache, I must form a
mental image of the teeth where the pain was localised, and then
of the word _pain_ which serves as a sign; but how am I to form an
image of the pain _in itself_? Some philosophers declare the thing
impossible, and allege that we only reproduce perceptions,
intellectual states, and words. This is, in fact, what usually
happens; but one can also, in my opinion, reproduce in the
consciousness (though incompletely) the _painful_ element of
toothache. To this end we must employ an indirect method. This
procedure consists in directly calling up the images and motor
reactions which accompany or follow toothache. I make the
experiment, localising my thoughts in one of the molars on the
right side; then I wait. The first thing to revive is a vague and
general state, common to all painful sensations. Then this
reaction grows more precise, as I concentrate my attention more
and more on the tooth. At last I feel a greater afflux of blood
into the gum, and even throbbings. Then I represent to myself a
certain movement passing from one point of the tooth or gum to
another; this is the passage of the pain. Thus I also revive the
motor reaction caused by the pain, the convulsion of the jaw, etc.
Finally, by thinking fixedly of all these circumstances, I end by
feeling in a more or less dull way the rudiments of shooting
pains. In an experiment just made, I have brought on real
toothache in a molar, which, however, is subject to it.... The
experiment leaves behind it a general irritability of the teeth,
and an inclination to pass the tongue over the gums.”[102]
-----
Footnote 102:
Fouillée, _op. cit._, vol. i. pp. 200, 201.
-----
Except for a few exceedingly clear observations, which I shall give
later on, I have only vague replies regarding the revivability of
sorrow, or moral pain, after the elimination of the conditions in
which it had its origin. One person represents to himself “a general
inertia and a febrile condition.” Another, who, during his time of
military service, underwent periods of depression and _ennui_, “a
year later, when the recollection comes back to him, sees everything
of a grey hue.” We shall see presently that in some individuals the
revival of moral pain is as acute as the initial state.
_Pleasant States._—The same results are obtained, _mutatis
mutandis_, as with the preceding group. I note a very marked
predominance of the motor elements. The pleasures most frequently
mentioned are those of skating, swimming, the trot or gallop of a
horse, and various physical exercises. Those who _really_ revive
agreeable recollections, describe a general state of excitement, a
dilatation of the chest, a lighting up of the countenance, a
tendency towards childish gestures. One, in thinking of his rides,
feels the pleasure of rapid motion, the wind playing over his
cheeks, etc. Musicians can easily revive their pleasure by means of
inner hearing alone. We find one who cannot think of the
_Walkürenritt_ without feeling himself lifted as if by motor
impulses.
4. _Emotions._—The phenomena of this group, though more complex,
are, in fact, only a prolongation of our third group. But, in order
to obtain a correct notion of their revivability, we must not
proceed by way of generalities. To ask any given individual whether
he is capable of reviving past emotions would be a useless question.
I have always asked persons to try and recall a _particular_ case of
a particular emotion (fear, anger, love, etc.). The answers are
reducible to three categories, which I shall enumerate in the order
of their frequency.
In the greater number of cases, only the conditions, circumstances,
and accessories of the emotion can be recalled; there is only an
_intellectual_ memory. The past event comes back to them with a
certain emotional colouring (and sometimes even this is absent), a
vague affective trace of what has once been but cannot be recalled.
In the affective order these subjects are analogous to those of
moderately good visual and auditory memory in the intellectual
order. C——, who, when standing on a rock, narrowly escaped being
surrounded by the tide, sees the waves rising, and recalls his
desperate rush for the shore, which he reached in safety; but the
emotion as such does not return to him. At Constantine, some years
ago, I nearly fell into the gorge of the Rummel. When I think of the
incident I can see before me quite clearly the landscape, the state
of the sky, all the details of the spot; but the only return of
feeling is a slight shiver in the back and legs.
Others (far less numerous) recall the circumstances _plus_ the
revived condition of feeling. It is these who have the true
“affective memory”; they correspond to those who have good visual or
good auditory memories. This is the case with the majority of
emotional temperaments. As we here touch on the most obscure and
disputed part of our subject, it will be convenient to give some
examples.
Irascible subjects, on hearing the name of their enemy, at the mere
thought can revive the rising feelings of anger. The timid person
shudders and turns pale when recalling the danger once incurred. The
lover, thinking of his mistress, completely revives the state of
love. If we compare the recollection of an extinct passion with the
occurrence to the mind of a passion still existing, we shall clearly
perceive the difference between intellectual and affective memory,
between the mere recollection of the circumstances and the
recollection of the emotion as such. It is a serious error to assert
that only the conditions of the emotion can be revived, not the
emotional state itself. I now only touch on this question, to which
I shall return.
Several of my correspondents affirm that the memory of an emotion
affects them as strongly as the emotion itself, which I have no
difficulty in believing. Does not the recollection of a foolish
action make one blush? One asserts that “her representation of
emotions is more acute than the emotions themselves, and that she
can recall them much better than visual, auditive, and other
sensations.” But a few detailed observations will make the nature of
true affective memory clearer.
Littré relates that, at the age of ten, he lost a young sister under
very painful circumstances. He felt acute grief at the time; “but a
boy’s sorrow does not last long.” At an advanced age this grief
suddenly returned, without apparent cause. “Suddenly, without wish
or effort on my part, by some phenomenon of affective automnesia,
this same event reproduced itself with feelings no less painful,
certainly, than those I had experienced at the moment of its
occurrence, and which went so far as to bring tears into my eyes.”
It was several times repeated in the course of the following days;
then it ceased and gave place to the habitual recollection, _i.e._,
to the purely intellectual form of memory.[103]
-----
Footnote 103:
_Revue positive_, 1877, p. 660.
-----
It is natural to suppose that emotional revival must be of frequent
occurrence in poets and artists. M. Sully-Prudhomme, whose
philosophical aptitudes are well known, has favoured me with a
written communication on this subject, from which I extract some
passages, with his permission.
"... It is my habit to separate myself from the verses I have
written before finishing them, and to leave them for some time in
the drawers of my writing-table. I even forget them sometimes,
when the piece has seemed to me a failure, and it may happen to me
to find them again several years after. I then re-write them; and
I have the power of calling up again, with great clearness, the
feeling which had suggested them. This feeling I pose, so to
speak, in my inner consciousness, like a model which I am copying
by means of the palette and brush of language. This is the exact
opposite of improvisation. It seems to me that at such times I am
working on the recollection of an affective state.
"When I remember the emotions aroused in me by the entry of the
Germans into Paris after our last defeats, I find it impossible
not to _experience this same emotion afresh_, simultaneously and
indivisibly; while the mnemonic image of the Paris of that day
remains in my memory very distinct from any actual perception.
When I remember the kind of affection which, in my childhood, I
felt for my mother, I find it impossible not to become, in some
sort, a child again, at the very moment when I call up this
memory—not to allow my heart of to-day to participate in the
former tenderness due to recollection. I am almost inclined to ask
myself if every _recollection of feeling does not take on the
character of a hallucination_.
“When a student, I formed a connection in which I was grossly
deceived; so everyday an occurrence that the correctness of my
observations can probably be tested by most men from their own
recollections. There was nothing very deep in my love,
imagination being the principal factor, and I have long ago
forgiven the injury, which, after all, chiefly concerned my
vanity. Both rancour and affection vanished long ago. Under
these circumstances, if I call up the recollection, I recognise
at the outset that I am now a stranger to the feelings which I
can remember; but I soon notice that I only remain a stranger to
them so long as the memories are vague and confused. As soon as,
by an effort of recollection, I make them more precise, they
cease _ipso facto_ to be memories only, and _I am quite
surprised to feel the movements of youthful passion and angry
jealousy renewed in me_. It is indeed only this revival which
could enable me to retouch the verses which this little
adventure of long-past years induced me to perpetrate, and to
allow the expression of my former feelings to benefit by the
experience acquired in my art.”
Case 5. H—— (20 years). On the _memory_ of the feeling of _ennui_
experienced on the first day in barracks.—"In order to _represent_
to myself thoroughly this feeling of _ennui_, which was very
intense, and lasted a whole afternoon, I shut my eyes and abstract
my thoughts. I feel, first, a slight shiver down my back, a
certain _malaise_, a feeling of something unpleasant which I
should prefer not to feel over again. After this first moment
comes a certain uncomfortable state, a slight oppression of the
throat; this feeling is connected with vague representations which
do not fix themselves. In the experiment here described, I first
picture to myself the barrack-yard, where I used to walk; then
this picture of the yard is replaced by that of the dormitory on
the third floor. I see myself seated at a window, looking at the
view, of which I can see all the details. This, however, does not
last; the picture soon disappears; there remains only a vague idea
of being seated at a window, and then a feeling of oppression,
weariness, dejection, and a certain heaviness in the shoulders. At
this point I break off the experiment and open my eyes, still
experiencing a general sense of uneasiness, which soon passes
off."
The whole experiment lasts a little more than ten minutes. To sum
up, we have, first, a feeling of weight and oppression, a shudder
in the back, but no clear representation of surrounding objects;
then a feeling of discomfort becoming more and more intense,
visual representations varying either in their nature or their
intensity; and finally, the total disappearance of these visual
representations, the feeling of _ennui_ being persistent
throughout.