relative who was undergoing treatment at an establishment in the
neighbourhood of P——. My visits were very frequent, and always
began with a long wait in a room overlooking the garden. If I wish
to repeat the impressions of this time of waiting, which was
always disagreeable to me, all I have to do is to sit down in a
chair, as I was then seated, to close my eyes and put myself in
the same frame of mind, which I can do quite easily. Not half a
minute passes between the evocation and the clear and absolute
reconstruction of the scene. First, I feel the carpet under my
feet, then I _see_ its pattern of red and brown roses; then the
table with the books lying on it, their colour and style of
binding; then the windows, and through them the branches of the
trees, of which I hear the sound as they beat against the glass;
lastly, the peculiar atmosphere of the room, its unmistakable
smell. After this, I feel over again all the weariness of waiting,
complicated by an intense dread of the doctor’s arrival, a state
of apprehension ending in a violent palpitation of the heart,
which I find it impossible to escape. When once I have entered on
this train of thought, I have to follow it out to the end, passing
through the whole series of states which I passed through at the
time. If I wished to eliminate any of them I am sure that I could
not do so, as when, in a dream, one tries, without ever
succeeding, to avoid an unpleasant fall which one foresees.”
Here nothing is wanting, either the circumstances, or the repetition
of the emotion itself; and this case shows that the complete revival
of an emotion is the beginning of the emotion itself.
Lastly, there remains a third category of answers, of which I have
only four cases. I mention these merely as a curiosity, and in order
to omit nothing. These persons represent the emotion _objectively_
to themselves, by localising it in another. One can only represent
anger to himself under the force of some particular angry man.
Another incarnates fear and hatred in a certain person whose
countenance or attitude expresses fear or hatred. The emotional
state is, for these, only represented under its bodily form.
Is this because they have, personally, little experience of these
different emotions?
III.
This series of facts, with their multiform and often contradictory
manifestations, may perhaps leave the reader in perplexity, which
would be still greater were I to enumerate all. Let us try to bring
them into some sort of order, and understand their significance.
If—placing ourselves at the point of view of the question stated
above, the possibility of a revival not produced by an actual
occurrence—we propose to ourselves to classify all images
whatsoever, we shall see that they fall into these groups, viz.:—
Those of direct and easy revivability (visual, auditory,
tactile-motor, with some reservations for the last named).
Those of indirect and comparatively easy revivability: pleasures and
pains, emotions. They are indirect, because the emotional state is
only induced through the intermediary of the intellectual states
with which it is associated.[104]
-----
Footnote 104:
A characteristic peculiar to emotional affective revivability is
the slowness with which it develops and the time required. While
the visual or auditory image may be called up instantaneously and
at command, the emotional representation arises slowly. This is
because it passes through two stages. The first (intellectual)
consists in the evocation of conditions and circumstances—a
toothache, a burn, a passion. Many do not get beyond this stage,
and the concomitant emotional tone, accordingly, is faint, or even
_nil_. The second or emotional stage adds to this the rise of
states of excitement and exultation, or of dejection and lowered
vitality. The latter requires organic conditions, a difference in
the organism, an excitement of the motor, vascular, respiratory,
secretory, and other centres.
-----
Those of difficult revivability, either direct or indirect. This
heterogeneous and difficult group includes tastes, odours, and
internal sensations.
What are the reasons for these differences? I reduce them to two
principal ones, which I may briefly state thus—
The revivability of an impression is in direct ratio to its
complexity, and consequently in inverse ratio to its simplicity.
The revivability of an impression (with certain exceptions to be
mentioned afterwards) is in direct ratio to the motor elements
included in it.
1. It is an incontestable fact that an isolated state of
consciousness, with no relation to what precedes, accompanies, or
follows it, has small chance of fixing itself in the memory. I hear
a word of an unknown language, it immediately vanishes; but if I
read and write it, if I associate it with some object or with
various circumstances, it is fixed. It is easier to remember a group
or a series than an isolated and unrelated term. Now, by their very
nature, the visual images arrange themselves in complex aggregates,
and the auditive in sequences (or even, in the case of harmony, in
simultaneities), while the motor images are associated in series,
every term of which awakens and brings with it the last. They
accordingly fulfil the conditions of immediate and easy
revivability. It is the same with pleasures, pains, emotions. Always
connected with intellectual states (perceptions, representations, or
ideas), they form part of an aggregate, and are involved in its
resurgent movement.
The case is different with the images of our third group. They are
not associated with one another; they have an isolated and
individual character; they contract no relations, either of space or
time, among themselves.
Let us take the case of odours. One excludes another; they are not
associated in the imagination as visual images are in the
recollection of a beautiful landscape. One of my correspondents is
able to recall at will the scent of pinks; she tried to do so while
walking in a wood full of decaying leaves and their smell, but
without success; one odour excluded the other. Neither can they be
arranged in sequences. I am aware that an English chemist, Piesse,
has claimed the ability to class scents in a continuous series, like
notes, patchouli corresponding to lower _c_ in the key of F, and
civet to the upper _f_ in the key of G—the whole in tones and
semitones; but no one, so far as I know, has taken this fancy
seriously.
In the same way, tastes may be associated with other images, as of
hunger (I have collected several cases of this), which makes their
revival more difficult. Among themselves they do not form
associations, but combinations. If associations ever occur they are
extremely rare and limited in character.
Hunger and thirst are special, indecomposable states. Disgust and
fatigue are revived easily enough, and, as we have seen, by almost
every one; but it must be remembered that these states are composed
of somewhat heterogeneous—sensory and motor—elements, and that they
approach the character of aggregates.
This antithesis between the first two groups and that of odours,
tastes, and internal sensations, depends, no doubt, on certain
physiological conditions. As we can do nothing but hazard
conjectures on this point, it is better to abstain.
2. The second theory stated above—viz., that the revivability is in
direct ratio to the motor elements included in the image—is more
open to question. I only give it as a _partial_, secondary,
subsidiary explanation, applicable to many cases but not to all, and
allowing of numerous exceptions. Since we have to do with an
empirical law—a pure generalisation from experience—we must test it
by facts, in order to fix its bearing and value. This rapid
examination will justify my restrictions and reservations.
Among all our impressions, those of sight and hearing are those most
easily revived. Now, though the visual faculty has at its disposal a
very rich, varied, and delicate motor apparatus, this is not the
case with the auditory. Considering the superior position of the
latter among the senses, it is very poor in motor elements;
movements of the head, accommodatory movements of the tympanal
membrane, in extreme cases movements of the vocal organs, and,
according to the latest hypotheses, a certain function of the
semi-circular canals. The difference between the two senses in
respect of motor elements is very striking.
The sense of smell is much more varied and of greater extent than
that of taste. It is far superior as a means of information, yet
inferior as regards the sum of the movements at its disposal for
exercising itself.
Pleasures, pains, and pleasurable or painful emotions, all include
motor elements. So much is evident, yet let us remark what follows:
if we divide the affective states—roughly, yet sufficiently for our
purpose—into two groups, on one side pains and painful emotions, on
the other pleasures and pleasurable emotions, a difficulty presents
itself. The first group, that of the “asthenic” states, manifests
itself by a diminution of movements, circulation, respiration, etc.
The second group, that of the “sthenic” states, manifests itself by
the reverse phenomena, increased movement, circulation, etc. Shall
we say that the second group, which contains more motor elements, is
revived more easily and more frequently than the first? The
conclusion would be logical, but contrary to experience. We should
even find, I believe, that the contrary opinion has more
supporters.[105]
-----
Footnote 105:
This opinion will be discussed later on.
-----
Organic sensations appear to depend principally on the chemical
action taking place in the organism; it is thus with hunger, thirst,
suffocation, disgust, fatigue, etc. Here the part played by the
motor element is but trifling. As this revival is vague, this group
seems to conform to the law stated above.
To sum up: when examined in detail our formula is only a partial
explanation, a generalisation of limited application.
IV.
We have now arrived at the principal question, for which all that
has hitherto been said was only a preparation: Is there such a thing
as a real revival of impressions? Although most psychologists do not
put this question at all, or only treat it in a cursory manner, the
majority of answers are certainly in the negative. It is maintained
that we remember the conditions and circumstances of an emotional
occurrence, but not the emotional state itself.
I feel obliged completely to reject this theory, which would never
have been maintained if the subject had not been treated _a priori_,
in an offhand manner, without sufficient observations. A closer
study, supported by the facts which I have adduced, and others which
will follow, shows that there are two quite distinct cases. Some
people have a _false_ or _abstract_ memory for feelings, others a
_true_ or _concrete_ one. In the former the image is scarcely
revived, or not at all; in others it is revived in great part, or
totally. In order the better to explain the difference between these
two forms of memory, let us examine the constituent elements and the
mechanism of each separately.
1. The _false_ or _abstract_ memory of feeling consists in
the representation of an occurrence, _plus_ an affective
characteristic—I do not say an affective state. This is certainly
the most frequent form. What remains of the small incidents of a
long journey but the recollection of the places where they happened,
the details, and the fact that they _were once_ disagreeable. What
remains of a vanished love-affair but the impression of a person, of
attentions paid to her, of adventures, and, besides, the
recollection that this _was once_ happiness? How much does the adult
retain of the memory of his childish games? How much of his former
religious or political belief remains to a person who has become
totally indifferent? In all cases of this kind, and there are
thousands, the remembered emotional characteristic is _known_, not
felt or experienced; this is only an additional intellectual
character. It is added to the rest as an accessory; pretty much as,
in picturing to ourselves a town, a monument, a landscape visited
long ago, we add the recollection of a bright or cloudy sky, of rain
or fog which surrounded it.
I call an emotional memory “abstract,” and I justify this term.
Emotional states are just as susceptible of abstraction and
generalisation as intellectual states. One who has seen many men,
who has heard many dogs bark or frogs croak, forms to himself a
generic image of the human figure, of the barking of dogs, or the
croaking of frogs. This is a schematic, half-abstract, half-concrete
representation, formed through the accumulation of rough
resemblances and the elimination of differences. In the same way, a
person who has several times suffered from toothache, colic, or
headache, who has had paroxysms of anger or fear, hate or love,
forms to himself a generic impression of these different states by
means of the same procedure. This is the first step. It would be
beside the point to follow here in detail the ascending progress of
the mind to higher and ever higher generalisations. In their highest
degree, concepts like force, movement, quantity, etc., suppose two
things: a word which fixes and represents them, and a potential or
latent knowledge, hidden under the word and preventing it from being
a mere _flatus vocis_. He who does not possess this potential
knowledge, who is incapable of resolving the superior abstractions,
first into medium, then into inferior ones, then into concrete
_data_, possesses only an empty concept. So for the affective states
the terms emotion, passion, sensibility, etc., are nothing but
abstractions, and in order to verify these terms and give them a
real significance, we must have experiences in the region of
feeling, concrete data. People who speak of a state of feeling which
they have never experienced, which they know only by hearsay, have
an empty concept. States of feeling are a material susceptible of
all degrees of abstraction, like sensory material.
The false or abstract memory of feeling is only a sign,
a simulacrum, a substitute for the real occurrence, an
intellectualised state added to the purely intellectual elements of
the impression, and nothing more.
2. The true or concrete memory of impressions consists in the
_actual_ reproduction of a former state of feeling, with all its
characteristics. This is necessary—at least in theory—if it is to
be complete. The nearer it approaches to totality, the more
accurate it is. Here the recollection does not consist merely in
the representation of conditions and circumstances, in short, of
intellectual states, but in the revival of the state of feeling
itself as such, _i.e._, as _felt_. I have already given instances
of this: Fouillée’s experiment, the cases of Littré and
Sully-Prudhomme; those numbered III. and IV., so clear and
precise, show that a true memory of impressions, independent of
its intellectual accompaniment, is no chimera.
Bain says that the emotions, “in their strict character of emotions
proper, have the minimum of revivability; but being always
incorporated with the sensations of the higher senses, they share in
the superior revivability of sights and sounds.” On which Professor
W. James makes the following comment: "But he fails to point out
that the revival of sights and sounds may be _ideal_ without ceasing
to be distinct; whilst the emotion, to be distinct, must become real
again. Professor Bain seems to forget that an ‘ideal emotion,’ and a
real emotion prompted by an ideal object, are two very different
things."[106]
-----
Footnote 106:
_Psychology_, ii. 474.
-----
I maintain, on the contrary, that we have here only two different
stages of the same thing; the first ineffectual and abortive, the
second complete; and the subject which now occupies us must either
have been in a very confused state, or very negligently treated, for
a clear mind like that of W. James not to have seen that affective
memories, like others, aim at becoming actual states of feeling. We
ought not, however, to forget the indisputable fact that our
consciousness only exists in the present. For a recollection,
however distant, to exist, as far as I am concerned, it must
re-enter the narrow area of _present_ consciousness; otherwise it is
buried in the depths of the unconscious and equivalent to the
non-existent. We have thus (not to speak of the present-future) a
present-present and a present-past—viz., that of memory; and this is
only distinguished from the other by certain additional marks which
it is needless to enumerate, but which consist principally in its
appearing like an initial state, though, in general, less intense.
Now these indispensable conditions of memory are the same for both
intellectual and emotional states. If, with my eyes shut, I can call
up the vision of St. Peter’s at Rome (if I were an architect, with a
good visual memory, I should see it in all its details), my
impression is an _actual_ one, and only becomes a memory by the
addition of secondary characteristics, such as repetition and a
lower degree of intensity. The two cases are similar; in both, the
revived impression, according to the law formulated by Dugald
Stewart and Taine, is accompanied by a momentary belief which places
it in the position of an actual reality. But the recollection of a
feeling, it will be said, has this special property, that it is
associated with organic and physiological states which make of it a
real emotion. I reply that it _must_ be so, for an emotion which
does not vibrate through the whole body is nothing but a purely
intellectual state. To expect that we should actually revive a state
of feeling without reviving also its organic conditions, is to
expect the impossible, to state the problem in contradictory terms.
We should, in that case, simply have its substitute, its
abstraction, _i.e._, the false affective memory which is a variety
of intellectual memory; the emotion will be _re_cognised, not
_re_vived.
Finally, the ideal of every recollection is that, while keeping its
character of being already experienced, it should be adequate in
such measure as was possible for the original impression. The
revival of impressions is an internal operation, whose extreme form
is hallucination. For the two forms of memory, intellectual and
emotional, the ideal is the same, only each has its special
mechanism for realising it.
There are all possible degrees of transition from the simple bald
representation of the words pleasure or pain, love or fear, to the
acute, fully and entirely felt representation of these states. In a
crowd of people taken at random, one might, with the help of
adequate information, determine all the intermediate degrees, from
the abstract to the concrete. Still more, these may be met with in
the same individual. When the poet says that “Sadness departs upon
the wings of Time,” his meaning, in psychological language, is that
the affective memory is gradually transformed into an intellectual
memory. We know that certain artists, in order to get rid of the
memory of a sorrow or a passion, have fixed it in a work of art.
This was Goethe’s method; every one knows the story of _Werther_, to
quote but one example. One of my correspondents employs the same
procedure with success; _i.e._, in the case we are dealing with, the
question is how to transfer emotion to the region of the
imagination, and, consequently, intellectualise it.
I have said that in certain persons the revival of emotional states
seems to be complete. Is it so in fact? I believe that it is
impossible to give a precise answer to this question; and here we
have a point where the emotional memory differs from the
intellectual memory.
A given recollection is considered accurate; but in the majority of
cases this is only an illusion. Nearly always, in revived
impressions, there are deductions and losses, sometimes additions;
sometimes they include _plus_, sometimes _minus_ factors. At any
rate, in the intellectual order, there are certain cases where one
can say that the recollection is perfect, without the least gap or
error; and this affirmation is legitimate because verifiable. It is
quite sufficient to compare the copy with the original. If I enter a
hall of the Alhambra with my eyes closed, I can ascertain whether
the inner vision which I have retained from a former visit is
adequate to the reality. I can check my recollection of a passage of
music by the actual hearing of the same. The painter mentioned by
Wigan who executed his portraits from memory, Mozart reconstructing
Allegri’s _Miserere_, are the classic examples of perfect cases
where the impression is revived with irreproachable exactitude.
But in the region of the feelings this comparison is impossible,
because two subjective states, of which one is the original and one
the copy, cannot co-exist in the same individual, and because the
primary impression cannot be objectivised. I see but one way of
getting over the difficulty so as to arrive at an approximately
correct answer. This would consist in comparing the revived
emotional state with a written document dating from the moment of
the first impression; and even this impression is open to doubt. J.
J. Rousseau, speaking of the enthusiasm aroused by the love-letters
of the _Nouvelle Héloïse_, tells us that they were inspired by his
own love for Madame d’Houdetot, and adds, “What would they have said
could they have read the originals!” It is possible that Rousseau
was more or less mistaken; but this is a comparison of the kind I am
suggesting. A correspondent, well equipped for psychological
observations, and accustomed to note down the day’s impressions, had
promised me to attempt such a comparison between the actual
recollection and the written document; but various causes have
prevented the accomplishment of this purpose. One might possibly,
without much trouble, chance to recover a letter written under the
impression of the moment, and compare it with the present emotional
recollection which, rightly or wrongly, we consider most correct.
For my part, I am inclined to doubt whether, in the case of
feelings, there is ever a complete correspondence between the
original and the copy; but this is merely a hypothetical view.
It still remains to say a few words on forgetfulness in the region
of the emotions. Affective amnesia is found in two forms—one
pathological, the other normal.
I pass over in silence the morbid manifestations, whose study would
be both extensive and curious, but would lead me away from my
principal aim, which is a practical one. We find numerous examples
of the loss of altruistic, moral, or religious feelings, of partial
or total indifference to the past, of complete insensibility—the
_Gemütslosigkeit_ of the German alienists.
I confine myself to the consideration of affective amnesia under its
simplest and most widely-known form. Nothing is more frequently met
with. In the first place, the single fact that most psychologists
either neglect or deny the phenomenon of emotional memory,
constitutes a presumption that its function is not a very obvious
one. Moreover, that emotional memory which I have designated the
false or abstract one, may, without prejudice, be considered as a
mitigated form of forgetfulness. Finally, eliminating the
non-emotional temperaments as irrelevant to our subject, we may
find, even among the emotional, many who feel acutely, but do not
retain their emotions. Every one knows people whose whole nature is
shaken by sorrow, joy, love, indignation; they seem for a long time
as if possessed; a few weeks later, not a trace remains. Emotions
glide off their minds as a thunder-shower does off the roofs. Now
this affective amnesia has a great influence on conduct.
Here, in fact, are two general truths derived from experience, and
in my opinion incontestable:—
On the one hand, pleasant and painful sensations are the most
powerful, if not the only motive forces of human activity.
On the other, there are people in whom emotions are revived
strongly, weakly, or not at all.
The conclusion is that the portion of individual experience
resulting from the pleasures and pains experienced, will show
itself, as to its efficacy, strongly, feebly, or not at all,
according to the individual. The prodigal who has ruined himself and
is restored to opulence by an unexpected chance, if he has not
preserved a lively recollection of his privations, will begin his
extravagant career over again; if his painful recollections are of a
stable character, they will act on his natural tendencies as a
restraining or inhibitory force. The drunkard and the glutton will
not repeat their excesses as long as the impression of the
after-effects remains vivid. The educator, as every one knows, has
no hold over a child on whom the recollection of rewards and
punishments has no effect. I have already mentioned the state of
mind which frequently succeeds dangerous confinements; this, again,
is a case of affective amnesia. The absence of sympathy, in many
men, is only an incapacity for reviving the recollection of the ills
they have suffered themselves, and consequently for feeling them in
others. These are well-known facts, of which it is needless to
lengthen the list; but however well known they may be, their
psychological reason is, in my opinion, not always apprehended,
because the importance of the emotional memory has not been
recognised.
Affective amnesia, therefore, plays a much more important part in
human life than we are apt to think. It often lets us into the
secret of strange modes of action, though I would not assert that it
_alone_ is sufficient to explain these everywhere and always.
V.
The study just made seems to me to lead to the following
conclusions:—
1. There exists an AFFECTIVE TYPE as clear and well-defined as the
visual, the auditory, and the motor types. It consists in the easy,
complete, and preponderant revival of affective impressions.
I have simply applied to an almost unexplored region of memory the
methods of research inaugurated for objective sensations by Taine
and Galton, continued by many others, and successful in their hands.
It will, perhaps, be objected that the complete emotional type is
rarely found; but neither is it certain that the visual, auditory,
and motor types are of very frequent occurrence in a pure state.
This, however, is of little consequence, the essential point being
to determine its existence. Those who belong to this type will
easily recognise it. I foresee that those whose memories are of the
opposite type will refuse to admit it; but the members of the Royal
Society and the Académie des Sciences,—being for the most part
possessed of non-visual memories,—when questioned by Galton, failed
to understand his queries, and would probably have rejected his
conclusions. Many men have an incurable tendency to wish that every
one were constituted like themselves, and to refuse to admit the
existence of any departures from their type. Yet in psychology, even
more than elsewhere, we must be distrustful of too extensive
generalisations.
2. There exists not only a general emotional type; it admits of
varieties, and it is even probable that _partial_ types are the most
frequent. Here I note a resemblance between my researches and those
made with regard to impressions of objective origin. It is known
that some persons have an excellent memory for faces, figures,
concrete objects, but not for colours or visual signs, such as
printing and writing. Others have an excellent memory for languages
but none for music, or inversely. Moreover, have not numerous
pathological phenomena demonstrated the fact that, in a determinate
category of images, a whole group may disappear, without appreciable
injury to the rest?
I have not at present a sufficient supply of documents to enter on
the study of the varieties of the affective type; but it is certain
that they exist; that, for some, a clear and frequent revival only
takes place in the case of pleasurable impressions; in others, of
gloomy or of erotic images. I have obtained conclusive affirmative
answers on this point, but will only transcribe a case which deals
with fear.
Case 7. "I am not what would be called a general emotional type,
but I have a special emotional memory—that of fear, which in me is
very pronounced.... I have had in my life, like every one else,
many joyful moments; I will frankly say that, when I remember
those incidents in my life which have caused me great joy, I feel
no joy whatever. Besides, it is very difficult to recall the
moments in which I felt joyful, or even the incidents which
produced my joy—probably because the representative memory has not
been reinforced by the emotional memory. I do not know how this
may be, and do not attempt to draw any inferences from my own
case. I am only speaking of myself.
"I have tried to recall one of the moments in my life when I had
the acutest sense of joy—it was in April 1888. [Here follows a
long description of honours obtained by the author at the age of
twenty, and the applause—unexpected at his age—of a numerous
public assembly.] I have a clear and very accurate recollection of
the incidents I have just been describing; I can remember the
cause to which, rightly or wrongly, I attributed my success; I
could repeat nearly every word I said on that occasion; I could
remember (though not so easily) the hall and the faces of the
audience; but I find, to-day, no joy whatever in thinking of all
this.
"As regards my capacity for reviving sad recollections the same
may be said as in the case of joyfulness.
"To return to fear. I have two very conclusive examples of special
emotional memory. When a boarder at the S—— _lycée_ at Bucharest,
I dreaded all the staff of the institution on account of a
punishment they were in the habit of inflicting on me—that of
confinement to the schoolroom on holidays. I remember having such
a fear of this imprisonment that, once I had left the building, it
was with great difficulty I could bring myself to pass the
gateway, for fear of being stopped. In later years, having
finished my studies, and kept up friendly relations with all
persons concerned, I used sometimes to return on a visit to the
Lycée, but never without feeling a kind of terrified shudder on my
entrance.
"More than this: having remained three years at Paris, without
visiting my own country, I returned to Bucharest, and went to see
a new director, with whom I was on friendly terms. Even then, when
approaching the door of the institution, I felt a sort of
uneasiness which was nothing else but my old dread in an
attenuated form.
"In the first year of my stay at Paris I entered my name for the
more advanced lectures of the Lycée L——. I only attended them for
a week. In the class-room I was conscious of an uneasy feeling; I
feared something without knowing what it was; I felt a horror of
all the staff, though they were full of consideration for me, and
at my age (twenty-two) I was no longer on the footing of a
schoolboy. What could I have been afraid of? for I might have left
whenever I wished it. Though accustomed to work for many hours
together in libraries, I could do nothing in this class-room. I
believe this state to have been a reminiscence of my old fear—that
of the Bucharest _lycée_.... Long afterwards, when a student
attending the lectures of the Faculté de Droit, I had every day to
pass the Lycée L——. I would hurry past it as quickly as I could,
feeling the same dread as at the time when I used to pass the
gateway of the Bucharest _lycée_.
“I have a good motor, no visual, and a very slight auditory
memory.”
It might be said that in this case the revival is often artificially
produced, and associated with special circumstances; but it seemed
to me of too clear and definite a character to be omitted.
I need not point out that these individual differences in the
revivability of emotional states certainly play a great part in the
constitution of different types of character. Moreover, the
existence of variations of the emotional type cuts short the
question, acrimoniously debated by some writers, whether pains can
be more easily remembered than pleasures. Optimists and pessimists
have fought fiercely over this phantasmal problem; but it is a vain
and factitious question so long as we suppose that it admits of but
one solution. There is not, and cannot be, a general answer.
Certain individuals revive joyful images with astonishing facility;
sad memories, when they arise, are immediately and easily trodden
down. I know an inveterate optimist, successful in all his
undertakings, who has much difficulty in picturing to himself the
few reverses that he has experienced. “I remember joys much more
easily than painful states” is an answer I frequently meet with in
my notes.
On the other hand, there are many who say, “I remember sorrows much
more easily than pleasurable states.” In the course of my inquiries
I have found that the latter are the most numerous; but I do not see
my way to draw any conclusion from this fact. One says, “I find it
much easier to revive unpleasant feelings, whence my tendency to
pessimism. Joyous impressions are evanescent. A painful recollection
makes me sad at a joyful moment; a joyful recollection does not
cheer me at a sad one.”
These are straightforward cases. Outside them the question above
stated can only be solved at haphazard, and by a merely mental view.
3. Revivability depends on cerebral and internal conditions
(whatever these may be, known or unknown) rather than on the primary
impression itself. To feel emotions acutely and revive them acutely
are two widely different operations; one does not imply the other.
We have seen that, in many cases, revivability even seems to be in
inverse ratio to the intensity of the initial phenomenon. This
brings us back to the question of characters. It does not matter
whether the impression is a vivid one; what is wanted is that it
should be fixed. Often it is heightened by a process of latent
incubation depending on individual temperament. Chateaubriand,
speaking of a gamekeeper to whom he was much attached, and who was
killed by a poacher, says, “My imagination (at sixteen) pictured to
me Raulx holding his entrails in his hands, and dragging himself to
the hut where he died. I conceived the idea of revenge; I wished to
fight the murderer. In this respect I am singularly constituted; at
the moment of a blow I scarcely feel it, but it engraves itself on
my memory; _the recollection, instead of being weakened, grows
stronger with time_; it sleeps in my heart for years together, then
the most trivial circumstance awakens it with renewed force, and my
wound becomes more painful than on the first day.”[107] Here we have
another analogy with what takes place in the order of objective
impressions. It is not sufficient to have good eyes in order to have
a good visual memory, and I know short-sighted persons whose inner
vision is excellent.[108]
-----
Footnote 107:
_Mémoires_, vol. i. p. 77. The italics are not in the original.
Footnote 108:
This has recently been experimentally demonstrated; the
observations made by Dr. Toulouse (with the assistance of
specialists) on M. Zola may be specially mentioned. In this case
the coincidence of a somewhat low degree of sensory acuteness with
a very high degree of delicacy and precision in revived sensory
impression was found not only in the case of vision, but
especially in that of smell. (Toulouse, _Emile Zola: Enquête
Médico-psychologique_, 1896, pp. 164, 173, 179, 206.)—ED.
-----
I may terminate this inquiry, which is a sketch rather than a study
of the subject, by reminding the reader that the facts ascertained
for the other, the intellectual part of memory, have not been the
work of one man or of one day.[109]
-----
Footnote 109:
This chapter was first published in the _Revue Philosophique_ for
October 1894. It called forth some new communications, two only of
which have been added to the original text. The affirmation of a
type of affective memory has, as I expected, provoked both
criticism and denial. My principal opponent, Prof. Titchener, has
published on this subject a somewhat extensive article in the
_Philosophical Review_ (November 1895), in which he reproaches me
with not having cited a single case of pure emotional memory—i.e.,
memory from which all sensory and ideational elements are absent,
and where there is a revival of feeling _as such_. An example of
this kind, which should be quite conclusive, seems to me almost
impossible to produce. A pleasure, a pain, an emotion, are always
associated with a sensation, a representation, or an act; revival
necessarily bringing back the intellectual state which forms part
of the complexus and supports it. But the real question is
elsewhere: Is revival, in certain persons at least, a dry record,
or a _felt_ state? In this last case—and it does occur—there is
the recollection of the emotional state as such.
There is another objection: Can it be said that an emotion is the
reproduction of an antecedent emotion, and not a new emotion? The
reproduction of an emotion can itself be nothing other than an
emotion, but it bears the marks of repetition. Without returning
to what has been said above, I remark that those contemporary
psychologists, who study with admirable patience the mechanism of
memory, neglect that of its most general conditions. Now the chief
of these is that every recollection must be a _reversion_, by
virtue of which, the past once more becoming a present, we live at
present in the past. The recollection of an emotion as such does
not escape the action of this law; it must become actual once
more—must _be_ a real emotion, whether acute or obtuse.
Taking account of the criticisms, and of the new material supplied
to me, I may once again sum up my inquiry thus—
1. The emotional memory is _nil_ in the majority of people.
2. In others there is a half intellectual, half emotional memory,
_i.e._, the emotional elements are only revived partially and with
difficulty, by the help of the intellectual states associated with
them.
3. Others, and these the least numerous, have a true—_i.e._,
complete—emotional memory; the intellectual element being only a
means of revival which is rapidly effaced.
-----
CHAPTER XII.
THE FEELINGS AND THE ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS.
_The function of the feelings, as the cause of association—The law
of affective association, conceived as general, and as local—I.
Function of unconscious feeling: ancestral or hereditary
unconsciousness; personal unconsciousness arising from
cœnæsthesia; personal unconsciousness arising from the events of
our life—Law of transference by contiguity, by resemblance: wide
or narrow—II. Function of the conscious feelings: accidental
cases, permanent cases, exceptional or rare cases._
In this chapter we have still to deal with the relation between the
feelings and the memory, but under quite another form, seeing that
we have to study the feelings as a _cause_. Instead of establishing,
as we have hitherto done, that there is such a thing as a real
memory of the feelings, our present aim is to determine the function
of states of feeling in the recalling of recollections and the
association of ideas. Their importance as a hidden factor of
revivability has been recognised by several contemporary
writers,[110] some even having a tendency to exaggerate it.
-----
Footnote 110:
I may specially mention Horwicz, _Psychologische Analysen_, vol.
i. pp. 160 _et seq._, 265-331, 369 _et seq._; Fouillée,
_Psychologie des idées-forces_, vol. i. pp. 221 _et seq._; J.
Sully, _The Human Mind_, vol. ii. pp. 76-80; Shadworth Hodgson,
_Time and Space_, p. 266; W. James, _Psychology_, i. 571;
Höffding, _Psychologie_ (2nd ed.), p. 331.
-----
We know that the theory of the association of ideas has been reduced
to two fundamental laws—that of contiguity and that of resemblance.
I may remark, without insisting on the fact, that they are not of
the same nature; the first, being purely mechanical, the result of
experience, while the second supposes, in addition to this, a
certain degree of mental labour, for a complete correspondence
between two states is rarely met with, and can only be grasped in
consequence of a dissociation or abstraction operating on the raw
materials. These two laws are purely intellectual; they are
regulative principles deduced from facts, nothing more. They are
rather descriptive than explanatory. They reveal the mechanism, but
not the motive force. They suppose something beyond, unless we admit
that ideas are psychic atoms endowed with some mysterious attraction
or affinity. With regard to the determining reasons, they are dumb.
Now it cannot be doubted that in many cases (not all) the cause of
the association is to be found in a permanent or momentary state of
the feelings.
The writers who have pointed out this influence (often efficacious
though latent) have conceived this superior law, which might be
called the Law of Feeling, in two different ways, some as absolute
and universal, others as partial and local. I take my stand among
the latter.
1. Fouillée (as also, it seems, Horwicz) has maintained the former
thesis. “The association of ideas presupposes that of the emotions,
and, with the latter, that of the impulses. The dominant impulse
awakens, by association, the secondary impulses tending in the same
direction. The tie which unites them is the unity of an aim in
relation to which the impulses are medium, the unity of an effect in
relation to which they are co-operating forces.... The laws of
association and contrast are what dominate the association of the
feelings” (_loc. cit._, p. 221). I shall not be suspected of
hostility to the essential spirit of this thesis, since the present
work is only one long vindication of the primordial nature of
tendencies. But unless we are led astray by the mirage of unity at
any price, it is impossible to admit that _every_ association
supposes an emotional factor as a determining reason. Not to speak
of the numerous cases resulting from contiguity, in which the part
played by the feelings is very doubtful, I find an important
category of purely intellectual associations, where the intervention
of the feelings appears to me impossible to verify. Is it likely
that the mathematician and the metaphysician who connect together a
long series of abstractions have an emotional state as the support
and vehicle of their thought, whether the latter be discursive or
constructive? I do not see, in theory or in fact, any reason for
admitting this, unless we wish to involve the love of truth; and in
any case this would only be a _primum movens_, not the direct and
immediate cause of the associations.
2. The influence of emotional states must be stated as a principal,
but not an exclusive cause. It is summed up in what Shadworth
Hodgson has called the “Law of Interest.” In a past event,
everything is not equally interesting; in its revival, all the
elements are not equally active, the most emotional bringing the
others with them. “Two processes are constantly going on in
redintegrations. The one a process of corrosion, melting, decay; the
other a process of renewing, arising, becoming.... Those parts of
the object, however, which possess an interest, resist this tendency
to gradual decay of the whole object.”[111] Coleridge rightly says
that “The true practical general law of association is this: that
whatever makes certain parts of a total impression more vivid or
distinct than the rest will determine the mind to recall these, in
preference to others equally linked together by the common condition
of contemporaneity or continuity. But the will itself, by confining
and intensifying the attention, may arbitrarily give vividness or
distinctness to any object whatsoever.”[112] The power attributed by
Coleridge to the attention and the will finally resolves itself into
an emotional state as ultimate cause, and from it alone can an
increase of intensity be derived.
-----
Footnote 111:
Shadworth Hodgson, _Time and Space_, p. 266; quoted by W. James,
i. 572.
Footnote 112:
_Biographia Litteraria_, chap. vii. p. 61 (Bohn’s ed.); quoted by
James, i. 572.
-----
I shall insist no further on these generalities, as it will be more
instructive to determine by means of a few details the influence of
the emotional life on the memory. To this end I shall divide our
study into two parts, the function of unconscious feeling, and that
of the conscious feelings.
I.
It is not always easy to determine positively the degree in which
unconscious feeling influences the memory in order to awaken it, or
to connect ideas with one another. I have purposely employed the
vague term “unconscious feeling” as prejudging nothing with regard
to its nature. We may form any conception we like of it, either
considering it as purely physiological or assigning to it a
psychological character—that of a consciousness diminishing to
infinity. Both these opinions have their partisans, but this does
not matter as regards the following considerations. In this
unconscious feeling I distinguish three strata, passing from the
deepest upwards, from the more obscure to the less obscure.
1. Hereditary or ancestral unconsciousness. I mention this merely
for the sake of completeness. It would consist in the influence of
certain modes of feeling, inherited and fixed in a race, which
might, without our knowing it, exercise some sway over our
associations. Under this form, at least, it appears to me extremely
hypothetical. Laycock[113] (1844), one of the founders of the
physiology of the unconscious, attempts to explain by this means
certain national and individual tastes; the Hungarians are supposed
to like plains because these appeal to the ancestral recollection of
the Mongolian steppes, their primæval home. Herbert Spencer, who,
however, has not occupied himself much with the influence of
sentiments on the association of ideas, says incidentally that, in
the impression produced by a landscape, “along with the immediate
sensations, there are partially excited the myriads of sensations
that have been in time past received from objects such as those
presented; further, there are also excited certain deeper, but now
vague combinations of states which were organised in the race during
barbarous times, when its pleasurable activities were chiefly among
the woods and waters.”[114] Schneider assumes this ancestral
revivification in every æsthetic perception. We shall return to this
subject in Part II. The predatory tastes of primitive man would
explain certain agreeable associations (_e.g._, the pleasure of
constructing a bloodthirsty drama) which contrast with the habits of
civilised man.
-----
Footnote 113:
_A Chapter on some Organic Laws of Personal and Ancestral Memory_,
1875.
Footnote 114:
_Principles of Psychology_, i., § 214.
-----
These facts seem to me reducible to a single explanation. There are
in every man latent tendencies, which may remain latent throughout
his life, but may also be awakened and revealed by some accidental
occurrence. They might be called hereditary, since they are found in
an inherited organism; but it would be quite as correct to call them
innate. In any case, it is very difficult to prove that they are a
survival, and above all a resurrection of once existing tendencies.
2. Personal unconsciousness arising from cœnæsthesia, _i.e._, from
the internal sensations collectively. This imperceptibly brings us
down to consciousness, from the moment when the affective state can
be verified without induction. A certain disposition, a certain
manner of feeling, is the direct and immediate cause of association.
It is permanent or transitory. If permanent, it answers to the
temperament or disposition. As the subject is cheerful, melancholy,
erotic, or ambitious, an unconscious selection is exercised on the
ideas arising in consciousness; an artist and a practical man, in
face of the same object, have two totally distinct modes of
association. If transitory, it corresponds, in the same individual,
to states of health and sickness, to changes of age; each one of
these distinct states produces a distinct selection. The unity of
certain dreams, in spite of the apparent difference of associations,
has its easily discovered cause in an organic or affective
disposition—fatigue, depression, oppression, circulatory or
digestive troubles, sexual excitement. The simplicity and frequency
of these facts will permit us to dispense with insisting upon them.
3. Personal unconsciousness, a residuum of affective states
connected with anterior perceptions, or with events of our life.
This emotional residuum, although latent, is no less active, and can
be recovered by analysis. This case, one of the most important
connected with our subject, has recently been studied by
Lehmann[115] under the name of displacement (_Verschiebung_) of the
sentiments, and by Sully under the name of _transference_ of
feelings; this second denomination seems to me the clearer and more
accurate of the two.
-----
Footnote 115:
_Hauptgesetze_, etc., pp. 268, 250-357; Sully, _The Human Mind_,
ii. 78; cf. _Outlines of Psychology_, p. 349.
-----
Under its most general form—for its mechanism is not always the
same—the law of transference consists in _directly_ attributing a
sentiment to an object which does not itself cause it. There is no
transference in the sense that the feeling is detached from the
primary event in order to be connected with another; but there is a
moment of generalisation or extension of the sentiment, which
spreads like a drop of oil. This transference can be symbolically
represented. Let us represent an intellectual state by A, and by _s_
the affective state which accompanies it; A by association excites
B, C, D, E, etc., while _s_ is successively transferred to B, C, D,
E, etc. Thus we have, first, (A)/_s_, B, C, D, E, etc., then
(A,B,C,D,E, etc.)/_s_, so that C, D, or E can directly produce _s_
quite as A can, and even without the assistance of A. “The feeling
is excited without the mediacy of the particular presentative
element of which it was originally a concomitant” (Sully).[116] This
law of transfer is of sufficient importance to delay us a little,
because it plays a somewhat important part in the formation of
complex emotions, and we shall need to recall it more than once.
Besides, it does not always operate in the same manner. I
distinguish two principal cases, according as the transfer is the
result of contiguity, or of resemblance.
-----
Footnote 116:
_The Human Mind_, ii. 79.
-----
_Transference by Contiguity._—When intellectual states have
co-existed and formed a complex by contiguity, and one of them has
been accompanied by a special sentiment, any one of these states has
a tendency to excite the same sentiment.
We can find numerous and simple examples in common life. The lover
transfers the sentiment at first called forth by the person of his
mistress to her clothes, her furniture, her house. For the same
reason, hatred and jealousy vent their rage on inanimate objects
belonging to the enemy. In absolute monarchies the reverence in
which the king’s person is held is transferred to the throne, to the
emblems of his power, to everything directly or indirectly connected
with his person. The following charming passage from Herbert Spencer
relates to a less simple case of the same nature: “The cawing of
rooks is not in itself an agreeable sound; musically considered, it
is very much the contrary. Yet the cawing of rooks usually produces
pleasurable feelings—feelings which many suppose to result from the
quality of the sound itself. Only the few who are given to
self-analysis are aware that the cawing of rooks is agreeable to
them because it has been connected with countless of their greatest
gratifications—with the gathering of wild flowers in childhood; with
Saturday afternoon excursions in schoolboy days; with midsummer
holidays in the country, when books were thrown aside and lessons
were replaced by games and adventures in the field; with fresh,
sunny mornings, in after years, when a walking excursion was an
immense relief from toil. As it is, this sound, though not causally
related to all these multitudinous and varied past delights, but
only often associated with them, rouses a dim consciousness of these
delights; just as the voice of an old friend, unexpectedly coming
into the house, suddenly raises a wave of that feeling which has
resulted from the pleasures of past companionship.” We must remark
that in the transfer by contiguity, which, by its very nature is
automatic, the intellectual states act as _causes_, since the
extension of the sentiment is subordinated to them.
_Transference by Resemblance._—When an intellectual state has been
accompanied by a vivid sentiment, every similar or analogous state
tends to excite the same feeling.
In this psychological fact lies the secret of the emotion of love,
tenderness, antipathy, respect, which we feel towards a person at
first sight, without apparent reason, and which we are apt to put
down to the account of instinct. But those who devote themselves to
the analysis of their own consciousness will discover, in many
cases, a more or less close resemblance to a person who inspires, or
has inspired, us with love, tenderness, antipathy, or respect. A
mother may feel a sudden sympathy for a young man who is like her
dead son, or even merely of the same age. The explanation of many of
these cases lies in an unconscious state which is not easy to seize,
but which, if it returns to consciousness (a process in which the
will is only very indistinctly concerned), elucidates everything.
There are also so-called instinctive fears, without conscious
motives, which, by going a little below the surface, can be referred
to the same explanation.[117]
-----
Footnote 117:
This point has been well treated by Lehmann, _op. cit._, p. 244.
-----
This transfer can take place in two ways, one narrow, the other
broad. The narrow method rests on resemblance only: B resembles A,
the perception or representation of whom is or was accompanied by a
certain feeling; the transfer goes no further. The broader method
rests on analogy, and has a much wider scope; it passes from one
individual to several—to a class or classes. “A friend of mine,”
says Lehmann, “hated dogs; circumstances forced him to keep one; he
attached himself to this animal, and gradually his feeling of
sympathy spread to the whole canine race” (_loc. cit._). This
possibility of a limited transfer has been a social and moral factor
of the first importance; it has allowed of the extension of the
sympathetic sentiments from the small exclusive clan to more and
more distant groups—the tribe, the nation, the human race. The wider
transfer has been the great agent of the transition from
particularism to universalism.[118]
-----
Footnote 118:
The mechanism of the suppression of the presentative intermediary
between the initial state A and the distant states O, II, I, etc.,
has been studied by J. Sully (ii. 79). I do not insist on this
point, which belongs rather to the psychology of association than
to that of the emotions.
-----
II.
From the unconscious states to the affective states, of which the
subject is fully conscious, the transition is made gradually and
through doubtful forms; but whether obscure, semi-obscure, or clear,
their influence remains the same. Among the numerous cases in which
the association of ideas depends on a conscious affective
disposition we may distinguish three groups:—
1. Individual, accidental, ephemeral cases. These can be reduced to
a single formula: when two or more states of consciousness have been
accompanied by the same emotional state, they tend to be associated
with one another. Emotional resemblance unites and intertwines
disparate impressions. It is a case of association by resemblance,
_but not intellectual_; impressions are associated because they
resemble one another in a common emotional colouring, not _qua_
impressions. Examples of this are abundant. L. Ferri (in his
_Psychologie de l’Association_, where, by-the-bye, he does not note
this emotional law) tells us that one day, being stung by a fly, he
suddenly remembered a child seen by him, long ago, when himself very
young, on its death-bed. Whence this sudden vision? “In the first
place, I was lying on my bed, then I had been stung by a fly, and
lastly, the sight of the corpse had caused in me a deep sadness,
while, at this same moment, I also happened to be very sad.”
Association through emotional identity or resemblance is of frequent
occurrence in dreams, as has been already said. I remember, among
many others, a dream whose unity, in spite of the apparent
incoherence of the association, was due to a general sense of
fatigue. A road without milestones stretched before me, of which I
was about to complete the last stage; steep mountains kept rising
one behind another; my eyes were wearied with trying to catch sight
of the longed-for town on the horizon; and every time I wished to
inquire the way I had to speak a foreign language which I understand
but imperfectly, and in which it is very difficult for me to express
myself. I awoke, feeling a general aching and heaviness of all the
limbs. Sully relates a dream whose unity consisted in a sense of
anxiety and vexation. He was suddenly called upon to give a lecture
on Herder; he began by stammering out some generalities; then he was
addressed by one of his audience, who suggested difficulties to him;
then the entire assembly broke up tumultuously. One of his children,
who had seen, for the first time, the great clock at Strasburg, and,
after an interval of two days, the Swiss glaciers, dreamed on the
following night that the figures of the clock were walking about on
the snow. In this case the groundwork of the dream is a feeling of
admiration or surprise.
2. Permanent and stable cases; to be met with everywhere, because
involved in the structure of the human mind. They are fixed in
language. When dealing with the expression of the emotions (Chap.
IX.) we met with “the principle of association of analogous
sensations,” formulated by Wundt. Adapting it to our present
subject, we may say that sensations imbued with a similar emotional
colouring are easily associated, and strengthen each other. Nothing
can differ more in nature than our external sensations (except smell
and taste), and the qualities which they make known to us; the data
of sight and hearing have no resemblance to one another as
cognitions of the external world, yet we speak of sombre voices,
clear voices, screaming colours, coloured music. We associate sight
with thermal sensations, as when we speak of warm or cold colours.
Taste also has its share—bitter reproaches, subacid criticism.
Finally, touch, as Sully-Prudhomme has remarked, is perhaps the most
abundant source of associations between the idea of the physical
sensation and an emotional state; compare the terms touching, hard,
tender, heavy, firm, solid, harsh, penetrating, poignant, piquant,
etc. At the bottom of all these associations there is a common
emotional colouring which both causes and supports them. Perhaps it
would be more accurate to class them among the cases of
semi-conscious emotional influence; but we have already said that
our division into conscious and unconscious factors is superficial
and of no great importance.
3. Exceptional and rare cases. Flournoy, in his important work on
“coloured hearing,” rightly explains this anomaly by “emotional
association.” We know that several hypotheses on the origin and
cause of this phenomenon have been constructed. On the embryological
one, it would be the result of an incomplete differentiation between
the sense of sight and that of hearing; a survival, we are told,
from a primitive epoch when this state was the rule. On the
anatomical theory, we suppose anastomoses between the cerebral
centres of the visual and auditory sensations. Besides these we have
the physiological theory, or that of nervous irradiation, and the
psychological, or that of association. I do not inquire if all cases
may be reduced to a single explanation; certainly most seem
reducible to association. We are not, however, dealing with any and
every form of association—it must be a psychological one, as
Flournoy was the first to remark. “By emotional association, I mean
that which establishes itself between two impressions, not on
account of a qualitative resemblance (for the two may be as
disparate as sound and colour), nor in virtue of their regular and
frequent concurrence in the consciousness, but in consequence of the
analogy between their emotional characteristics. Each sensation or
perception possesses, in fact, along with its objective quality or
its intellectual content, a sort of subjective coefficient,
springing from the roots which it sends down into our being, and
from the peculiar way in which it impresses, pleases or displeases,
excites or subdues us, in a word, makes our whole nature vibrate. We
can conceive how two absolutely heterogeneous sensations,
incommensurable as far as their objective content is concerned, such
as a colour and the sound _i_, may be comparable with one another
and resemble each other more or less, by virtue of vibrations
produced by them in the organism; and by the same process of thought
it is conceivable that this emotional factor might become a link
between the two, an associative bond by means of which one awakens
the other.”[119]
-----
Footnote 119:
Th. Flournoy, _Des phénomènes de Synopsie_ (1893), p. 20.
-----
Let us add that we meet, though much more rarely, with cases of
coloured smell and taste, and even, it appears, of coloured
pain.[120] This abnormal association between determinate colours and
determinate tastes, odours, pains, may be explained in the same
manner.
-----
Footnote 120:
Suarez de Mendoza, _L’audition colorée_ (1890), pp. 58, 59.
-----
Shall we attribute to the same cause a fact, ascertained
(exceptionally, however) in the case of certain hysterical subjects
in the hypnotic state, which may be described as follows? The
excitation of certain circumscribed regions of the body immediately
causes to arise in the mind either ideas or feelings which are
imperiously imposed on the consciousness and last as long as the
excitement which provoked them. Pitres, who has made an extended
study of these “_zones idéogènes_,”[121] has discovered about twenty
scattered over various parts of the body in the same subject. The
effect of excitation (by friction or compression) is always the same
in the same individual, but varies from one individual to another,
which excludes the hypothesis of a previously existing mechanism.
Among the feelings aroused by this procedure I note sadness,
cheerfulness, anger, fear, eroticism, piety, ecstasy.
-----
Footnote 121:
_Leçons cliniques sur l’hystérie et l’hypnotisme_, vol. ii.,
lecture 39. Here will be found the historical part of the subject
(Braid, Chambard, Féré) and the personal observations of the
author.
-----
Most writers have limited themselves to the statement of the fact,
without attempting to explain it. Pitres alone proposes the
hypothesis of auto-suggestion, which is not far from an association
of ideas. Must we admit an original fortuitous coincidence between a
local bodily modification and a certain emotional state (or idea),
whence an association through contiguity fixed and strengthened by
repetition, so as to become indissoluble? Or can it be that friction
and compression produce in certain subjects peculiar organic
reactions, capable of exciting a special emotional state? We can
only hazard conjectures.
In conclusion: the influence of emotional dispositions on the memory
is great, and continually active; it contributes to the revival and
association of ideas. Now, the emotional states are not entities,
but modes of consciousness, the psychical equivalents of certain
organic reactions—visual, vaso-motor, or muscular; so that the
emotional influence reduces itself to all this. And is all this to
be reduced to movements? A marked tendency towards this opinion is
visible in several of our contemporaries. Fouillée, as we saw a
little while ago, refers all association to that of impulses;
Horwicz does the same under another form (_loc. cit._). He places in
the feelings the basis of all conservative memory, and the basis of
all feelings in motion. “We recall our emotional state in proportion
as we can reproduce the movements implied in it.” By a different
road—that of experiment—Münsterberg has attempted to show that
so-called successive association is reducible to a rapid
simultaneity, and that, if we suppress all movements during the
reception of impressions, memory is much diminished and reproduction
difficult.[122] It is true that his experiments were limited to
articulatory movements.
-----
Footnote 122:
Sommer (_Zeitschrift für Psychologie_, vol. ii.) reports an
observation on an aphasic patient, which admits of an analogous
interpretation.
-----
I merely indicate in passing this general hypothesis. Whether
admitted or not, the relation between the feelings and the
association of ideas, though often misunderstood, has been
indubitably proved by a mass of facts which, in spite of their
heterogeneous character, all point to the same conclusion.
PART II.
SPECIAL PSYCHOLOGY.
INTRODUCTION.
_Importance of the study of special feelings—Utility of historical
documents—Causes of the evolution of the feelings: (1)
intellectual development; (2) hereditary influence, perhaps
reducible to influences of environment—Cases in which the
evolution of ideas precedes that of feelings—Inverse cases—The
intellect swayed by the principle of contradiction;
feeling by that of finality—Classification of primitive
tendencies—Method to be followed—Group I.: physiological
(reception, transformation, restitution)—Group II.:
psycho-physiological—Group III.: psychological—Their
enumeration._
I.
The special study of the various manifestations of the emotional
life enables us to penetrate much further into psychology than do
the preceding generalities. This study is not a merely supplementary
or elucidatory one to be abbreviated, treated cursorily, or even
omitted altogether, as is done by some representatives of the
intellectualist theory. As long as we have not considered,
_seriatim_ and in detail, every feeling, whether simple or compound,
we have no idea of their rich multiplicity of aspects, of which
general formulas are only meagre abridgments.
Some say or imply, contemptuously, that this is a purely descriptive
study. But so long as we have found no other method of treating the
question, it will always be better than silence. Hitherto,
experimentation applied to the feelings has been kept within very
narrow limits, and has done scarcely anything beyond corroborating
the data furnished by observation. We must therefore modify our
point of view and seek elsewhere; anthropology, the history of
customs, of arts, religions and sciences, will often be more useful
to us than the contributions of physiology. The experiments of the
laboratory inspire some with a faith not to be shaken; but the
evolution of the feelings in time and space, through centuries and
races, is a laboratory, operating, for thousands of years, on
millions of men; and its documentary value is a high one. It would
be a great loss to psychology if these documents were neglected.
Having been long confined to introspective observation, it has
deliberately cut itself off from the biological sciences,
considering them alien or useless to its work. It would not be
desirable to fall into a similar error with regard to the concrete
development of human life, and, after mutilating the study from
below, to do so from above. If the intellectual life has its roots
in biology, it is only in social facts that it can find its full
development. A science never gains by excessive restriction of its
scope; it is better to err in the opposite direction.[123]
-----
Footnote 123:
Among the causes which have given some impulse to the psychology
of the feelings during the last half of this century, Ladd
(_Psychology, Descriptive and Explanatory_, pp. 163, 164)
mentions: (1) the theory of evolution, because the affective
phenomena are fundamental and permanent, and men differ from one
another far less in their appetites, emotions, and passions than
in their ideas and thoughts; and because this doctrine affirms
that, underlying the highest forms of feeling, there is always
some instinctive tendency; and (2) the literary and artistic
movement which began with J. J. Rousseau, and asserts itself more
and more in the Wagnerian music and the modern novel, and which
should invite psychologists to attempt its analysis. It would be
well to add the contemporary sociological studies which have shown
the important part played by emotional elements, simple or
complex, deliberately eliminated by the economists from their
theories of social organisation.
-----
Since, therefore, we have to pass in review all the forms of
feeling, lower and higher, primary and derived, to note the
successive moments of their development, and to follow them in their
transformations, one question dominates our whole subject: what
causes determine the evolution of the feelings?
In order to give to this question a clear and concrete form, let
us take primitive man, as reconstructed by the anthropologists,
not without much hypothesis and conjecture. Whether he were the
ferocious wild beast described by some, or a puny, feeble, naked
being, chipping his first weapons among the rolled flints of a
river-bed, keeping up with difficulty his famished life from day
to day, and finding a precarious shelter from incessant dangers in
the hollows of the rocks, it is in any case certain that he made
originally but a poor figure on the surface of the globe. How has
he progressed from primitive cannibalism to his present moral and
social culture? from the bestial sexual act to chivalrous love?
from coarse fetichism to religious metaphysics or mysticism? from
the rude drawings of the Neolithic age to the refinements of the
æsthetic sentiment? from a narrow and limited curiosity to a
disinterested enthusiasm for science? How has the passage been
accomplished from one extreme to the other? It is clear that a new
form of feeling cannot arise by spontaneous generation; it can
only be the work of a transformation, of a physiological
development. How has this happened? What causes have brought about
this metamorphosis?
The principal, essential, fundamental cause is intellectual
development.
Another cause, adduced by many writers, but more doubtful and more
limited in its action, is transmission by heredity.
1. In spite of its importance, the first cause need not detain us
long, since it can only be presented, for the moment, under the form
of vague generalities. Its action consists in the ascending
progression which rises from the inferior forms of knowledge
(sensations and perceptions) to concrete representations, then to
abstract representations (generic images), then to the medium and
superior forms of abstraction, and involves in its movement
concomitant modifications of affective life produced by reaction.
Primitive man, like the child and the animal, is at first only a
bundle of wants, tendencies, instincts which, when not simply
unconscious, are connected with external or internal tendencies. The
instinct of self-preservation, a synthetic formula expressing a
group of subordinate and convergent instincts, adjusts itself
differently according to circumstances—sometimes defensive,
sometimes offensive. It is only determined by the successive ends
which it has to attain, just as the muscular force of my arm may be
equally well employed in raising a weight, in firing a gun, in
striking a blow, or in caressing. The intellectual element, whatever
it may be, is always the determining principle; never, alone and by
itself, the spring of action. The process always follows the same
course, and remains identical from start to finish; it passes from
the simple into the complex, as we shall see in discussing each
separate emotion. The child who feels acutely the possession of a
toy, or the deprivation of it, is not affected by the beauty of a
landscape, by reason of his limited intellectual power. We know that
(in spite of common opinion) a savage, even a barbarian, is not
moved by the splendours of civilised life, but only by its petty and
puerile sides. Its greater aspects inspire him neither with desire,
admiration, nor jealousy, because he does not understand them.
Bougainville, in the last century, had already remarked this fact,
which has frequently been confirmed since. Speaking of the profound
indifference of the Pacific Islanders to the skilled construction of
his ships and the instruments belonging to them, he says, “They
treat the masterpieces of human industry as laws and phenomena of
nature.”
2. Must we admit heredity as a special and independent cause of
emotional evolution? This problem has been hotly debated. Darwin,
Spencer, and many others following them, admit that certain acquired
variations or modifications in the range of the feelings may be
hereditarily transmitted, then fixed and organised in a race. They
give as examples, fear, the benevolent feelings, the love of nature,
the musical sense, etc.; the sudden return of so-called civilised
individuals to savage or nomad life, for want of a hereditary
tendency fixed by the habit of several generations; while the
co-existence of predatory tendencies with the highest culture is for
them a case of atavism or reversion.[124] On the other hand, the
dominant opinion for the last twenty years (I think it shows
symptoms of declining) is radically opposed to the inheritance of
acquired modifications. Weismann and Wallace, who, more than others,
have touched on the psychological parts of this subject, are
decidedly for the negative. The question is therefore an open one,
and I accept it as such, in order to escape the accusation of a bias
in favour of heredity. But even while admitting that there is no
fact strictly conclusive in favour of the transmission of psychic
peculiarities, it nevertheless remains true that some occurrences of
this sort are probable enough, especially in the pathological order.
These belong to the category of appetites, tendencies, and passions,
much more than to the group of intellectual states. This might have
been foreseen, physiological heredity being more stable than
psychological, and physiological conditions affecting the emotional
life much more immediately than the intellectual.
-----
Footnote 124:
For further details, see my _Hérédité psychologique_, Bk. I. chap.
v. and Bk. III. chap. iii. Bain has discussed the question at
great length from the strictly psychological point of view (_The
Emotions_, chap. ii.). He inclines to a “probability” of
transmission in certain cases.
-----
If then, by a reserve which is perhaps superfluous, we eliminate
heredity as a factor in the evolution of the feelings, the functions
of conservation and consolidation ordinarily attributed to it ought
to be assigned to other causes—the influences of environment,
imitation, tradition, education, with its multitudinous influences.
It is clear that a new mode of emotion, arising in an isolated human
consciousness, cannot last, increase, or become contagious, in
totally different and uncongenial surroundings. Religious mysticism
was irreconcilable with the bloodthirsty cult of the Aztecs; and
what could a native St. Vincent de Paul have done among a tribe of
cannibals, or a Mozart among the Fuegians?
But these influences of environment bring us back, indirectly, to
our original cause; for manners, customs, traditions, institutions,
all these are _ideas_ which, with their accompanying feelings, have
fixed and incarnated themselves in certain acts serving as
starting-points for a new stage in evolution.
Nevertheless, the preceding statements cannot be admitted without
qualification. We have stated it as a law that the intellectual
development involves the evolution of the feelings; but this rule is
not absolute, and should be taken with important reservations. In
the first place, these two forms of evolution rarely advance _pari
passu_. Not to mention the cases in which ideas remain completely
ineffectual and abortive, and produce no movement, their action, in
general, is only felt in the long run, and emotional evolution is
retarded. In the second place, there are certain cases where the
evolution of feelings is _direct_, and precedes that of ideas.
The philosophical historian, Buckle, in his study of the factors of
civilisation, points out two as essential—intellectual progress and
moral progress; after which he puts to himself what he calls a very
grave question: which of these two is the more important, and
dominant over the other? He is decisive in choosing the first.
Buckle’s question is in great part ours; for, though not
comprehending all the manifestations of the emotional life, the
moral sentiments form at least a very important fraction of it. His
answer seems to me a legitimate one; but he was too much imbued with
the notion that it is sufficient for an idea to be true and clearly
conceived to make it an incentive to action; and he seems never to
suspect that an idea can only supplant a feeling on condition of
becoming a feeling itself.[125]
-----
Footnote 125:
The discussion is to be found in his _Civilisation in England_
(vol. i., chap. iv.). It may be summed up in the very questionable
sentence quoted by him from Cuvier, “Le bien qu’on fait aux
hommes, quelque grand qu’il soit, est toujours passager; les
vérités qu’on leur laisse sont éternelles.” He thus counts for
nothing the institutions which have arisen from an original
effort, a new growth of moral sentiment. The saying is a purely
academic aphorism.
-----
The intellect is capable of instantaneously finding out a new truth,
or recognising an idea as just and conformable to the nature of
things; but all this remains in a theoretic condition—_i.e._,
without emotional colouring or tendency to realise itself. That
which is discovered so rapidly by means of logic, takes years, or
even centuries, to become a motive for action. “If the Greeks were
unable to extend their feelings of humanity so as to include the
barbarians, the cause lay, not in intellectual insufficiency, but in
the arrestive power of their national feeling. Christianity
overthrew these barriers, not by means of intellectual reflection,
but by the effect of an acute and deeply-seated feeling. Afterwards,
within the limits of Christianity, intolerance raised new barriers,
and fettered the natural development of religion.”[126] We might
find in history numerous examples of this inertia of the feelings,
as in the case of slavery, etc. We imagine the emotions as in a
state of perpetual motion and instability, whilst a habitual manner
of feeling, in fact, possesses a formidable arrestive power, only
gradually lost under the influence of time. It is a common saying
that an argument has never changed a conviction; but this is only
the case if we regard the present; it can act by incubation and at a
great distance of time.
-----
Footnote 126:
Höffding, _Psychologie_ (4th edit., German translation, 1893), pp.
411-412, where this point is briefly but ably treated.
-----
Another reason for disagreement between the two modes of
development, the intellectual and the emotional, may be expressed
under a form which, though rather pedantic, is clear and precise.
Intellectual evolution is subject to the principle of contradiction,
emotional evolution is not; it is, indeed, subject to a logical
principle to be determined later, but the principle is another. Let
us suppose a purely intellectual being: affirmations and negations
regarding the same object cannot co-exist in his brain; one
eliminates the other. If we suppose a purely emotional being it will
be found that two opposite tendencies can be simultaneously active
in him, each working towards its own end, provided that they do not
bring about the destruction of the individual. In every individual
who contradicts himself there is, at the moment when he contradicts
himself, an emotional element at work. We shall see later on that
this is the key to all contradictory characters, which are quite
natural from the emotional point of view, though they are the
stumbling-blocks of the intellect.
Finally, in certain cases the emotional development is completely
detached from the other, and even in advance of it; this is direct
evolution. Feeling, as has been said, is the pioneer of
knowledge—_i.e._, it sometimes involves a confused knowledge; it is
the anticipation of an ideal. In this case it is not an idea which
excites a feeling, but the development of a feeling which ends by
taking concrete form in an idea; its source is in the temperament
and the character. The theory of evolution has familiarised us with
the notion of spontaneous variations in animals and plants. This
phenomenon is also found in psychology—in the intellectual order, in
the emotional order, in the order of action. We are too much
inclined to believe that inventors, revealers, initiators, exist
only in the region of knowledge or activity; but in the region of
feeling, too, there are spontaneous variations, both serviceable and
injurious. If there are original ways of thinking, there are also
original ways of feeling, which impose themselves on others, create
a contagion. We shall find examples of this in abundance, for these
“variations” have played a great part, especially in the evolution
of the moral sentiment.
These remarks are of too general a character, but will be
supplemented later on, when we come to study each form of emotion in
its turn. Such is the object of our second part. It will consist of
a series of monographs of varying length. Except for a general
survey of the law which seems to govern the dissolution of the
feelings, their pathology will not be treated in a special section,
but will be distributed throughout the work, terminating the study
of each normal form, but only in such measure as will serve to
render their nature more comprehensible, in which case it partakes
of the character of psychology.
II.
Before setting out on our journey we must map out our route. At the
beginning of this work I presented the reader with a general survey
of the emotional life; it will be necessary to return to this
subject in a briefer, more precise, and more limited manner. Since
complex emotions are derived from simple emotions, and the latter
from needs and instincts, whether satisfied or thwarted, from
tendencies which are the direct and immediate expression of our
physical and mental constitution; since the irreducible element is a
motor phenomenon, actual or virtual, realised or in a nascent
condition, it is indispensable to draw up a list of those primitive
tendencies or instincts which are the roots of emotion.
On this point we have very little clear knowledge. Some writers do
not notice it at all; others content themselves with a haphazard
enumeration. W. James, who has seriously occupied himself with the
question, lays down the principle that man has as many instincts as
the animals, and even more, which seems to me indisputable. But his
list, which he closes by saying that some will find it too long and
others too short, contains very heterogeneous elements: instincts
which are certainly primitive, derived instincts (as the love of
possession), instincts whose existence as such is disputed (as
imitation), pathological instincts (as the phobias or pathological
fears, kleptomania, etc.), which last can only be considered
anomalous, and, therefore, very different from simple and
indecomposable instincts.[127]
-----
Footnote 127:
James, _Psychology_, ii. pp. 403-440.
-----
Although it is rash to engage in a campaign in which some have fled
and others failed, we must nevertheless attempt to draw up a list of
primitive instincts (or tendencies), since these are the sources of
all pleasures, pains, emotions, and passions. I can see but one
method of attaining this end—a method long employed in animal
psychology: that of admitting to the list of human instincts only
those which present the following characteristics:—(1) They are
innate. This does not imply that they appear at the very hour of
birth, but that they are anterior to experience, not acquired; that
they appear ready made, as soon as the fitting conditions exist.
Those which are called _deferred_ instincts, which make their
appearance late, such as the sexual instinct in man and many
animals, are none the less innate. (2) They are specific. They exist
in the entire race, except for some individuals, who by reason of
their exemption are, on the point in question, abnormal; so various
instincts are wanting in the idiot. (3) They are fixed, in a
relative sense; for no one now maintains the theory of the absolute
invariability of instinct; and in man its plasticity is extreme,
because a superior power, that of intelligence, moulds and adapts it
to its designs.
These characteristics being determined, it remains to apply them in
chronological order, and, starting with the birth of the individual,
to draw up the catalogue of actual, strictly innate instincts. We
shall then follow the course of life, noting the appearance of every
new and indecomposable instinct, and thus continue till we have
exhausted the list.
I propose to divide the instincts into three groups: the earliest in
date being essentially physiological in its nature, the second
psycho-physiological, the third essentially psychological. We shall
not need to study them all, because some are outside the domain of
general psychology, and others unconnected with the psychology of
the emotions. The enumeration will be made, for the moment, in a
very bald form, like a table of contents.
Group I. These belong to the life which biologists call organic or
vegetative, as opposed to the life of relation. All these converge
towards a single end, the fundamental act of life—nutrition. To
simplify the matter as much as possible, let us divide this act into
three stages: reception, transformation, and restitution.
(1) The first only has any psychological interest, showing itself in
consciousness by two very energetic needs—hunger and thirst. It is
almost superfluous to say that these instincts pass beyond the
bounds of psychology into the domain of sociology, where their
function is a very important one, as is seen by the phenomena of
dearth, famine, theft, crimes, cannibalism, deadly combats for the
possession of a little water, etc. Their pathology is thus more
instructive than one would think, because it states and resolves, as
we shall see, in a simple form, the problem of whether the tendency
is anterior to pleasure and pain.
(2) The stage of transformation is purely physiological. It, too,
shows itself in needs, of which the most pressing is that of
breathing, an indispensable condition of the combustion of matter
and the consequent interstitial exchanges. If air had to be acquired
and conquered, like food, this instinct would show itself in
consciousness, as do hunger and thirst; but this rarely happens
(dyspnœa, asphyxia). Its pathology is not instructive, and only
comprises individual peculiarities, such as always breathing either
hot or cold air, sleeping with open windows, etc.
(3) The stage of restitution outwards (secretions, excretions,
etc.), though showing itself by instinctive movements, is only very
indirectly connected with our subject; and though, in fact,
_nothing_ which takes place in the organism is quite unconnected
with psychology, we may pass this over in silence.
Group II. These instincts belong to the so called relative life, and
correspond to two stages—those of reception and restitution. The
first stage is represented by all the forms of external perception,
and comprises the tendencies connected with the exercise of each of
our senses, the tendency of each sensory organ to fulfil its
function: the eye tends to see, the hand to grasp and feel. These
tendencies, if satisfied, are agreeable; if obstructed, unpleasant.
Hence result pleasure and pain, but not emotions properly so called.
The second stage is represented by all the forms of muscular
movement, tendencies to action, to the production of noises, as in
certain animals, to cries, vocalisation, gestures, and bodily
attitudes. We have seen that all these things, in popular opinion,
serve to express emotions, while, in our view, they are integral
parts of them.
Group III. This group of tendencies no longer has for its end
reception or restitution, but the conservation and development of
the individual as a conscious being. They express not his physical,
but his psychical constitution, his mental organisation under its
different aspects; they embody his needs as a spiritual being; as
breathing, hunger, thirst, etc. embody his needs as a living being.
They all therefore have a psychological character, and are the
source of that complexus of pleasant, painful, or mixed movements
and states which we call emotions.
Let us recall the chronological order of their appearance already
indicated elsewhere: (1) The instinct of conservation under its
defensive form expressed by fear, with its varieties and morbid
forms (_phobias_). (2) The instinct of conservation under its
aggressive form—_i.e._, anger and its derivatives, and (in a morbid
form) the destructive impulses. (3) The sympathetic tendencies and
the tender (non-sexual) emotions. It may, however, be questioned
whether sympathy can be called a tendency in the strict sense; it
seems to me to be rather a general property of sentient beings, a
point which will be examined later. The same thing may be said of
the imitative instinct or tendency to imitation, which does not
appear to be indecomposable.
These three primitive tendencies and emotions, with their
derivatives, form the first storey of the building. Fear and anger
especially have an extremely general character; we can descend very
low in the animal scale before we find them absent. The tender
emotions, based on sympathy (the source of social and moral
emotions), cover a much narrower area; they are, however, to be
found among the lower animals under the form of temporary or
permanent associations.
The other tendencies are slower in appearing, and their circle is
more restricted: (4) The play-instinct, if we use this word to
designate the tendency to expend superfluous activity. This is a
stock which puts forth several branches: (_a_) the need of physical
exercise; (_b_) the taste for a life of adventure; (_c_) the passion
for gambling, which so soon becomes morbid; (_d_) æsthetic activity.
(5) The tendency towards knowledge (curiosity) only appears with a
certain degree of intelligence and attention; at first connected
with the exercise of the senses (looking at an object, touching it,
etc.), it is strictly practical, though at a later stage producing
all the varieties of the intellectual sentiment. (6) At a later
epoch, and perhaps in man alone, are manifested the egotistic
tendencies (self-feeling, _Selbstgefühl_, _amor proprius_), which
express the _ego_, the personality as conscious of itself, and show
themselves in the emotion of pride, or its opposite, and their
varieties. (7) There remains the latest in date (at least in man),
the sex-instinct, of which the exceedingly general character is well
known.
Such are the tendencies which, in my opinion, are the roots of all
simple or compound emotions, present, past, or future. This
assertion will be justified or invalidated by the following studies.
CHAPTER I
THE INSTINCT OF CONSERVATION IN ITS
PHYSIOLOGICAL FORM.
_Hypothesis regarding the relation between the nutritive organs
and the brain—Perversion of the instincts relating to
nutrition—Pathology of hunger and thirst—Proofs furnished of
the priority of these tendencies in relation to pleasure and
pain—Facts in support of this—Negative tendency; disgust—Its
biological value as a protective instinct._
The above title may seem quite unconnected with psychology, or at
least of a nature to throw little light on our subject. This is not
the case. This group of tendencies—for we have seen that the
conservative instinct is a sum, a total—represents the principal
factors in what is called cœnæsthesia, the very soil on which
emotional life grows and bears fruit. Moreover, the nutritive
instincts have their pathology, which enables us to watch, not the
genesis (which would be impossible) of new tendencies, but a radical
transformation, a complete change of orientation, whose effects are
easily observable and instructive. In a normal state the instincts
are presented to us as ready made and in action; we cannot, either
in ourselves or in others, go back to that distant and obscure
period when the unconscious impulse, the blind tendency, showed
itself for the first time, without antecedent experience of the
pleasant or unpleasant consequences. So that our affirmation that
tendency is antecedent to pleasure and pain may be stigmatised as
merely theoretical so long as we are unable to cite indubitable
facts in demonstration of it. These facts we are about to furnish.
I.
The nutritive acts take place in the inmost recesses of the tissues
and organs. By what channels are they connected with the cortex,
either when undergoing its influence or transmitting the echoes of
their slackening, accelerative, and other modifications? On this
point physiologists know little. According to some (Schiff,
Brown-Séquard), there are relations between the digestive tube and
the optic layer, the striated body, the cerebral peduncles; the
psychic actions which modify respiration being transmitted through
the third ventricle and the anterior corpora quadrigemina. The
experiments of Pitres and François-Franck on the sensori-motor zone
of the cortex show that excitement, at any given point, results in:
augmentation, retardation, or even arrest of breathing; acceleration
of the cardiac rhythm, and, if powerful, inhibition or even syncope;
vaso-motor effects, a contraction or relaxation of the bladder; an
influence on uterine contractions; on the secretion of the saliva
and the pancreatic juice, and on trophic action in general.
According to Goltz, the destruction of the anterior lobes produces
atrophy, that of the posterior the contrary effect. These
discrepancies and uncertainties are to us of small importance; but
it remains certain that the nutritive functions especially depend on
the pneumogastric and the great sympathetic nerves, that they are in
some manner represented in the cerebral cortex and form the
principal contents of cœnæsthesia. Though in the adult they play
only a latent and intermittent part by reason of the preponderance
of external sensations, images, and ideas, it is probable that in
animals, particularly in voracious ones, the functions are inverted,
and that cœnæsthesia, as a synthesis of the organic functions,
passes to the front rank. This has even been asserted to be the case
in children and savages, the argument being based on the fact that
they have, in proportion, larger stomachs and longer intestines, and
on various other characteristics.[128] However this may be, when
deep-seated disturbances take place in the organism, cœnæsthesia is
modified; which involves modification of the tendencies, and,
consequently, of the position of pleasure and pain.
Footnote 128:
Brugia, _Patologia della cenestesia_ (1893).
The facts I am about to enumerate relate to nutritive needs only;
but we shall find their equivalents or analogies in the other
manifestations of emotional life. We can, therefore, already
generalise so far as to say that when abnormal or morbid tendencies,
however absurd or violent, show themselves, their satisfaction
involves pleasure, their non-satisfaction, pain. Where the normal
man, with normal tendencies, places pleasure, the abnormal man, with
abnormal tendencies, places pain. Conversely, that which the man
with normal tendencies feels to be agreeable, the man with abnormal
tendencies feels to be unpleasant. Pleasure and pain follow the
changes of tendency, as the shadow follows the movements of the
body.
Let us look at the facts. We have at this moment to do only with the
perversion of instincts relative to nutrition.
Pregnancy produces during the first few months digestive,
circulatory, secretory disturbances, incomplete nutrition, and at
the same time those grotesque aberrations of appetite, those
depraved tastes, which every one knows, and of which the catalogue
would be endless. Not to digress from the subject of this chapter, I
say nothing of those morbid tendencies of another kind which show
themselves at the same time in some women—homicidal or suicidal
tendencies, aversion to husband, kleptomania, etc.
In anæmic, chlorotic, hysteric, and other subjects, if badly
nourished, we sometimes find an acute pleasure in earth, straw,
tobacco, chalk, sand, charcoal, etc., and an aversion to the most
savoury foods.[129]
Footnote 129:
I must here repeat Briquet’s remark on this point: “However
strange these appetites may appear, their origin can frequently be
discovered. Thus a young woman, who would greedily devour the
embers of her foot-warmer, told me that she had, from the
beginning, been fond of the crust of bread; from this she came to
like the crust of toasted bread, then charred bread, and so
gradually acquired the taste for small pieces of charcoal. I am
inclined to think that, were we to inquire into the origin of many
of these strange tastes, we should find it as simple as the
above.” Pierre Janet (_État mental des hystériques_, ii. p. 71)
transcribes this passage, and adds, “I have often followed this
advice and been in a position to appreciate its value.” This
psychological inquiry is very ingenious, but only removes the
difficulty a stage further back. It shows us through what series
of associations the final result is attained; but association
alone is not sufficient to arrive at this result, still less to
render it permanent. It is only the external mechanism which
explains, at the utmost, why the deviation should have taken this
particular direction. Many persons are fond of crust, even of
burnt crust, who will never come to have the slightest appetite
for charcoal. Many have eaten charcoal out of curiosity, or by
accident, but without acquiring a taste for it. It is some deeper
and more powerful cause than association which lies at the root of
these feelings and renders them active.
There are many instances of hypochondriacs searching for and
devouring with enjoyment worms, toads, spiders, caterpillars, etc.;
and the beginning of insanity is often marked by an eccentric and
disordered dietary.
Again, at a still lower stage, we have coprophagy and scatophagy
(the swallowing of excrements, urine, the contents of spittoons,
etc.), which are rarely, if ever, found in any but idiots and those
suffering from dementia, _i.e._, in beings whose simplest instincts
have been abolished or perverted. The voracity of certain idiots has
been attributed to paralysis of the gastric branch of the vagus
nerve.[130]
-----
Footnote 130:
For details, see Campbell “On the Appetite in Insanity,” in the
_Journal of Mental Science_, July 1886, pp. 193 _et seq._, and
Belmondo, “Pervertimenti dell’istinto di nutrizione,” in
Tamburini’s _Rivista_, 1888, pp. 1 _et seq._, where is cited the
case of an insane patient in whose stomach were found 1841
objects, such as nails, bits of lead, and the like, weighing in
all eleven (English) pounds, ten ounces.
-----
The same would apply to the sense of smell, so intimately associated
with that of taste that it has justly been called “tasting at a
distance.” (We must not, moreover, forget its close connection with
the sex-instinct.) Certain persons, who cannot endure the most
delicate aromas, enjoy the odour of valerian, of asafœtida, and of
still more repulsive substances.
To sum up, we may say that, in a given race, at a given moment of
its development, there is a certain average of alimentary tastes,
whose satisfaction is pleasurable; but on the appearance of
deep-seated disturbances in the organism everything is changed,
tendencies, desires, and aversions; the pleasurable and painful
states, _which are merely effects_, vary with and in the same manner
as their cause.
The physiological acts, which have for their aim the maintenance of
nutrition, scarcely enter into the consciousness, except under the
guise of hunger and thirst, whose psychology cannot be studied here,
because it forms part of another department—that of the sensations.
All the phenomena previously enumerated are reducible to anomalies
or deviations of hunger. The pathology of thirst is simpler, for it
may be summed up as dipsomania, a condition whose modalities and
clinical varieties have no interest as regards the psychology of
instinct; but so far as this need is concerned, the transformation
of the normal and natural tendency into a morbid one does not differ
in its mechanism and results from what we have already stated in the
case of hunger.
There exist, in general and special treatises, many descriptions of
dipsomania to which we may refer the reader. Leaving aside all
hallucinations, motor disturbances, intellectual and moral
decadence, we shall only consider the genesis, the development, and
the consolidation of this morbid tendency.
“It is not every one who can be a dipsomaniac.” To drink too much,
whether voluntarily or by accident, is a thing which may happen to
any one; but such an occurrence does not necessarily bear the fatal
and inexorable character of an insatiable instinct. The period of
incubation—_i.e._, of gradual action tending towards complete
metamorphosis—presents clearly-marked psychological characteristics,
showing a disturbed state of cœnæsthesia and belonging to the region
of the emotions: _malaise_, sadness, lack of energy and courage,
apathy, moral insensibility, vague presentiments of danger. After
this the eruption takes place in the form of an intense, devouring
thirst. Many try to react on this and cheat themselves by the aid of
water or mucilaginous substances, which shows, as several writers on
the subject have remarked, that alcoholism properly so called is
only a paroxysm: under the pressure of a progressively intensified
craving the decisive step is taken. We shall find a great variety in
the numerous observations published on this subject, a struggle at
the beginning only, a struggle preceding every attack, indignation
of the patient against himself, under the influence of which he
calls himself names, and forces himself to swallow strange and
repugnant beverages; all these phenomena are found in various cases.
To sum up, the history of this psychological metamorphosis is
briefly this: incubation, formation of a fixed idea, obsession,
final fall.
It is scarcely necessary to point out once more that the primary
fact is the transformation of a natural tendency, in consequence of
changes in the organism, and that satisfaction and appeasement only
come _afterwards_.
II.
Nutrition—_i.e._, the essential act of physiological life—is
safeguarded by two distinct kinds of tendencies. (I am still
speaking of those only which come within the bounds of
consciousness, and therefore have a psychological character.) On the
one hand, we have the positive tendencies, consisting in an
attraction towards and attack on the external world (in this case,
food and drink)—viz., hunger and thirst. On the other hand, the
negative tendencies consisting in aversion, refusal, flight, and
summed up in the state known as disgust.
Disgust is due to excitement of the pneumogastric nerve, producing
vomiting, nausea, or mere _malaise_. This repulsive instinct is
connected (1) directly and immediately with taste and smell, two
senses which can scarcely be isolated, and whose function is to
watch over all substances entering the organism; (2) indirectly and
through association of ideas with visual and tactile sensations
(sticky, slimy bodies, etc.), by analogy and metaphorically with
certain objects which have nothing in common with the nutritive
functions—the ugly, the immoral, etc. In virtue of that law of
transference or association of analogous sensations, of which we
have spoken, the tendency departs more and more from its primary
form; but in all cases there is a common groundwork of repulsion,
refusal, desire to escape, etc.
Disgust under its primary form (the only one now occupying us) has
not been much studied. Writers have contented themselves with
classing it among organic sensations, while neglecting its emotional
side, _i.e._, its function in the conservation of the individual.
The only work I know on this subject is the excellent monograph of
Ch. Richet,[131] of which I here give a summary.
-----
Footnote 131:
“On the Causes of Disgust,” in _L’Homme et l’Intelligence_, pp.
41-84.
-----
Disgust is connected with conservation; it is “an instinctive
feeling of protection.” In order to justify this statement, the
author passes in review the various objects in nature, noting those
which inspire us with disgust, and inquiring into the cause of this.
The inorganic kingdom, in general, leaves us indifferent; yet
sulphuretted hydrogen, ammonia, and various other gases cause a
marked repulsion. This is the effect of an association of ideas; the
smell recalls that of decomposition, of a corpse. As regards the
vegetable kingdom, the herbivora, by reason of their diet, are the
best subjects for observation; their instinct scarcely ever deceives
them in the choice of food. We are reminded that, on their arrival
in the New World, the Spaniards, hesitating before an unknown flora,
whose properties were unknown to them, trusted the judgment of their
horses. In man, Richet attributes the repellent influence exerted by
bitter aromas to the fact that they frequently co-exist with toxic
properties; he takes as types the vegetable alkaloids (quinine,
nicotine, etc.), whose power as poisons is in some degree
proportioned to their bitterness. So that we have always, at bottom,
“the love of life and the horror of death.” In the animal kingdom
disgust is aroused by putrescent matter, which indicates or suggests
cadaveric decomposition and toxic substances; by parasites, by
animals really venomous, or so reputed; for instinct, which sees
everything in mass, confounds in the same repugnance the toad and
the frog, the venomous serpent and the harmless snake.
In its general bearing, the thesis of the finality of disgust is
incontestable. There are, no doubt, many exceptions, many facts
difficult to explain (some have been pointed out by Richet); but if
we take into account the complexity of the question, all objections
fall to the ground.
That tastes are not to be argued about is a platitude which has
been worn threadbare for centuries past. Taken literally, it would
reduce disgust to a purely intellectual manifestation, with no
biological bearing; it would deprive it of all specific character,
and utterly eliminate it as an instinct. This, however, is a
merely superficial position. Contradictions in taste may be
compared with contradictions in morality. Variations in manners
and customs, according to race, epoch, country, and even caste, do
not exclude the existence of a law which has this characteristic
common to all cases—that it is derived from the conditions of
existence of each group, and is by that right imposed on it. In
the same way, disgust exists everywhere, under one form or
another, as a protective instinct. The question is complicated, in
man, by his intellectual development, and the consequent
modification, transformation, or even suppression of this
instinct. Between reasoned knowledge and instinctive tendency a
battle has been fought, in which the victory inclined sometimes to
one side, sometimes to the other. We know the repugnance of
animals towards a change of food. The same thing is seen in
children, and in the inferior races, when not pressed by
necessity. Plasticity grows with civilisation.
We may add to this the necessity for new adaptations; thus, in a
besieged town, people devour unclean food; the instinct of
physiological conservation is a “divided house,” where the positive
form struggles against the negative with results, varying in
different individuals. To this antagonism between primitive instinct
and more complex rational motives let us add the influence of
imitation and of fashion, and there will remain few or no
unexplained exceptions.
As for the _origin_ of this instinct, if we accept the hypothesis of
acquired modifications, we may say that the animals and men best
fitted for abstaining from hurtful substances, have _ipso facto_
better chances of survival, and that they have been able to transmit
to their descendants certain qualities which became fixed and
organised as an innate tendency. Whether or not we admit this
hypothesis does not matter, our only aim being to remind the reader
that disgust is not a capricious and irrelevant phenomenon, but has
its roots in the unconscious depths of our organisation.
CHAPTER II.
FEAR.
_Fear the conservative instinct under its defensive
form—Physiology—Psychology—First stage: Instinctive
fear—Hypothesis of heredity—Second stage: Fear founded on
experience—Pathology—Morbid or pathological fears—Two periods in
their study—Attempts at classification—How are they derived from
normal fear? Two groups, connected respectively with fear and
disgust—Inquiry into the immediate causes: events in life of
which a recollection has been retained; of which no recollection
has been retained—Occasional transformation of a vague state
into a precise form._
The instinct of individual conservation, under its defensive form,
is the origin of the emotion called fear, and its varieties. We have
already said, more than once, that it is the first in chronological
order of appearance, showing itself, according to Preyer, at
twenty-three days; according to Perez, at two months; while Darwin
puts it as late as the fourth month. It is the first manifestation
in the consciousness of emotion properly so called, as a
psycho-physiological complexus. Following the method which will be
invariably applied to every emotion, simple or composite, we shall
examine in turn its psychology and its pathology.
I.
It has been defined as “the particular emotive reaction which takes
place through a sufficiently vivid and persistent representation of
possible pain or evil.”[132] This formula, though good in the
majority of cases, does not seem applicable to the first stage of
fear, as we shall see presently.
Footnote 132:
J. Sully, _The Human Mind_, vol. ii. p. 91. The reader should also
consult Mosso’s well-known monograph on _Fear_ (English tr.), and
Bain, _The Emotions_, ch. viii. Fear has been tolerably well
studied. The absence of monographs concerned with the other
emotions is another proof that emotional psychology is yet in its
infancy, whereas for the memory, perceptions, images, etc., we
find, on the contrary, a large number of special studies on
special points.
The physiology of fear has been worked out by Darwin, Mantegazza,
Mosso, and Lange. I prefer the last writer’s description, as being
more systematic; it is not a collection of isolated facts, but a
logically arranged synopsis. We know already the importance attached
by him to the physiological conditions of each emotion. The
characteristic marks of fear are:—
1. As regards the innervation of the voluntary muscles: a greater
weakening than in the case of sorrow, a convulsive tremor; in
extreme cases, suppression of all movement, one is fixed to the
spot; voice hoarse and broken, or complete dumbness; in short, a
more or less accentuated paralysis of the whole voluntary motor
apparatus.
2. As regards the muscles of organic life: arrest of the lacteal
secretion, of menstruation, of the salivary secretion; the mouth
dry, the tongue adhering to the palate; cold sweats, “goose-flesh,”
bristling of the hair, arrest of respiration, oppression,
constriction of the throat. Fear also, as is well known, influences
the intestinal secretions.
3. As regards the vaso-motor apparatus: a spasmodic constriction of
the vessels, shiverings, violent spasm of the heart; and if the
impression is of excessive violence, paralysis, which may end in
death; pallor, and peripheral anæmia.