The Instinctive Emotions.
Many attempts to classify the emotions have been made by the
psychologists, but the best authorities hold that beyond the purpose of
ordinary convenience in considering the subject _any_ classification is
scientifically useless by reason of its incompleteness. As James
cleverly puts it: "Any classification of the emotions is seen to be as
true and as natural as any other, if it only serves some purpose." The
difficulty attending the attempted classification arises from the fact
that every emotion is more or less complex, and is made up of various
feelings and shades of emotional excitement. Each emotion blends into
others. Just as a few elements of matter may be grouped into hundreds of
thousands of combinations, so the elements of feeling may be grouped
into thousands of shades of emotion. It is said that the two elements of
carbon and hydrogen form combinations resulting in five thousand
varieties of material substance, "from anthracite to marsh gas, from
black coke to colorless naphtha." The same thing may be said of the
emotional combinations formed from two principal elements of feeling.
Moreover, the close distinction between sensation and feeling on the one
hand, and between feeling and emotion on the other, serves to further
complicate the task.
For the purposes of our consideration, let us divide the emotions into
five general classes, as follows: (1) Instinctive emotions, (2) social
emotions, (3) religious emotions, (4) æsthetic emotions, (5)
intellectual emotions. We shall now consider each of the above five
classes in turn.
THE INSTINCTIVE EMOTIONS.
Instinct is defined as "unconscious, involuntary, or unreasoning
prompting to any action," or "the natural unreasoning impulse by which
an animal is guided to the performance of any action, without thought of
improving the method." An authority says: "Instinct is a natural impulse
leading animals, even prior to all experience, to perform certain
actions tending to the welfare of the individual or the perpetuation of
the species, apparently without understanding the object at which they
may be supposed to aim, or deliberating as to the best methods to
employ. In many cases, as in the construction of the cells of the bee,
there is a perfection about the result which reasoning man could not
have equaled, except by an application of the higher mathematics to
direct the operations carried out. Mr. Darwin considers that animals, in
time past as now, have varied in their mental qualities, and that those
variations are inherited. Instincts also vary slightly in a state of
nature. This being so, natural selection can ultimately bring them to a
high degree of perfection."
It was formerly the fashion to ascribe instinct in the lower animals,
and in man, to something akin to "innate ideas" implanted in each
species and thereafter continued by inheritance. But the application of
the idea of evolution to the science of psychology has resulted in
brushing away these old ideas. To-day it holds that that which we call
"instinct" is the result of gradual development in the course of
evolution, the accumulated experience of the race being stored away in
the race memory, each individual adding a little thereto by his acquired
habits and experiences. Psychologists now hold that the lower forms of
these race tendencies are closely akin to purely reflex actions, and the
higher forms, which are known as "instinctive emotions," are phenomena
of the subconscious mind resulting from race memory and race experience.
Clodd says: "Instinct is the higher form of reflex action. The salmon
migrates from sea to river; the bird makes its nest or migrates from one
zone to another by an unvarying route, even leaving its young behind to
perish; the bee builds its six-sided cell; the spider spins its web; the
chick breaks its way through the shell, balances itself, and picks up
grains of corn; the newborn babe sucks its mother's breast--all in
virtue of like acts on the part of their ancestors, which, arising in
the needs of the creature, and gradually becoming automatic, have not
varied during long ages, the tendency to repeat them being transmitted
within the germ from which insect, fish, bird, and man have severally
sprung."
Schneider says: "It is a fact that men, especially in childhood, fear to
go into a dark cavern, or a gloomy wood. This feeling of fear arises, to
be sure, partly from the fact that we easily suspect that dangerous
beasts may lurk in these localities--a suspicion due to stories we have
heard and read. But, on the other hand, it is quite sure that this fear
at a certain perception is also directly inherited. Children who have
been carefully guarded from all ghost stories are nevertheless terrified
and cry if led into a dark place, especially if sounds are made there.
Even an adult can easily observe that an uncomfortable timidity steals
over him in a lonely wood at night, although he may have the fixed
conviction that not the slightest danger is near. This feeling of fear
occurs in many men even in their own houses after dark, although it is
much stronger in a dark cavern or forest. The fact of such instinctive
fear is easily explicable when we consider that our savage ancestors
through immemorable generations were accustomed to meet with dangerous
beasts in caverns, especially bears, and were for the most part attacked
by such beasts during the night and in the woods, and that thus an
inseparable association between the perceptions of darkness, caverns,
woods, and fear took place, and was inherited."
James says: "Nothing is commoner than the remark that man differs from
lower creatures by the almost total absence of instincts, and the
assumption of their work in him by reason. * * * We may confidently say
that however uncertain man's reactions upon his environment may
sometimes seem in comparison with those of the lower mammals, the
uncertainty is probably not due to their possession of any principles of
action which he lacks. _On the contrary, man possesses all the impulses
that they have, and a great many more besides._ * * * High places cause
fear of a peculiarly sickening sort, though here again individuals
differ. The utterly blind instinctive character of the motor impulses
here is shown by the fact that they are almost always entirely
unreasonable, but that reason is powerless to suppress them. * * *
Certain ideas of supernatural agency, associated with real
circumstances, produce a peculiar kind of horror. This horror is
probably explicable as the result of a combination of simple horrors. To
bring the ghostly terror to its maximum, many unusual elements of the
dreadful must combine, such as loneliness, darkness, inexplicable
sounds, especially of a dismal character, moving pictures half discerned
(or, if discerned, of dreadful aspect), and a vertiginous baffling of
the expectation. * * * In view of the fact that cadaveric, reptilian,
and underground horrors play so specific and constant a part in many
nightmares and forms of delirium, it seems not altogether unwise to ask
whether these forms of dreadful circumstance may not at a former period
have been more normal objects of the environment than now. The
evolutionist ought to have no difficulty in explaining these terrors,
and the scenery that provokes them, as relapses into the consciousness
of the cave men, a consciousness usually overlaid in us by experiences
of a more recent date."
Instinctive emotion manifests as an impulse arising from the dim
recesses of the feeling or emotional nature--an incentive toward a dimly
conscious end. It differs from the almost purely automatic nature of
certain forms of reflex process, for its beginning is a feeling arising
from the subconscious regions, which strives to excite an activity of
conscious volition. The feeling is from the subconscious, but the
activity is conscious. The end may not be perceived in consciousness, or
at least is but dimly perceived, but the action leading to the end is in
full consciousness. Instinct is seen to have its origin in the past
experiences of the race, transmitted by heredity and preserved in the
race memory. It has for its object the preservation of the individual
and of the species. Its end is often something far removed in time from
the moment, or the welfare of the species rather than that of the
individual; for instance, the caterpillar providing for its future
states, or the bird building its nest, or the bees building cells and
providing honey for their successors, for very few bees live to partake
of the honey which they have gathered and stored--they are animated by
"the spirit of the hive."
The most elementary forms of the instinctive emotions are those which
have to do with the preservation of the individual, his comfort, and
personal physical welfare. This class of emotions comprises what are
generally known as purely "selfish" feelings, having little or no
concern for the welfare of others. In this class we find the emotional
feelings which have to do with the satisfaction of hunger and thirst,
the securing of comfortable quarters and warm clothing, and the spirit
of combat and strife arising from the desire to obtain these. These
elemental feelings had their birth early in the history of life, and
indeed life itself depended very materially upon them for its
preservation and continuance. It was necessary for the primitive living
thing to be "selfish." When man appeared, only those survived who
manifested these feelings strongly; the others were pushed to the wall
and perished. Even in our civilization the man below the average in this
class of feelings will find it difficult to survive.