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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Footnote 113:
_A Chapter on some Organic Laws of Personal and Ancestral Memory_, 1875.
Footnote 114:
_Principles of Psychology_, i., § 214.
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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.
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Footnote 115:
_Hauptgesetze_, etc., pp. 268, 250-357; Sully, _The Human Mind_, ii. 78; cf. _Outlines of Psychology_, p. 349.
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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.
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Footnote 116:
_The Human Mind_, ii. 79.
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_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]
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Footnote 117:
This point has been well treated by Lehmann, _op. cit._, p. 244.
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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]
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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.
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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]
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Footnote 119:
Th. Flournoy, _Des phénomènes de Synopsie_ (1893), p. 20.
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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.
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Footnote 120:
Suarez de Mendoza, _L’audition colorée_ (1890), pp. 58, 59.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Footnote 122:
Sommer (_Zeitschrift für Psychologie_, vol. ii.) reports an observation on an aphasic patient, which admits of an analogous interpretation.
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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]
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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]
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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.
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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.
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Footnote 126:
Höffding, _Psychologie_ (4th edit., German translation, 1893), pp. 411-412, where this point is briefly but ably treated.
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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]
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Footnote 127:
James, _Psychology_, ii. pp. 403-440.
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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.