I.—Impulse, Interest, and Emotion
Any discussion of animal behaviour must deal largely with what is termed the conative aspect of consciousness. “The states designated by such words as craving, longing, yearning, endeavour, effort, desire, wish, and will,” says Dr. Stout, in his admirable “Manual of Psychology,”[117] “have one characteristic in common. In all of these there is an inherent tendency to pass beyond themselves and become something different. This tendency is not only a fact, but an experience; and the peculiar mode of being conscious, which constitutes the experience, is called conation.” Closely associated with this conation is impulse, which Dr. Stout defines as “any conative tendency, so far as it operates by its own isolated intensity, apart from its relation to a general system of motives. Action on impulse is thus contrasted with action which results from reflection and deliberation.”[118] In the interpretation we have advocated, animals are essentially creatures of impulse, and not to any large extent, if at all, reflective agents. And their impulses may be associated either with their inherited and congenital behaviour, or with that which is due to acquired experience. In other words, their impulses may be divided broadly into two classes, the one instinctive, the other acquired.
Dr. Stout says that conation is not only a fact, but an experience. Now, first as to the fact. It seems to be the correlative in consciousness of the behaviour of the nervous system under stimulation. Let us take some simple case such as that, for example, of a hungry chick pecking at a grain of corn. This is explained from the physiological point of view by saying that internal and external stimulation—internal from the digestive organs and system in need of food, external through the eye—gives rise to a state of unstable equilibrium in the nerve-centres; and that, when the instability reaches a certain value, the nervous system discharges into the motor organs, the chick pecks, and stable equilibrium is restored. The tendency to discharge in some way under stimulation is an essential characteristic of a nervous system. It is one of the facts of physiological science. So, too, the conative tendency is one of the facts of psychological science; it is a change in the situation introduced by the effects of the physiological discharge.
Let us here parenthetically notice that the physiological tendency in the nervous system is an evolved complication and a specialized development of one of the fundamental properties of protoplasm—that which is often spoken of as irritability. One of the characteristics of all living matter is its “explosive” instability. So that at the very threshold of organic behaviour we have the analogue of that which, in its developed form, becomes the tendency of the nervous system to discharge as the result of stimulation. The conative tendency of the psychologist, therefore, has its roots deep down in the elemental germs of all organic life.
And this conative tendency is, says Dr. Stout, not only a fact but an experience. Let us return to our hungry chick that pecks at a grain of corn. And let us grant that as the result of stimulation there arise states of consciousness which we describe as a feeling of hunger and the sight of the grain of corn. The nervous system now discharges; and there are introduced into the situation a further group of data, the motor consciousness of the actual behaviour, sensory data from the results of the act, the seizing of the grain and so forth. The situation has unquestionably changed. But is there any specific consciousness of the conative tendency as such? Is there any “peculiar mode of being conscious which constitutes the experience which is called conation”? It is difficult to say. Hence we find differences of opinion among psychologists as to what, from the psychological point of view, the impulse actually is. Is it simply the conscious situation prior to the response? Is it a feeling of the change from the initial to the succeeding phase? Or are new data introduced apart from those afforded by stimulation on the one hand and response on the other? We will not attempt to decide. Without determining its exact nature we may rest content with the very general statement that impulse is a concomitant of a change in the conscious situation.
There is, however, a use of the term concerning which it seems necessarily to enter a word of protest. Impulse is by some regarded as the underlying cause of the conative tendency. Now science, as such, has nothing whatever to do with underlying causes. If, as a matter of observation and inference, we have reason to believe that there is such a tendency, science simply accepts the fact, and endeavours to formulate the conditions under which it arises, and to trace its observed or inferred antecedents. No doubt many of us find it difficult or impossible to rest content with the strictly scientific position, that of unquestioning acceptance of the facts of nature as we find them given in experience. We say: Here is an observed tendency the conditions and antecedents of which are described by science. But what causes the tendency; what is the impelling force? Now to such questions science can give no answer. Science deals with phenomena, and tries to tell us all about their conditions and their antecedents. But whenever Science is asked: “What is the underlying cause of the phenomena,—that which calls them into being?” Science should always give one answer and one only: “Frankly, I do not know; that lies outside my province; ask my sister Metaphysics.” Science ought to have nothing whatever to do with force as the underlying cause of anything in this universe of phenomena. And impulse, as the impelling force which calls a conative tendency into being, is a metaphysical, not a scientific conception.
We need not further discuss the psychological nature of impulse. Indeed, the little that has been said would not have been necessary to our inquiry were it not that we frequently have occasion to speak of animals as “creatures of impulse,” and to refer to their behaviour as due to impulse. What do we mean by such expressions? If we regard conative tendency as a fact (whatever may be said for or against its being also a specific experience), and if this fact is the tendency of the conscious situation to develope in certain definite ways, then we may define impulse with sufficient clearness by saying, with Dr. Stout, that it is characterized by being unreflective. Conative tendency thus comprises two categories—impulse and volition; the one unreflective, the other involving deliberation.
Before passing on to consider how impulse is partly determined by the feeling-tone and the emotional attributes of the conscious situation, we may first draw attention to the important way in which the results of conative tendency afford the data through which consciousness attains its unity in the midst of diversity of experience.
We said that the impulses might be divided broadly into two classes—the one instinctive, the other acquired. Now, from the point of view suggested by a study of behaviour, if not also, as I am disposed to think, from the more general standpoint of a genetic study of mental development, it is convenient to start with the instinctive act and the conscious situation it implies. We have here a piece of experience which, if we may so phrase it, hangs together; in which experience of things in the environment is included in the same elemental synthesis with that of bodily acts in organic relation to these things. It is closely linked, on the one hand, with a foregoing act of attention, itself of the instinctive type; closely linked, on the other hand, with the results of behaviour through which the environing things call forth a new conscious situation and evoke a further response. Thus not only does the experience of an instinctive act hang together, but a series of such acts do so likewise. And coalescent association not only links and groups the elements within the situation called forth by the single act, but comprises also the elements of the developing situation afforded by the whole series. We see this in the young chick, where, as the result of experience, attention is emphasized where the material is palatable, and lapses where it is nauseous—such nauseous substances being soon ignored. Furthermore many environing things appeal in different ways to the same limited number of sense organs, while the same motor organs respond in different ways in successive modes of instinctive behaviour. The same brain forms the physical basis of varied situations overlapping in many ways, and receives afferent messages from the same body. Hence, in its organic unity it affords the conditions for an underlying stratum of mental unity, amid all the diversities of experience; while the multiplicity of messages on the one hand from external things, and on the other hand from internal happenings, lays the foundations of a differentiation between the external world and the self—a differentiation long to remain implicit, and only to be rendered explicit on a far higher level of mental development. For at this early stage, and perhaps throughout animal life, “there is no single continuous self contrasted with a single continuous world. Self, as a whole, uniting present, past, and future phases, and the world as a single coherent system of things and processes, are ideal constructions, built up gradually in the course of human development. The ideal construction of self and the world is comparatively rudimentary in the lower races of mankind, and it never can be complete. On the purely perceptual plane [with which we are now dealing] it has not even begun.”[119] But though the ideal constructions of self and the world have not, as Dr. Stout says, at this stage, even begun, yet, as the same author observes,[120] “animals distinguish in the environment, and treat as a separate thing, whatever portion of matter appeals to their peculiar instincts, and affords occasion for their characteristic modes of activity.” And this differentiation of specially interesting things from each other, and from their relatively uninteresting surroundings, must be accompanied by some differentiation of these things from themselves as affected by them and reacting to them. So that here, as we have seen to be the case in other matters, what is commonly called the perceptual life of animals affords the rough-hewn materials from which ideal constructions may be elaborated by rational beings.
We cannot here attempt to do more than barely indicate the manner in which the perceptual process in animals may acquire unity and diversity—unity through the functioning of the same brain and body, diversity from the different modes of functioning and the differential effects of diverse modes of stimulation. The interesting point for us in our special inquiry is that it is through behaviour that all this is brought about.
As we interpret the facts, the restless activity of the young is primarily a biological fact, and is to be dealt with as an organic problem—a complication of the fundamental irritability of protoplasm. But it is also an essential condition to the acquisition of conscious experience; and the more there is of it in varied modes the wider is the range of the data afforded to consciousness. Congenital behaviour is thus the goal of organic heredity, and the starting-point of conscious accommodation and adjustment; it is the biological end of variation, and affords the means to intelligent modification.
So much for some of the results of conative tendency. Not only does it secure adaptation or adjustment to the environment, but it affords the conditions of mental development by which further accommodation is rendered possible. But, in addition to the attainment of biological ends, in addition to the furtherance of survival in the struggle for existence, mental development has another aspect. All sensory data, whether from the special senses, from the motor processes concerned in responsive behaviour, or from other sources, may, and perhaps always do, carry with them some amount of what is termed feeling-tone, giving rise to a net result in consciousness which we call pleasure or the reverse. Pleasure or satisfaction—however we name that which, though vague and indeterminate in outline, is a very real attribute of the conscious situation—affords its sanction to certain modes of conation, and may thus be regarded as the psychological end of their continuance or their repetition. It is partly, no doubt, a direct adjunct of sight, hearing, taste, and so forth, and of smooth and easy movements of the body and limbs; but it is partly due to a great body of stimulation coming from many parts of the organic system. The blood-vessels are dilated or contracted, the heart’s action increased or diminished; respiration is deepened or the reverse, and its rhythm may be altered; glands are thrown into a state of activity; the tone of the muscles is affected, and there may be either incipient contraction or relaxation. These are primarily organic effects; but they influence the conscious situation, and are themselves suffused with feeling-tone. For, from all the parts so affected, messages are carried in to the brain, and such afferent messages afford data to consciousness. It may be that the experience of the conative tendency, for which Dr. Stout and others claim a distinctive place in consciousness, is largely due to afferent messages from the motor organs incipiently innervated in preparation for the behaviour which follows. In any case these probably form very important elements in the conscious situation antecedent to the actual response. In what we may term motor attention—the state well exemplified by a cat in the strained pause which precedes the spring on to the prey, or in ourselves when we poise before a dive or hold the billiard cue in preparation for a delicate stroke—this incipient innervation, felt through afferent messages from the parts thus braced for action, enters with much distinctness into the conscious situation. In sensory attention, on the other hand, reflex acts have actually taken place, having for their end and purpose the focussing of the sense organs on the object which stimulates them, so that in this way further and more effective stimulation may be received. But, as the sense organ is steadily held to the focus, and made effectually to cover the stimulating thing, the motor apparatus concerned is kept on the strain, and is all the while contributing data to the conscious situation.
In primary genesis attention, both motor and sensory, is unquestionably organic and reflex in its nature. It is a product, and an invaluable product, of biological evolution. Without this as a basis, the higher forms of attention under conscious guidance would be impossible. For all these higher forms are modifications and complications of what is given in organic heritage. Here, as elsewhere throughout the whole range of behaviour, consciousness only guides to finer issues what is presented to it in rough outline, or in isolated fragments, as the outcome of biological evolution. But the organic responses afford the data which consciousness uses that it may mould and fashion the behaviour so as to reach higher and more complex modes of adjustment.
Lest a familiar form of words should give rise to misapprehension, it may here be stated that, when we say that consciousness moulds and fashions behaviour, we do not intend to imply that consciousness is an underlying cause. We are not using the term consciousness in a metaphysical sense. We mean that consciousness is the expression of certain conditions under which behaviour is guided. Instead of saying, therefore, that consciousness utilizes certain sensory data, it would be more correct to say that it is the sum-total of these data which are the psychical expression of certain brain conditions under which behaviour, as a matter of fact, takes a given set or direction. We use the word consciousness, then, not in its metaphysical sense of an underlying cause or force, but in its scientific sense, as the concomitant of certain antecedent conditions. Our common modes of speech lend themselves with misleading facility to metaphysical assumptions, all the more insidious since they are not consciously acknowledged as such. And not only what we comprise under the broader group-name “consciousness,” but what we include under narrower group-names, such as “impulse,” “volition,” “instinct,” “intelligence,” “reason,” and the like, often do duty as underlying causes of the phenomena, which, from the scientific point of view, they do no more than name.
We often say, for example, that interest guides behaviour in this direction or in that. But such interest must not be regarded as an impelling force; it is an attribute of the conscious situation, more or less suffused with feeling-tone. It is not easy to define; but it seems to take on its distinctive character when re-presentative elements contribute what Dr. Stout[121] terms “meaning” to the conscious situation. The meaning in the early stages of mental development is, however, merely perceptual, and not that which comes much later—that which is implied in the phrase “rational significance.” In the chick which has tasted a cinnabar caterpillar the situation evoked by the sight of this larva has meaning in virtue of the actual experience. But, in this case, the meaning is not conducive to continued interest, since it checks, rather than stimulates, behaviour. At first, indeed, there may be the repellent interest of aversion. But this passes by, and the larvæ are soon ignored. Small worms also acquire meaning, and here the interest is attractive, and is stimulated afresh each time the meaning is reinforced by repetition of the act of seizing and swallowing.
We have seen that it is through behaviour that things become differentiated from their surroundings, and acquire relative independence in experience. It is through behaviour that what we have termed conscious situations develop. The thing is the centre or nucleus of a developing situation—that which starts the behaviour, and towards which the behaviour is directed; or, since the behaviour may be that of avoidance or escape, we should, perhaps, rather say, it is that to which the behaviour has reference. Now, if interest is the feeling-tone attaching to the whole attentive situation, and if the nucleus of the situation is the thing, it naturally follows that the thing becomes the centre of interest. The mouse is a centre of absorbing interest to the cat, her eggs to the mother-bird, his mate to the sparrow in the spring. Companions are centres of abiding interest to social animals, because they are also the centres of social behaviour and the conscious situations arising thereout; because they evoke in special ways the attentive situation.
The differentiated thing being thus a centre of interest, a relatively fixed nucleus in a changing conscious situation, the development of which is due to behaviour, there can be no question that, among social animals, the companion becomes a peculiar and specialized centre. Around him develops a particular type of behaviour. Towards him the reactions are of a quite distinctive kind. Mother and offspring, mate and mate, are reciprocal centres of interest. To the offspring the parent is a common centre of interest. As they grow up together, what is of interest to one is likewise of interest at the same time to others. Imitation begets similarity of conscious situations. In many ways such community of interest is fostered; and through this community of interest the conscious situations acquire their distinctively social character. Not only is the companion, as the nucleus of a situation, a thing which reacts in altogether special ways, so that it becomes differentiated from other things as something the meaning of which, and the interest in which, are sui generis and unique in type; but it enters into other situations in ways that are also peculiar and characteristic. A worm is thrown to a couple of chicks, and is to each a centre of interest—the nucleus of a situation involving appropriate modes of behaviour. But into this situation there enters for each of them, in a quite peculiar and distinctive way, the action and behaviour of the other chick. The situation is complicated by the introduction of a second centre of interest, and the behaviour has reference to both centres. Instead of quietly and leisurely dealing with the worm in accordance with its special meaning, as it does when there is no rival in the field, the chick darts at it, and bolts with it in accordance with the special meaning which its neighbour’s presence, under such circumstances, has acquired. And this different behaviour carries with it a felt difference in the conscious situation—the interest of which is centred in the companion. Or take the case of a herd of cattle, which attacks a common enemy. The enemy is the primary nucleus of the situation, but it is profoundly modified by the presence of companions by which the behaviour of attack is determined. The situation is social, and not merely individual, and a social interest suffuses it, and gives it a distinctive character.
In this social interest probably arise the germs—but only the germs—of the sense of personality. Some, indeed, go so far as to urge that we learn to know ourselves only through knowing others. The genetic order, so far as there is an order, is, they say, not first the ego and then the alter, but first the mother and companions and then through them the self. Or, to put this point of view in a less questionable form, it is only through the reaction of one on the other that the two are differentiated. Be this as it may, it is only through the action of environment on the organism, and the reaction of the organism on the environment in behaviour, that experience becomes polarized into subject and object. Let it be clearly understood that for the animal, in all probability, subject and object are not clearly distinguished, and set over against each other in the antithesis of thought. Only late in mental development are the self and the world distinguished in subtle analysis as different aspects of the common experience in which both have their inseparable being. Animals, and perhaps the majority of mankind, never trouble themselves about object and subject as clearly realized products of conception and reflective thought. For these concepts are exceedingly subtle. And here, too, the external aspect of experience has the precedence, so far as there is precedence. A healthy lad from the moment he gets up in the morning till the moment he goes to bed, lives chiefly in the objective aspect of experience, an aspect which is in us chiefly associated with the products in consciousness of the leading senses of sight and hearing. But the subjective aspect creeps in when he is hurt, when he is hungry, when he is fatigued. He does not argue about the matter, or formulate it in definite terms. He just dimly feels that the interest has somehow shifted. Still more dimly does the animal feel that, apart from external interests which prompt nine-tenths of its behaviour, chiefly through the senses of sight, hearing, and smell, there are also matters in which the interest has somehow shifted to his own body. For the germ of self is essentially an embodied self. And perhaps the emotions, which ring through the system for some time after the external cause has been removed, serve in some degree to aid in this dimly felt shifting of interest.
Whatever may be the exact psychological nature of the emotions—and there has been much discussion of the question—it may be regarded as certain that they introduce into the conscious situation elements which contribute not a little to the energy of behaviour. They are important conditions to vigorous and sustained conation. And so closely interwoven are these elements with the whole situation in its impulsive aspect, that their disentanglement, in psychological analysis, is a matter of extreme difficulty. I have elsewhere[122] devoted some space to the consideration of the matter. I there follow Professor William James in regarding organic effects, other than motor sensations, as specially characteristic of the emotions in their primary genesis. The cold sweat, the dry mouth, the catch of the breath, the grip of the heart, the abdominal sinking, the blood-tingle or blood-stagnation—these and their like, in varied modes and degrees, characterize the emotions of fear, dread, anger, and so forth, when they rise to any pitch of intensity, and contribute largely to their sharpness and piquancy. These organic effects may be regarded as part of the private and individual business of the body; but in experience they closely coalesce with the motor effects through which the animal has to deal in practical behaviour with that which evokes the emotion.
On this view these organic states which contribute characteristic elements in the emotional consciousness are due to afferent data from the vascular system and visceral organs, just as motor consciousness is due to afferent data from the parts concerned in overt behaviour. But, associated with emotional states, there are also certain motor reactions, which we speak of as their “expression”—so carefully discussed and elucidated by Darwin,—and these unquestionably contribute data to consciousness which coalesce with those afforded by the visceral and vascular elements. The whole is commonly suffused with feeling-tone, and the object which excites the emotion is a centre of pleasurable or painful interest. Representative elements, as experience develops, crowd into the conscious situation and render it more complex. And in addition to all this, there is, apart from the motor expression, the strenuous behaviour of flight or attack, or other mode of vigorous procedure which we commonly speak of as the outcome of the emotional state. The conscious situation, in the case of an enraged or scared animal actually behaving as such, is thus exceedingly complex. And it should be understood that in urging the importance of vascular and visceral elements, this complexity is nowise denied. What is suggested is that these elements are essential, and that they serve to characterize the distinctively emotional factor in the situation, that in any case they heighten the conative tendency.
Sufficient has now been said to indicate—but scarcely more than indicate—the importance of feeling-tone, interest, and emotion in determining the nature, character, and effective energy of the conscious situations which arise in the course of animal behaviour. They largely influence, and in part direct, the course of the conative tendency. But they also occur as its sequel. In animal, as in human life, the successful attainment of the end towards which conation sets is highly pleasurable. The equilibrium that is reached after instability, though it marks the close of present endeavour, leaves after-effects in consciousness in a sense of satisfaction which enters re-presentatively into later situations and helps to further more strenuous endeavour.