I.
The formulas universally made use of in characterising pleasure indicate this vague position of the problem: “Agreeable states are the correlatives of actions which conduce to the well-being or preservation of the individual.” “Generally speaking, pleasures are the concomitants of medium activities, where the activities are of kinds liable to be in excess or in defect” (Herbert Spencer). “Experience attests that, in all the sensory regions, sensations of moderate energy are specially accompanied by a feeling of pleasure. Thus this feeling connects itself with the sensations of tickling due to cutaneous excitations of slight energy” (Wundt). According to this writer, the gamut of pleasure is less rich and extensive than that of pain, and he finds the proof of this assertion in the language expressive of universal experience. “Language,” he says, “has created numerous expressions for disagreeable feelings, emotions, and inclinations, while the joyful moods of the mind are dismissed with a brief general designation. This phenomenon arises less from the fact that man observes with especial care and minuteness his disagreeable or troublesome states, than from the greater uniformity which pleasurable feelings in reality possess. This is particularly evident in the case of the sensory feelings [those connected with the sensations]. Pain has not only numerous degrees of energy, but numberless gradations according to its seat.” Mantegazza, when determining the synonyms of pleasure, appears to uphold the contrary view.[[32]] For my own part, I am of Wundt’s opinion.
The anatomical and physiological conditions of the genesis and transmission of pleasure are a terra incognita. In cases of physical pleasure, what takes place at the peripheral terminations, in the nerves, in the cerebro-spinal axis? Most authors do not even propound these questions. The physiology of pain, in spite of its uncertainties, is rich and instructive compared with that of pleasure.
In recent times it has been maintained that pleasure, as well as grief, ought to be regarded as a sensation, not as the concomitant of various psychic states; that both are fundamental senses having their own proper nervous energies distinct from other sensations. In other words, the expression, “sensations of pleasure and pain,” ought to be taken in the strict sense borne by the word sensation. I have already touched on this point in treating of pain, but it may not be out of place to return to it here; for, apart from its hypothetical character, I cannot think this assertion a happy one. In fact, if there is any psychological state clearly delimited and differentiated from all others, it is sensation.
Sensation is determined and circumscribed by a special organ serving for this purpose only, as in the case of sight, hearing, etc., or at least by special nerves and special peripheral terminations, as in the case of touch, and temperature. Internal sensations, in spite of the nervous apparatus proper to them, have a vaguer character; hence some psychologists call them indifferently sensations or feelings. The kinæsthetic sensations, or those of movement, long included under the designation of muscular sense (an improper term, gradually falling out of use), have, though diffused through the organism, nerves peculiar to themselves; those of the muscular tissue, the articulations (the periosteum, the ligaments, the synovial membranes, the tendons). But pleasure and pain have neither special nerves nor special organs. We have seen the opinion admitted with regard to the pain-bringing nerves; as for the nerves of pleasure, I know no author who has hazarded such a hypothesis, however tentatively. It is true that one of those who admit the existence of nerves of pain (Frey) gets out of the difficulty very easily by saying that pleasure, consisting only in the absence of pain, requires no special nerves. May we not say, then, that it is a complete falsification of the meaning of words to class among sensations psychical phenomena answering to none of the required anatomical or physiological conditions?[[33]]
The manifestations taking place within the organism are better known when we are in a condition of pleasure. Let us take as typical the constant pleasures, putting aside those which, by their exuberance, as we shall see later on, border on pathological forms. Whether the point of departure is a physical excitation, a representation, or a concept, two distinct events take place, as in the case of grief: on the one hand an internal state of consciousness, which we describe as agreeable; on the other a bodily external condition, of which the following are the principal characteristics.
Taken as a whole, they may be opposed, almost point for point, to the description already given of the physical manifestations of grief, and betray a heightening of the vital functions. This contrast is not without importance in favour of the common thesis which regards pleasure and pain as a pair of opposites.
1. The circulation increases, especially in the brain, as shown by various symptoms, in particular the increased lustre of the eyes. The experiments of Lehmann, already quoted (Chapter I.), prove that physical, as well as æsthetic pleasure, is accompanied by dilatation of the vessels and an increase of the heart’s contractions.[[34]]
2. The same thing is to be observed with regard to the respiration, which becomes more active; in consequence, the temperature of the body rises, and the nutritive exchanges, becoming more rapid, result in a rich alimentation of the organs and tissues. “In joy, all parts of the body receive advantage, and are likely to last longer; the cheerful and contented man is well nourished and remains young. It is a truism that people in good health are contented” (Lange). Joy also tends to make the secretions (lacteal, spermatic, etc.) more abundant.
3. The innervation of the voluntary muscles expresses itself by exuberance of movements, by joyful exclamations, laughter, and singing. Certain cases of extreme and sudden joy have been known to produce all the effects of alcoholic intoxication. Sir H. Davy danced in his laboratory after making the discovery of potassium. At the London International Congress of Psychology (1892), Münsterberg communicated the following experiments under the title of “The Psychological Foundation of the Feelings.” A line ten centimetres in length is drawn with the right hand. When this movement has been thoroughly practised, it should be repeated with closed eyes, passing the hand first from right to left, with a movement of centripetal flexion, then from left to right, with a movement of centrifugal extension. In such a case mistakes will be made, sometimes in the one direction, sometimes in the other. Let us repeat the same experiments under the influence of certain affective states (sadness, gaiety, anger, etc.), noting all errors and their direction. Münsterberg has discovered them to be determined by a very exact law. In vexation, the extensor movements (centrifugal) are too short (average error, 10 mm.), and the flexor movements (centripetal) too long, the average excess being 12 mm. In joy, on the other hand, the centrifugal movements are in excess by (on an average) 10 mm., and the centripetal movements too short by an average of 20 mm. From this he concludes that, in pleasure, motion tends to increase; in pain, to diminish.
The manifestations of joy may be summed up in a single word—dynamogeny. Joy produces energy.
It is superfluous to say that we consider pleasure, for the same reasons as pain, to be an additional phenomenon, a symptom, a sign, a mark, denoting the satisfaction of certain tendencies; and that it cannot be regarded as a fundamental element of the life of the feelings. Like pain, pleasure is separable from the complex of which it forms part, and under certain abnormal conditions may totally disappear. Anhedonia (if I may coin a counter-designation to analgesia) has been very little studied, but it exists. I need not say that the employment of anæsthetics suppresses at the same time pain and its contrary; but there are cases of an insensibility relating to pleasure alone. “The sensation of sexual pleasure is, in very rare cases, subject to lesions affecting no other part of the organism. Brown-Séquard saw two cases of special sexual anæsthesia, all other kinds of sensibility, those of the urethral mucous membrane and the skin, still persisting. Althaus quotes another case. It would no doubt be possible to find such cases in larger numbers were it not for the false modesty which prevents patients from speaking of the subject. Fonssagrives cites a very remarkable example observed in a woman.”[[35]] This insensibility exists not only for physical but also for moral pleasure (joy, high spirits, etc.). Apart from the cases of profound melancholy, which will occupy us later on, where the individual is untouched by the slightest impulse of joy, there are cases of anhedonia which seem simpler and clearer. “Antoine Cros mentions the case of a patient, a young girl, suffering from congested liver and spleen, which of course altered the state of her blood, and thus, for a time, modified her constitution. Her moral character was greatly altered by it. She ceased to feel any affection for father or mother; would play with her doll, but could not be brought to show any delight in it; could not be drawn out of her apathetic sadness. Things which previously had made her shriek with laughter now left her uninterested. Her temper changed, became capricious and violent.”[[36]] Esquirol has recorded the case of a magistrate, a very intelligent man, suffering from a liver complaint. “Every affection seemed to be dead in him. He showed neither perversion nor violence, but there was complete absence of emotive reaction. If he went to the theatre (as he continued to do from force of habit) he could find no pleasure there. Thoughts of his house, his home, his wife, his absent children, affected him no more, he said, than a theorem of Euclid.” We have here a specimen of what we may call a purely intellectual existence—that of the Wise Man of the Stoics.
These facts—and we shall find analogous ones in other chapters, under other headings—show that, as we have seen in the case of pain, pleasure does not depend simply on the quantity of excitement. To attribute all pleasures to excitements of medium energy is equivalent to the formula: “Pain is due to an intense and prolonged excitement.” In both cases intensity alone is emphasised; but there are pleasures irreducible to medium energy and depending on the quality of the excitement and the nature of the sentient subject. Will it be said that sexual pleasures are the concomitants of a medium activity? The pleasure produced by harmonious chords is, for a musical ear, a matter of quality, not of intensity. We find it impossible, therefore, to reduce the objective conditions of pleasure to a single formula.
Although general opinion has established a distinction between sensory and spiritual pleasures, this distinction is purely theoretical. Pleasure, as an affective state, always remains identical with itself; its numerous varieties are determined only by the intellectual condition originating it—sensation, image, concept. It would be tedious to repeat in detail the analysis already given of pain in order to apply it to pleasure; it will be sufficient to indicate the principal points.
All forms of pleasure are accompanied by the organic modifications previously enumerated. Primarily, it can only be physical—i.e., combined with a sensation, such as the pleasure of a soft, warm contact, the satisfaction of hunger and thirst in children and animals. Then pleasure becomes an anticipation, as in the case of a dog when his food is being brought to him; to employ the term used by Herbert Spencer, it is a presentative-representative state. Then, in this ascending evolution, pleasure appears attached to pure representations. This—as in the case of pain—is the main group, that of the varied and numerous joys which console humanity for its sufferings; these, too, are divided into egoistic and sympathetic pleasures. There remain the highest and rarest manifestations attached to pure concepts—the pleasures of æsthetic creation, those of the metaphysician or the man of science. We might further show how the transition from pleasure, considered as strictly physical (that of the thirsty man drinking a cool beverage in long draughts), to the subtlest, most ethereal intellectual pleasures, may in fact be gradually traced step by step; that the two elements—sensory and representative—are always coexistent, and that we qualify any given pleasure solely according to the preponderance of one or the other. Finally, if we have found in hypochondriasis a composite form, which might be classed with equal justice as a physical or moral pain, in the domain of pleasure it is not difficult to discover analogous forms. The æsthetic pleasure called forth by forms, by colours, and especially by sounds, affords us an example. It is incontestable that these three kinds of sensation can, unassisted, in and by themselves, produce a sensory pleasure. Certain colours, certain qualities of sound, certain chords, produce at once an agreeable impression. Then the representations evoked by memory excite, in their turn, a degree of pleasure quite distinct from the original sensations. Fechner, in his Vorschule der Æsthetik, distinguishes, in his analysis of the elements of the Beautiful, the direct factor, i.e. sensation, and the indirect or associative factor, that is to say, the associated ideas evoked. These two coexistent factors are only separable by psychological analysis, and the position established by Fechner for the intellectual elements has its equivalent for the emotional states.[[37]]