I.
As the decay of the feelings progresses from the higher to the lower, from complex adaptation to simple adaptation, gradually narrowing the area of the affective life, we may, in this decadence, distinguish four phases, marked by the successive disappearance of (1) the disinterested emotions, (2) the altruistic emotions, (3) the ego-altruistic emotions, and (4) the purely egoistic emotions.
(1.) I class under the first head the æsthetic emotions and the higher forms of intellectual emotions, which aim at no practical or utilitarian end, but are luxuries, not necessaries of life. Æsthetic and scientific cravings are so slightly marked, and so far from imperative in the majority of men, that it is impossible to demonstrate with certainty that they are the first to disappear; but it may be indirectly inferred.
It cannot be denied that those who have a passion for art or science, and for whom these are necessary conditions of life, are extremely rare compared with those who are moved or possessed by love, the desire for riches, or ambition. In the mass of men the æsthetic and intellectual feelings remain in a rudimentary condition, or attain only a slight, at most a medium development, and it cannot be said with certainty when they become extinct, seeing they have never really existed. Compared with the higher forms, they resemble a case of arrested development, i.e., of retrogression; and this arrest of development is the rule, as it must be for all tendencies beyond the bounds of the mere necessities of life.
To this negative proof I may add other positive proofs.
Age and diseases whose effect is retrogressive diminish, if they do not annihilate, zeal, enthusiasm, the impulse towards creation, discovery, or the simple enjoyment of art, and the curiosity which is always on the alert. I omit some very rare exceptions, each of which would require individual examination. In the majority of men weakened vitality at once destroys all taste for the superfluous.
We must also note the decided hostility to all innovations—new forms of art, new discoveries, new ways of stating or treating scientific questions—which comes on with old age. The fact is so well known as to make proof unnecessary. As a general thing, in art especially, every generation rejects that which follows it. The usual explanation of this “misoneism” is that there is a fixed cerebral constitution, organised intellectual habits. Yes—but if the proposed new scientific or artistic ideal caused a true, deep, intense emotion, it would break down and sweep away the barriers of habit. There would be a shock, a turning upside down, a conversion. Cases of a rupture with the artistic or scientific past sometimes occur, but rarely, as they presuppose the possibility of a violent shock and the revival of an imperious passion, but turned in another direction. This repulsion for novelty is rather of emotional than of intellectual origin; it is a sign of the weakening of the affective life, and of a tendency towards diminished effort, repose, inertia.
(2.) The altruistic feelings (social and moral emotions) having a practical value, and being reckoned among the conditions of human existence, it is much easier to fix the moment of their partial or total decay. Now, the preceding groups apart, they are the first to disappear. They may have been altered or extinct for a long period, while the ego-altruistic, and still more the egoistic tendencies, are still intact. We have seen, again and again, how quickly persons become unsociable and ungovernable through dementia, general paralysis, melancholia, epilepsy, hysteria, shock, and injuries to the head.
But their retrogression takes place by gradations to be determined by observation alone.[[254]]
Case 1. "F—— entered the asylum December 20, 1889, suffering from general paralysis, which took the form of dementia. He was an intelligent, well-educated man, capable of filling a brilliant position in society. Being a gifted musician, he became well known as a violoncellist and his playing was long an attraction at the most frequented concerts. What especially struck one in this patient on his admission was his utter indifference to all about him—doctors, nurses, and patients alike. When shown an aged dementia patient who was dying he was neither touched nor disturbed, but simply remarked, ‘There’s one of ’em going to croak’ (‘En voilà un qui va claquer’). To suggestions that he should leave the asylum and mingle again in society, he never returned any other answer than ‘I like my own comfort too well—I wish people would leave me in peace.’ The more general altruistic feelings, therefore, would seem at this date to have vanished; but family affection, especially filial love, is still intact. F—— incessantly speaks of his father, wants to write to him, to see him. On being shown his picture he burst into tears. The personal feelings are still intact, the love of liberty, and the instinct of self-preservation in all its forms.
"Jan. 15, 1891 (a year and a half later). F—— is now in the gâteux ward. The feelings already ruined or destroyed have not reappeared. Retrogression has gone on almost uninterruptedly. F—— no longer speaks of his father, and if spoken to about him he replies with indifference. One day, all his family being assembled at the foot of his bed, he recognised each of his relations and spoke to them by name, but showed no emotion whatever; the moment of separation left him as indifferent as their arrival had found him.
"Even the egoistic feelings are now impaired; he no longer demands freedom of movement. Eating is the only thing that interests him; he devours ravenously, and, after his meals, picks up the crumbs which have fallen on the bed-clothes. The nutritive instinct is the last surviving.
"Yet, in this patient, the artistic feeling long remains unimpaired, for the reason indicated above, viz., that it is the direct expression of his temperament, and an essential part of his ego: because he is an artist.
"Two months after his admission into the asylum, though devoid of social tendencies and generous feeling, he was still able to co-ordinate his movements and play his old tunes on the violoncello. One day, in the garden, he was found gazing ecstatically at the blue sky, flecked with small white clouds; he was saying, ‘How beautiful it is! how beautiful it is!’ Nothing else, by-the-bye, could be got from him that day. Chance having brought the famous violinist X—— as a visitor to the asylum about a month before F.’s death, he was asked to play to the latter. The patient had been, for some time, in the last stage of insanity and was past understanding anything, yet he understood this, and when he heard the familiar airs of old times played on the violin his eye became clear, and for a minute the mind seemed to have found itself again under the influence of art."
Case 2. “Ph. R——, aged 70, suffering from senile dementia, was up to this age an intelligent, peaceable, respectable citizen. At the last elections he presented himself as a candidate for the Chamber, and, in spite of the protests of his family, placed himself at the head of an Anarchist group, and drew up a programme which we will not inflict on the reader. He claimed to have received 700 votes. However that may be, it became necessary to place him in seclusion. His political and social tendencies perished in the first catastrophe, but his domestic feelings still remained intact. He spoke of his family with a touching simplicity. A letter written to his brother-in-law (too long for reproduction here, but very sensible) furnishes throughout irrefragable proofs of this. Gradually these feelings became weaker, the disease progressed rapidly, he became dirty in his habits, and the only function now remaining is the generative instinct in its simplest form, as masturbation.”
In the following cases intellectual retrogression seems to precede and determine the affective evolution:—
Case 3. "D——, a general paralytic, on his admission into the asylum, is fond of talking of the 3000 francs he has invested; he is much occupied with the dividends and coupons now due which he ought to have received. On inquiries being made all this was found to be accurate. He had, therefore, a tolerably clear idea of property, since this idea was suggested by the image of certain papers representing the values involved. At a later period, when spoken to about his 3000 francs, he had forgotten everything and did not understand. When reminded of what he had himself said, and that he possessed the values guaranteed by the receipts, he understood no more than before. But D—— carries money about with him, and knows very well how much he has at the time. ‘For ten centimes,’ he says, ‘I can have a cup of coffee every day, and I have three francs.’ The sight of a white, shining metal is sufficient to awaken in him the idea of possession represented by the pleasure to be bought with it." Three months later he no longer understands even this third degree of possession: possession with him means having something to eat; the piece of bread which he is holding in his hand and greedily devouring is the only thing he cannot be induced to give up.
Case 4. "M——, formerly employed in the octroi; paralytic dementia. During the first few days after his admission he gave himself up to political divagations, spoke much of universal suffrage, and especially of liberty. When asked for a definition of this word he gave the following explanation: ‘Liberty is the right to do what one wishes.’ A short time after this he ceased to make speeches and seemed to collapse. He was no longer capable of giving his definition, or of understanding it; when pressed with questions he said at last, ‘Liberty is being able to walk about in the yard.’ The abstract idea is replaced by a concrete idea indicating an assemblage of movements. Later still, a few days before his death, he answered the same question with, ‘Being free is when any one is in bed; I shall be free when I am in bed.’ The idea of liberty, therefore, was at last confused in his mind with that of a vague state of comfort."
These observations show how the group of altruistic sentiments dissolves piecemeal, and the affective sphere narrows itself more and more. The first to disappear are the vaguest and weakest of all the forms of benevolence—those embracing the whole human race; then the family emotions, which are more stable, more restricted, more frequently repeated; finally, there is absolute indifference to every one.[[255]]
(3.) The ego-altruistic emotions (to employ H. Spencer’s terminology) form a group whose limits are vague, floating, and indecisive. It is even uncertain whether it exists as a distinct group or simply corresponds to a particular “moment” in the evolution of complex emotions. Without arguing this point, or attaching any importance to it, I employ this formula, because it is a convenient one in following step by step the retrogression from pure altruism to pure egoism.
Sexual love is a fairly good representative of the group. Need we say that, appearing later than the other instincts, it disappears before them, thus being in strict conformity with the law of retrogression. It does not belong to childhood, but neither does it to old age. We must eliminate the survivals and simulacra, which are only a factitious product of imagination; we are dealing with the tendency under its normal and complete form, with all its physiological and psychological conditions.
The religious sentiment in its medium forms, neither too coarse nor too subtle, belongs also to this category, plunging its roots deeply into the individual, but in order to rise beyond him. Of its two constituent elements, love tends towards the dispossession of the individual; the other, fear, towards strict egoism; with retrogression, the latter becomes exclusive. The believer, especially in the melancholic state, at first complains of being wanting in pity, fervour, love of God; he no longer finds consolation in prayer. Thus, as decadence increases, or simply in consequence of age and the approach of death, the egoistic anxiety about personal salvation becomes imperious. This was the time of life when the kings, princes, and lords of the Middle Ages multiplied pious foundations—monasteries, churches, and hospitals; and the same thing still takes place, in our own day, in religions which admit of the efficacy of works in purchasing salvation, and of prayers for the dead. The religious feeling thus comes back to fear, its primary form in evolution. We might also note the frequent survival of observances and rites when the true feeling has disappeared, i.e., the solidity of the organic and automatic element. In a retrograding religion, dogma dissolves before outward acts of worship, which, as we have seen, is the inversion of the evolutionary process.
Ambition is the type of the higher form of egoism; but as it must take into account the nature of other men and employ them in carrying out its designs, it is a modified form of egoism. We know how tenacious and durable is this passion in its numerous forms—the pursuit of power, honour, renown, riches; in it we have a foretaste of the stability of egoism after the ruin of all other tendencies. It disappears when the stage is reached when man sincerely declares himself disgusted with everything, and speaks like the author of Ecclesiastes. The greatest of the Cordovan Caliphs, Abderrhaman III., who noted down the principal events of this life, wrote: “I have reigned fifty years in peace and in war, loved by my people, feared by my enemies, respected by my allies, seeing my friendship sought for by the greatest kings on earth. Nothing have I lacked that the heart of man could desire—neither glory, nor power, nor pleasures. Yet, having counted the days in this long life in which I enjoyed unalloyed happiness, I found that there were fourteen.” But this contempt for human interests comes late, and springs rather from weakness than from wisdom. Men renounce the world, not so much because they have weighed it and estimated it at its true value, as because they no longer have the courage to conquer or keep it. Except in the case of philosophers, the disappearance of all ambition is the first symptom of the decadence of the egoistic tendencies: it indicates weariness, exhaustion, and a want of faith in one’s self.
(4.) The last group, that of the strictly egoistic feelings, the most general and most firmly organised of all, is the last to disappear. The threefold group formed by the offensive instinct (anger), the defensive instincts (fear), and the nutritive cravings, persists in men and animals up to the farthest limit of consciousness. We know that anger makes its appearance later than fear; does it vanish earlier? I have no data to enable me to reply to this question. What is certain is that the affective states associated with nutrition last to the end, and that all remaining activity is concentrated in them, as shown by the cases above quoted. The fact, moreover, is so well known that there is no need to dwell on it.