The Psychology of the Emotions

by Th. Ribot

II.

We have seen, in fact, that Lange expressly confines himself to some simple emotions, and refuses to venture further. W. James concentrates his efforts on the “coarse emotions,” the others (“the subtler emotions”) he only refers to in passing, limiting himself to some remarks on æsthetic emotion. However, I think it necessary to treat this subject otherwise than by merely passing it by. Indeed, the very numerous advocates of the opposite view have maintained that the physiological theory, while it may be accepted, for want of a better, for the inferior forms of emotion, becomes insufficient as we rise to the higher, and that every attempt to apply it to the superior forms would result in failure.

We must first come to a clear understanding of the value of the terms inferior and superior, coarse and subtle; they can only denote degrees in evolution. The inferior or coarse emotions have also been called “animal,” because common to man and the greater number of animals. The superior or subtle emotions are properly “human,” though their germs are to be found in the higher animals.

The first are connected with sensations and perceptions, or with their immediate representations; they are in close and direct relation with the preservation of the individual or the species. The second are connected with images of a less and less concrete character, or with concepts; they are related in a more vague and indirect manner to the conditions of existence of the individual or the species.

We may also say that “inferior” is synonymous with “primary, simple”; “superior” with “derivative, complex.” How is the transition from inferior to superior forms produced? For the moment, it is of no importance to know—it is sufficient to observe that it has taken place.[^[70]]

Thus, just as, in the intellectual order, there is an ascending scale, leading from the concrete, successively, to the lower, medium, and higher forms of abstraction, so in the affective order there is a scale ascending from fear or anger to the most ideal emotions. And in the same way as the highest conception retains the characteristics of the concrete whence it sprang, on pain of being merely an empty word, so the most ethereal sentiments cannot entirely lose the characters which constitute them emotions, on pain of disappearing as such.

I shall not insist on these theoretic remarks; the direct observation of facts is preferable, and gives a clearer answer.

The superior and truly human forms of emotion are reducible to four principal groups: the religious, moral, æsthetic, and intellectual sentiments. Although the somatic characters accompanying each of these will be noted with the greatest care in the second part of this work, it will be necessary, even at present, to enumerate the principal in advance. We must more especially be on our guard against the common error which insists in seeking emotion where nothing remains of it save a mere survival and shadow. If, e.g., we take the most intellectualised forms of the religious or the æsthetic sentiment, we shall have much trouble in recovering the physiological conditions of its existence. There is nothing surprising in this, all we have in this case being an abstract or extract of emotion, a simple mark, an emotional scheme, an affective substitute equivalent to those intellectual substitutes which take the place of the concrete. What we must study is true emotion, felt and expressed, not inadequately recalled to memory, a pale remnant of what once was an emotion.

1. The religious sentiment is attached—perhaps more than any other—to physiological conditions, because closely connected with the instinct of self-preservation, with the saving of the soul, under whatever form the believer may conceive it. The intensity of the emotion alone is what concerns us; its quality is a matter for critical appreciation. We take the observable fact in the rough, whether legitimate or not. Now, does not the believer, whatever his degree of culture, whatever his religion, at the moment when he feels the emotion, tremble, turn pale, exhibit the sacer horror, the overwhelming awe which may end in unconsciousness, the prostrate attitude? Have not the mystics over and over again described the violent disturbances which agitate them, the internal tempest which ravages them, till, calm being re-established, they express themselves in language frequently recalling that of sexual love? The designation “hysterical,” bestowed, rightly or wrongly, on many of them, is based on the physical symptoms described by themselves. And have not the methods employed to excite, revive, or strengthen religious emotion, from the wine of the ancient Bacchanals to the noisy concerts of the Salvation Army, a direct physiological influence on the organs? What of the action of the rites which are only the fixed expression of a particular form of belief? and the miracles which happen in all religions to those who have “the faith which saves”—do they not take place in the organism? We might fill many pages with the mere enumeration of the material conditions surrounding, sustaining, evoking the religious sentiment, as we find it in fact in contemporary life, or in history. Nothing is more chimerical than to conceive religious emotion as an unmixed act, a psychological entity existing in and by itself, independently of its physiological concomitants. Suppress all these, and what remains?—a pure idea, cold and colourless. It is very evident that the physiological factors which show themselves so vividly in intense emotion, are attenuated by the effect of temperament, of repetition, and of custom; but in the same measure also, emotion is enfeebled and attenuated; a lofty religious conception and a profound religious emotion are two exceedingly different psychical phenomena. We shall come back to this point later on.

2. Moral emotion, also, must not be confounded with the moral idea. The abstract notion of justice, duty, categoric imperative, acts on some, and is without influence on others. Moral emotion, not factitious and conventional, but really felt and experienced, is a shock and an impulse that carries one away; it always shows itself by internal and external movements; it acts like an instinct. Sympathy, which places us in unison with others, making us feel their happiness and misery, is (as we shall see later) a property of animal life which imperatively requires physiological conditions, and cannot exist without them; now the part played by sympathy in the genesis of the moral emotions is quite clear. Is not the man who runs to arrest a thief or a murderer, being merely a witness, and not himself robbed or assaulted, subjected to a disturbance which is really physiological? In explosions of maternal love, in acts of sudden self-devotion, is there not a raptus which shakes the whole individual from head to foot? If these facts, among so many others, are not sufficient, let us consider what takes place in masses of people under strong excitement, in certain cases of the psychology of crowds. “If into the term morality we import the momentary appearance of certain qualities, such as abnegation, devotion, disinterestedness, self-sacrifice, the sense of justice, we may say that crowds are sometimes accessible to a very lofty morality ... a much loftier one, indeed, than that of which the isolated individual is capable. Only collectively is humanity capable of great acts of disinterestedness and devotion.”[^[71]] But in this state of enormously magnified moral emotion, is it conceivable that the physiological factors are negligible? Are they not the natural and necessary vehicles of moral contagion?

3. I shall be very brief in treating of intellectual emotion, since it is rare, and usually temperate in character; however, when it springs up with the true characteristics of intense emotion, it does not deviate from the rule. Most human beings are not passionately eager for the search after or the discovery of pure truth, any more than they are afflicted by privation of it; but those possessed by this demon are given up to him, body and soul. Their emotion is no more independent of physiological conditions than any other. The biographies of learned men furnish us with innumerable examples: the perpetual physical sufferings of Pascal, Malebranche nearly suffocated by the palpitations of his heart when reading Descartes, Humphrey Davy dancing in his laboratory after having made the discovery of potassium, Hamilton suddenly feeling something “like the closing of a galvanic circuit” at the moment of discovering the method of quaternions, etc. There is no need to extend our search so far; everyday life provides us moment by moment with examples which, though prosaic, are none the less valuable as proofs. The instinct of curiosity is at the root of all intellectual emotion, whether lofty or commonplace. Does not the man who perpetually watches his neighbour’s conduct and the thousand petty details of his life, feel when his puerile curiosity is baffled, all the physical anguish of unsatisfied desire?

4. If we are to believe certain over-subtle critics, æsthetic emotion would have the privilege of moving in the region of pure contemplation. This assertion is founded on the error pointed out above, which consists in taking into account only the quality of the emotion, not its intensity. They put a critical emotion, purified, sublimated, stripped as far as possible of its somatic resonance, in the place of the true, primitive emotion, whence all the others have issued, and which they, like the rest of men, have begun by experiencing; for even the most refined cannot begin at the end. It is an abstract mode of feeling substituted for the concrete. W. James makes, on this point, some excellent remarks, to which we refer the reader (op. cit., pp. 428 et seq.). Complete æsthetic emotion, without regard to its quality, does not always require advanced culture. The savage who, along with his companions, excites himself over his dance and song, becomes intoxicated with sound and motion; the naïve spectator quite carried away by the interest of a crude melodrama; the Spanish peasant, contemplating his church crammed with rococo ornaments and strangely-dressed saints: all these experience the concrete emotion which shakes the frame, makes the heart beat, produces tears, laughter, or gestures.

Besides, it is enough to recall the researches inaugurated by Fechner in his Vorschule der Æsthetik, and since continued, especially in Germany, under the name of elementary æsthetics,[^[72]] which so greatly emphasise the part played by the sensory element in the genesis of æsthetic pleasure and pain. We may thus briefly summarise them: There are two constituent factors in the æsthetic sentiment—one direct, connected with sensations and perceptions; the other indirect, connected with representations (images and associations of ideas). One or the other predominates, according to the particular art: the direct factor in music and the plastic arts, the indirect in poetry. The direct factor, by its very definition, depends on the organism. The colours are not simple sensations, they have an affective tone proper to themselves. According to Wundt, white suggests gaiety; green, a quiet joy; while red corresponds to energy, strength, etc. We may or may not admit these correspondences; Scripture gives others, and they probably vary from one individual to another; but the principle is unassailable. Féré’s previously quoted experiments, on exciting and depressing colours, tend in the same direction. It is the same with sounds:—according as they are high, deep, or medium, they induce a special mood. If from simple sensation we pass to perceptions, direct physical action is not doubtful; we find it in the arrangement of colours, in the phenomena of contrasts, in the outlines and forms of certain lines, in the innate pleasure of symmetry and regularity, in rhythm, measure, cadence, in the perception of harmony and dissonance, etc. In truth, the authors cited, have insisted rather on the sensory action than on the organic and motor modifications accompanying it. But it always remains indisputable that the æsthetic sentiment is necessarily connected with physiological conditions.

Since we are maintaining the proposition that the intensity of even the superior emotions is in direct ratio to the quantity of the physiological occurrences accompanying them, I propose in the following paragraphs to examine a single one separately, and in some detail.

Which is the most emotional of all arts? Music. There is no possible doubt as to the answer—eliminating, of course, those persons on whom it has no effect, and who must be rejected for the purposes of this argument. No art has a deeper power of penetration, no other can render shades of feeling so delicate as to escape every other medium of expression. So much is unanimously admitted.

Is the most emotional art also—as required by our thesis—the most dependent on physiological conditions? Yes, and if we wish to demonstrate this, facts are so numerous that the only difficulty is to choose between them. Let us leave aside every intellectual element, all representations, either vague or distinct, evoked by music; let us, further, avoid all metaphysical dissertations on its nature and its revelation of the Infinite, or its origin in the human species, in order to confine ourselves to its physical and affective aspect, and to grasp the connection.

In the first place, we shall find that music has an effect on many animals. Although on this point many nursery tales and marvellous anecdotes have been handed down from antiquity, yet—having made deduction of all apocryphal stories—we find a large number of observations and experiments which must be considered accurate. They are to be found in the writings of various musicians or historians of music (Grétry, Fétis, etc.). Dogs, cats, horses, lizards, serpents, spiders, not to mention many birds, are the examples most frequently quoted. Experiments made at the Jardin des Plantes, Paris, particularly on the elephants, at the beginning of this century, have been many times referred to, and are both varied and conclusive.[^[73]] Are we to conclude from them that these animals are melomaniacs? Some authors appear to have no doubt on this point, having a natural inclination to neglect the physical side of the phenomenon, and to interpret it in a quasi-human sense. It is much more probable that the sensations of sound and movement (animals being very sensitive to rhythm) act directly on the organism, and indirectly on the vital functions, and produce a physical state of pleasure or pain; perhaps in the highest, such as the elephant, a certain affective state approximating to emotion. In short, music acts like a burn, like heat, cold, or a caressing contact. I have on this point consulted writers of recognised competence in musical psychology. M. Dauriac writes to me: “Relative consonances and dissonances, composed of major or minor thirds, produce pleasurable or painful effects on the organism, independently of any impression or æsthetic judgment.” M. Stumpf has been kind enough to reply by a long letter, amply furnished with quotations from original authorities, whence he concludes that “der Grund hiervon dürfte ein rein physiologischer sein.”

Let us turn to primitive man. The question becomes less simple; but the physical element still preponderates. Music consists only of rhythm, marked by clumsy and noisy instruments, whose principal effect is to increase the vibration of the nervous system. The aborigines of America are able, during four consecutive hours, to intoxicate themselves with rhythmic sounds having no melodic significance. Among certain tribes, diviners and sorcerers employ the drum in order to produce in themselves a sort of ecstasy;[^[74]] it is a true intoxication through sound, and especially through motion—i.e., an affective state excited directly by external and internal sensations. We have here before us the genesis of emotion.

Civilised man, exceptions apart, is sensitive to music in different degrees, from the peasant or artisan, who, like the savage, prefers tunes with a well-marked rhythm, to the most cultivated amateur. But for all states the primary effect is a physical one. “Musical vibration is only one particular mode of perceiving that universal vibration—that music of life which animates all beings and all bodies, from the lowest to the highest. From this point of view, musical art may be called the art of sensibility par excellence, since it regulates the great phenomenon of vibration, into which all external perceptions resolve themselves, and transfers it from the region of the unconscious, in which it was hidden, to that of consciousness.”[^[75]] Music acts on the muscular system, on the circulation, the respiration, and the parts dependent on them. Intense sounds (the big drum, kettledrum, etc.) give the whole body a shock, over-acute sounds cause muscular contractions. I know a musician who is thrown into convulsions by too marked a discord. Let us add to these the well-known effects of horripilation, of thrills passing down the back or over the scalp, of sudden sweats, of tickling, of epigastric constriction. Grétry had already noted that the pulse is sensitive to rhythm; and he has recorded several observations made on himself, showing that the pulsations are accelerated or retarded according to the rhythm of a chant heard internally. It would be an interminable task to enumerate the purely physical effects of the musical impression. The conclusion to be drawn is, that while certain arts at once awaken ideas which give a determination to the feelings, this of music acts inversely. It creates dispositions depending on the organic state and on nervous activity, which we translate by the vague terms—joy, sadness, tenderness, serenity, tranquillity, uneasiness. On this canvas the intellect embroiders its designs at pleasure, varying according to individual peculiarities.

We might go further, and pass from the general to the particular. If music, by its effect on the organism, creates dispositions, momentary affective situations, the differences in voice, instrument, timbre, must produce different and special dispositions, which is indisputable. The tonality of a piece must act in the same way, which is also admitted by many composers. It is true that they are not agreed on the definition and the significance of every tone, and that many amusing discrepancies might be selected from their writings. (So the key of E flat minor, which, for Gevaert, is powerful and majestic, indicates, according to Grétry, an imminent catastrophe.) Here, more than elsewhere, over-precise definition is injurious.

Let me add a remark on the therapeutic action of music. We have abundant evidence that this was known in the most ancient times. From the Greek physicians to Leuret, who employed it in his moral treatment of insanity, a long series of cures have been attributed to it. A well-known Russian physiologist, Tarchanoff, has recently lauded and recommended its rational employment in disorders of the nervous system; but it does not act through occult, mysterious, spiritual influences; it acts physically, as a kind of vibratory medicine. The researches[researches] of Boudet de Paris, Mortimer Granville, Buccola, Morselli, Vigouroux, furnish proofs of this.

Although we might say much more on this subject, the above will be sufficient to show that the most emotional of the arts is also that most intimately dependent on the modifications of the organism. This has seemed to me an argument not to be neglected in favour of the physiological theory of emotion.[^[76]]