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]]
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.
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.
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.
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.