II.
We now pass from darkness to light, from the vital to the psychic. But before entering into the conscious period of the life of feeling and following it in the progress of its evolution, this is perhaps the place to examine a sufficiently important question which has usually been wrongly answered in the negative: Are there pure states of feeling—that is to say, states empty of any intellectual element, of every representative content, not connected either with perceptions or images or concepts, simply subjective, agreeable, disagreeable, or mixed? If we reply in the negative, it follows that without exception no kind of feeling can ever exist by itself; it always requires a support; it is never more than an accompaniment. This proposition is held by the majority; it has naturally been adopted by the intellectualists, and Lehmann has recently maintained it in its most radical form; a state of emotional consciousness is never met with; pleasure and pain are always connected with intellectual states.[[3]] If we reply in the affirmative, then the state of feeling is considered as having at least sometimes an independent existence of its own and not as condemned to play for ever the part of acolyte or parasite.
This is a question of fact, and observation alone can settle it. Although there are other reasons to give in favour of the autonomous and even primordial character of the life of feeling, I reserve them for the conclusion of this book, to remain at present in the region of pure and simple experience. There can be no doubt that, as a rule, emotional states accompany intellectual states, but I deny that it can never be otherwise, and that perceptions and representations are the necessary condition of existence, absolutely and without exception, of every manifestation of feeling.
There is a first class of facts which I only refer to in order not to ignore them. Although they have been invoked they seem to me to carry little weight. I refer to the emotions which suddenly break out in animals and are not explicable by any anterior experience. Gratiolet having presented to a very young puppy a fragment of wolf’s skin so worn that it resembled parchment, the animal on smelling it was seized with extreme fright. Kröner, in his book on cœnæsthesia,[[4]] has collected similar facts. It is, however, so difficult to know what passes in the consciousness of an animal, and to ascertain the part of instinct and of hereditary transmission, that I do not insist. Moreover, in all these cases the emotion is excited by an external sensation which touches a spring and sets the mechanism of instinct at work; so that it might be argued that we are not here concerned with a pure and independent state of feeling. To remove all doubt, we require cases in which the state of feeling precedes the intellectual state, not being provoked by, but, on the contrary, provoking it.
The child at the beginning can only possess a purely affective life. During the intra-uterine period he neither hears nor sees nor touches; even after birth it is some weeks before he learns to localise his sensations. His psychic life, however rudimentary it may be, must consist in a vague state of pleasure and pain analogous to ours. He cannot connect them with perceptions, because he is still unable to perceive. It is a widely accredited opinion that the infant enters into life by pain; Preyer has questioned this; we shall see later on what grounds. At present we need not insist upon these facts, since we cannot interpret them except by induction. Adults will furnish us with unquestionable and abundant evidence.
As a general rule, every deep change in the internal sensations is translated in an equivalent fashion into the cœnæsthesia and modifies the tone of feeling. Now the internal sensations are not representative, and this factor, of capital importance, has been forgotten by the intellectualists. Of this purely organic state, which afterwards becomes a state of feeling, and then an intellectual state, we shall later on find numerous examples in studying the genesis of the emotions; it is enough for the moment to note a few of them. Under the influence of haschisch, says Moreau (de Tours), who has studied it so well, “the feeling which is experienced is one of happiness. I mean by this a state which has nothing in common with purely sensual pleasure. It is not the pleasure of the glutton or the drunkard, but is much more comparable to the joy of the miser or that caused by good news.” I once knew well a man who for ten years constantly took haschisch in large doses; he withstood the drug better than might be expected, and finally died insane. I received his oral and written confidences, often to a greater extent than I desired. During this long period I have often noted his feeling of inexhaustible satisfaction, translated now and again into strange inventions or commonplace reflections, but in his opinion invaluable. At the epoch of puberty, when it follows its normal development, we know that there is a profound metamorphosis. Certain conditions, known or unknown, act on the organism and modify its state (first moment); translated into consciousness, these organic conditions give birth to a particular tone of feeling (second moment); this state of feeling produces corresponding representations (third moment). The representative element appears in the last place. Similar phenomena are produced under other conditions, in which the cœnæsthesia is modified by the state of the sexual organs (menstruation, pregnancy). The emotional state is produced first, the intellectual state afterwards. But the most abundant source from which we may draw examples at will is certainly the period of incubation which precedes the appearance of mental diseases. In most cases it is a state of vague sadness. Sadness without a cause, it is commonly said, and rightly, if by that is meant that it is produced neither by an accident nor by bad news nor by ordinary causes; but not causeless, if we take into consideration the internal sensations which in such a case play a part which is unperceived but not the less effective. This inclination to melancholy is also the rule in the neuroses. Sometimes it happens that the state of feeling, instead of being a slow incubation, is an aura of emotional character and short duration (a few minutes to at most a few hours). Some patients, by repeated experience, are aware of this; they know by the change that the attack is approaching. Féré (Les Epilepsies) gives several examples; among others, that of a young man who under these circumstances became totally changed in character, which he expressed in an original manner by saying, “I feel that my heart changes.” That is because in the last stage this state of feeling takes form and becomes fixed in an idea, as may best be seen in persecutional insanity.
Without insisting, as would be easy, on any further enumeration of facts, we may reduce these pure states of feeling to four principal types:
1. Agreeable state (pleasure, joy): that of haschisch and similar drugs, certain stages of general paralysis of the insane, the sense of well-being experienced by the consumptive and the dying; many people who have escaped a death which they considered certain have felt themselves overwhelmed on its approach by a feeling of beatitude, without further definition, which is perhaps only the absence of all suffering.[[5]]
2. Painful state (sadness, annoyance): the incubation period of most diseases, the melancholy of menstrual periods.
3. State of fear: without reason, without apparent causes, without justification, without object; fear of everything and of nothing: a fairly frequent state, which we shall examine in detail when we come to the phobias.
4. State of excitability: connected with anger, frequent in neurosis; it is an unstable and explosive state of being which, at first vague and undetermined, ends by taking form, attaching itself to a representation, and discharging itself on an object.
Finally, there are mixed states, formed by the co-existence or alternation of simple states.
From all which goes before it results that there is a pure and autonomous life of feeling, independent of the intellectual life and having its cause below, in the variations of the cœnæsthesia, which is itself the resultant and concert of vital actions. In the psychology of feeling the part played by external sensations is very scanty compared to that played by internal sensations, and certainly one must be unable to see beyond the first to set up as a rule “that there is no emotional state unconnected with an intellectual state.”
Having made this point clear, we may return to our general picture of the evolution.
1. Above organic sensibility we find the stage of needs—that is to say, of purely vital or physiological tendencies with consciousness added. In man this period only exists at the beginning of life, and is translated by internal sensations (hunger, thirst, need of sleep, fatigue, etc.). It is constituted by a bundle of tendencies essentially physiological in character, and these tendencies have nothing added or external; they are life in action. Each anatomical element, each tissue, each organ has but one end, to exercise its activity; and the physiological individual is nothing but the convergent expression of all these tendencies. They may present themselves under a double form. In the one case they express a lack, a deficiency; the anatomical element, the tissue, the organism has need of something. In this form the tendency is imperious and irresistible; such is the hunger of the carnivorous animal, which swallows its prey alive. In the other case they translate an excess, a superfluity: such are, a gland which needs to secrete, a well-nourished animal which needs to move: this is the embryonic form of the luxurious emotions.
All these needs have a point of convergence—the preservation of the individual; to use the current expression, we see in them the exercise of the instinct of preservation. On the subject of this instinct there have recently been discussions which seem to me sufficiently idle. Is the instinct of preservation primitive? is it derived? Some authors are for the first hypothesis; others (especially James and Sergi) lean towards the second. According to the point of view each of these two solutions is admissible and true. From the synthetic point of view the instinct of preservation is primordial, since it is nothing else but the resultant and sum of all the particular tendencies of each essential organ; it is only a collective formula. From the analytic point of view, it is secondary, since it presupposes all the particular tendencies into which it is dissolved, since each of its elements is simple, and since it adds nothing and is nothing but their translation into consciousness. One might ask in the same way if a sensation of sound is simple or compound, and here also, according to the point of view, the answer would vary. For consciousness the event is one, simple and irreducible; for objective analysis the event is compound, reducible to a definite number of vibrations. In the various regions of psychology we might find many problems of the same kind. The important point is to understand that the instinct of preservation is not an entity, but an abbreviated expression indicating a group of tendencies.
2. Emerging from the period of needs, which are thus reducible to tendencies of physiological order accompanied by physical pleasures or pains, we now enter the period of primitive emotions.
We cannot at the present point determine rigorously and in detail what is meant by an emotion (see Part I., Chap. vii.); it is enough to give a rough but comprehensible definition. From our standpoint, emotion is in the order of feeling the equivalent of perception in the intellectual order, a complex synthetic state essentially made up of produced or arrested movements, of organic modifications (in circulation, respiration, etc.), of an agreeable or painful or mixed state of consciousness peculiar to each emotion. It is a phenomenon of sudden appearance and limited duration; it is always related to the preservation of the individual or the species—directly as regards primitive emotions, indirectly as regards derived emotions.
Emotion then, even while we keep to its primitive forms, introduces us into a higher region of the affective life in which its manifestations become complex. But how can we determine these primitive forms—the simple irreducible emotions—for this is our principal aim? Many neglect this determination, or leave it to arbitrary chance. The old authors seem at this point to have followed a method of abstraction and generalisation which could only lead them to entities. It was an accredited doctrine among them that all the “passions” can finally be reduced to love and hate; we meet this thesis throughout. To reach this conclusion they seem to have brought together and compared the different passions, disengaged the resemblances, eliminated the differences, and by continued reductions abstracted from this multiplicity its most general characters.[[6]]
If by love and hate we are to understand the movements of attraction or repulsion which lie at the bottom of the emotions, there is nothing to be said; but we are only given abstractions and theoretical concepts; such a determination is illusory and without practical utility. If we understand love (what love? for nothing is vaguer than this word) and hate in a more concrete sense, and pretend to consider them as the primitive source from which to derive all the other emotions, that is a purely mental opinion, an assertion which nothing justifies.
The determination of the primitive emotions must be made not by abstraction and generalisation, but by verification. To attain this I can see but one method to follow—the method of observation, which teaches us the order and the date of appearance of the various emotions, and gives us their genealogical and chronological list. We may count as primitive all those which cannot be reduced to previous manifestations, all those which appear as a new manifestation, and those alone; all the others are secondary and derived.
The materials for this investigation can only be sought in the psychology of animals and in that of children. The first will give us but little help. No doubt special and authoritative treatises enumerate the emotions of animals, but without any distinction between the simple and the compound, and with no precise indication as to the order of their appearance. It is not the same with infantile psychology; the numerous studies published on this subject during the last thirty years have rendered possible an attempt which could not be made before.
The question is then to determine in accordance with facts the order in which the emotions appear, only taking into account those which seem primitive—that is to say, not reducible to other emotions. I limit myself to their simple enumeration, with an indication of their chief characters; each of them will be the object of a special study in the second part of this book.
1. Fear is the first in date, according to unanimous observations. Preyer finds that it is manifested from the second day. At the same time the fact which he records seems to me to agree with surprise rather than with fear properly so called. In any case, according to the same author, it is easy to note it after twenty-four hours. Darwin thought he could only observe it at the end of four months, Perez at two months. The last is inclined to believe that this emotion is first aroused by auditory sensations, and then by visual sensations. The precocity of its appearance has been attributed to hereditary transmission, an assertion which we shall have to examine.
2. After the defensive emotion, the offensive emotion appears in the form of anger. Perez notes it between two and three months; Preyer and Darwin at ten months; they mean real anger, marked by the contraction of the eyebrows and other clear symptoms (to throw itself about, crying, etc.). Naturally the dates indicated for each emotion are not rigorously fixed; they must vary according to the child’s temperament and circumstances.
3. Then comes affection. Some authors use the word sympathy, which seems to me too vague. It shows itself by its fundamental method of expression, the movement of attraction, the seeking for contact. Darwin, who has well described it, remarks that it probably appears very early in life, judging by the infant’s smile, in the second month, but that he had no clear proof that the child recognised any one before the fourth month; at the fifth month he showed a wish to go towards his nurse, but only at twelve months did he show affection spontaneously and by plain gestures. Darwin adds that sympathy (?) was manifested exactly at ten months, eleven days, when the child’s nurse pretended to cry.[[7]] According to Perez, it appears towards ten months.[[8]] It is from this source that complex forms of great importance must later on be derived—the social and moral emotions.
With fear, anger, and affection we remain in the region of the emotions which man shares with animals; for even affection is met with very low in the animal series, at all events in the form of maternal love. These three emotions have therefore a very clear character of universality. We now make a step which introduces us into a purely human region.
4. This stage is marked by the appearance of emotions connected with the personality, the ego. Hitherto we have had an individual, a living being with more or less vague consciousness of his life; but the child, usually towards the age of at least three years, becomes conscious of himself as a person. Then appear new emotional manifestations, of which the source may be called for lack of a better term the self-feeling or egoistic emotion (selbstgefühl, amour propre), and which may translate itself in two forms: in a negative form as a feeling of powerlessness and debility, and in a positive form as a feeling of strength and audacity. This feeling of plenitude and exuberance is the source from which later numerous emotional forms are derived (pride, vanity, ambition). Perhaps also we must connect with it all those which express a superfluity of life: the need of physical exercise, play in all its forms, curiosity or the desire for knowledge, the need of creation by imagination or action.
5. There remains the sexual emotion; it is the last in chronological order and the moment of its appearance is easy to fix, since it has objective physiological marks. It is an error to suppose that it can be derived from affection, or that affection can be derived from it, as has sometimes been maintained. The observation of facts completely condemns this thesis, and shows that they cannot be reduced one to the other. Later on we shall meet with evident proofs.
Now we meet with one of those embarrassing questions with which our subject is full. Must we here conclude our list of primitive emotions, or must we add two others: joy and grief? It is possible to incline to the latter view. Thus Lange has included joy and grief among the four or five simple “emotions” which he has chosen as types of his descriptions. The following reasons, in my opinion, are against this solution. No doubt joy and grief present all the characters which constitute an emotion: movements or arrest of movements, changes in the organic life, and a state of consciousness sui generis. But in that case physical pleasure and physical pain must also be included among the emotions, for they both present the characters above enumerated; moreover, there is an identity of nature between physical pleasure and joy on one side, physical pain and grief on the other side, as I hope to prove later on; the only difference is that the physical form is preceded by a state of the organism, the moral form (joy, grief) by a representation. In other words, we should have to class pleasure and pain (without qualification or restriction) among the primitive emotions. Now these two alleged emotions present, with reference to the five already named, an evident and capital difference: their character of generality. Fear is quite distinct from anger, affection from self-feeling, and sexual emotion from the other four by its specific mark. Each of them is a complex state, distinct and impenetrable; just as vision is in relation to hearing, or touch to smell. Each expresses a particular tendency (defensive, offensive, attraction to the like, etc.), and is adapted to a particular end. Pleasure and pain, on the contrary, express general conditions of being; they are diffused everywhere and penetrate everywhere. There is pain in fear, in certain moments of anger and of the self-feeling; there is pleasure in sexual emotion, in certain moments of anger and of the self-feeling. These two states have no domain of their own. Emotion, by its nature, particularises; pleasure and pain by their nature universalise; they are the general marks of the affective life, and if they coincide like the emotions with motor, vaso-motor, and other phenomena, that is because no form of feeling can exist without its physiological conditions.
Such are the reasons for which I refuse to class the agreeable and painful states among primitive emotions, and to consider them as of the same nature. As to the moment of their appearance, physical pain is held to co-exist with the very beginning of extra-uterine life; physical pleasure resulting from satisfied appetite, the sensation of warmth, etc., must begin almost at the same period. Joy and grief are later. According to Preyer, the smile and brightness of the eyes indicate joy; “from the second month an infant takes pleasure in hearing singing and the piano.” I am not sure that this example is very decisive; I prefer to see here the pleasure that is mostly physical. Darwin observed it towards the fourth month, perhaps before, but very clearly towards twelve months on the return of an absent person. Grief may manifest itself, according to Preyer, towards the fourth month (tears before the fourth week). Darwin, in the observation already quoted, makes the first appearance at six months. On the whole, the observations are few and wanting in harmony, because of the great difficulty at this moment of life in distinguishing with certainty between the two forms of pleasure and the two forms of pain.
At the root of each of the primitive emotions there is a tendency, an instinct; but I do not claim that this list exhausts the human instincts; later on we shall have to return to this point (Part II., Introduction). Let us admit as a provisional hypothesis that these five emotions alone are irreducible, and all the others derived from them. In the sequel I shall try to indicate how these secondary emotions are the result of a complete evolution, of an arrest of development, or of a mixture and combination (Part II., Chapter vii.).