II.
We have just seen how the process of decay, beginning at the top of the building, gradually destroys all its storeys, one after another, as it descends to the foundations. It would be interesting to ascertain whether the work of restoration would follow, as it ought, the inverse order; but, when decay has fully accomplished its task, all is over, without hope of recovery. We only meet with partial and fragmentary cases of restoration. In the absence of this converse proof we may proceed from below upwards, not to retrace the normal evolution of the affective life, which has already been done, but to consider the cases in which this evolution remains in a rudimentary state, or becomes abortive at various stages of its ascending progress, i.e., in idiots, imbeciles, feeble-minded persons, human beings of incomplete development.
In the lowest stage, that of the complete idiot, all instincts are wanting, even that of nutrition. In infancy idiots only learn to take the breast with difficulty. At a more advanced age, there are some who feel neither hunger nor thirst; the sight of food fails to awaken them from their torpor, and without the help of others they would perish of inanition. Ordinary cases, on a higher level than this, show unbounded voracity. Idiots may be capable of feeling nothing but the nutritive cravings, and giving no signs of pleasure or pain except inarticulate growls, shrill cries, or strident laughter.
The complete idiot shows no sign of fear; he cannot fear, because he feels and comprehends nothing. Those less devoid of sensibility dread punishment, especially blows.
With regard to anger, there are the apathetic and insensible, and, above them, in imbeciles, fits of bestial rage, with convulsions, suffocations, violent impulses, and destructive cravings.
Those who pass the purely egoistic stage and do not remain totally indifferent to those about them, show a vague and transient affection for the person who takes care of them. Others, less destitute, “seem amiable and affectionate, and we may compare these patients to the dog who fawns on those who caress him” (Schüle). The highest step attained by them, and that rarely, is a certain sense of injustice. Itard observed this in his famous “savage of the Aveyron,” whom he had purposely punished without cause.[[256]] In short, the social and moral tendencies are rudimentary or non-existent.
With regard to the sex-instinct, it is either entirely absent or there are various perversions and unrestrained erethism.
Lastly, there are some who can rise to a rudimentary manifestation of the superfluous or disinterested feelings. The idiot, as a rule, does not play; he is self-centred, isolated, and has no surplus vitality to expend. That activity which seems to live on itself and costs no effort, but is a source of pleasure without fatigue, is almost, if not quite, unknown to him. Even when invited and induced to play, he does so with little enthusiasm. We find, however, a rudiment of artistic tendency in those who have some taste for drawing or music. We may note, in passing, that the musical faculty being, as we know, one of the first to appear, ought also to be one of the last to disappear.[[257]] But all this is very poor and reduces itself to mere imitation, and even this natural and simple tendency is wanting among the lower grades of the feeble-minded.
Such, briefly, is the balance-sheet of the affective life in these disinherited ones. It is generally admitted that, in this abortive development, there are two main periods: the first lasting from birth till about the third or fourth year, when, if arrest of development takes place, the psychic state remains almost nil; the second, from the fourth year onwards, allows of a less scanty, but a discordant and perverted psychology. In both cases, the evolution, however incomplete, reproduces in all its stages the contrary order to that of decay.
It will be necessary, in concluding this study of decay, to say a few words about a doctrine, much used and abused in these days, and often alluded to in the course of this work, which stands in direct relation to the pathology of the feelings, and, in short, permits us to return some sort of answer to the question put at the beginning of this chapter: the Theory of Degeneration.
When we review the abnormal or morbid forms of the affective life: destructive impulses, phobias, incurable melancholy, sexual perversions, failure of the moral sense, insanity of doubt, etc., and seek their causes, we at once find some which are proximate or immediate. Among the most frequent are physical maladies, injuries to the head, sudden shocks, as in railway accidents; sorrow, whatever its origin, whether love, ambition, ruin, separation; intellectual overwork, and excesses of all sorts. A little reflection, however, shows us that the alleged causes are not the whole cause—that, in fact, they are often, rather, accidental and occasional. One man bears courageously or even cheerfully a loss under which his neighbour succumbs. Many are able to give themselves up with impunity to excesses of pleasure or work, physical or mental. Of the passengers in the same train, at the time of an accident, the greater number will suffer nothing worse than fright, while one perhaps may on this account become insane, or permanently subject to phobias. To explain this difference of results under identical conditions, we must seek a supplementary cause in the constitution of the individual himself. When he offers only a slight resistance, and succumbs to the least shock, we say that he is a degenerate.
The conception of degenerescence as a fundamental cause is due, as every one knows, to Morel, and has flourished famously since his day. Unfortunately, it has been called in to account for occurrences so numerous and so dissimilar that, in the end, it has brought down on itself the suspicions of some writers, who have recently stigmatised it as a “metaphysical,” i.e., vague and transcendental explanation. In fact, different writers seem to understand by this word totally different things. The original propounder of the doctrine had a clear if not a correct notion of degenerescence. “The clearest idea,” says Morel, “which we can form of human degenerescence is by representing it to ourselves as a morbid deviation from a primitive type. This deviation, however simple we may suppose it at its origin, nevertheless contains such elements of transmissibility that he who carries its germ in himself becomes more and more incapable of performing his functions as a member of the human race, and progress, already impaired in his person, is threatened in those of his descendants.... Degenerescence and morbid deviation from the normal type of humanity are therefore, in my idea, one and the same thing.” This is quite clear. Morel, as a Christian, believed in a typical man, perfect as he came from the hands of the Creator: such a belief simplifies many things. This position has been given up. At present, we understand by degenerescence, a morbid predisposition, having its peculiar signs, its physical and psychical “stigmata.”
The physical stigmata, which have been enumerated at great length by specialist writers, consist in anomalies of the skeleton, the muscular and the digestive system, of the respiratory, circulatory, and genito-urinary apparatus, of the skin, the special sense-organs, of speech, and especially of the central and peripheral nervous system. The detailed lists contain about sixty items.
The psychic stigmata are more vaguely defined. The principal are: irritability, showing itself in a marked disproportion between action and reaction; instability of character, absence of unity, of consent, incessant changes, eccentric conduct, painful haunting by fixed ideas, irresistible impulses, or extraordinary apathy.
It has been objected to this doctrine that, of a thousand individuals taken at random, there is perhaps not a single one who does not show one or more of the stigmata, so that the whole human race would be included in the alleged class of degenerates. No stigma, it has been said, is specific by itself; neither is any group of symptoms, at least in a clear and indisputable form; so that one can come to no conclusion from them.
This and other difficulties have supplied matter for many discussions, into which this is not the place to enter. Degenerescence, whatever its value as an explanation, and the abuse to which it has been subjected, is not a mere word; it expresses a reality: it sums up in itself a number of characters. This is sufficient for us, and allows us to eliminate one hypothesis: that the decay of the feelings is necessarily dependent on intellectual decay.
To say truth, the question stated above: Is the retrogression of the feelings a primary, and that of ideas a secondary fact? or the contrary? is, under this form, somewhat factitious. It is only by analytical artifice that we separate thought and feeling, which, by their nature, are closely connected. The law of retrogression is generally valid in biology, and probably also in psychology; it does not act on isolated points, it gradually surrounds and saps the whole building, no matter on what side it begins. It is clear that all weakening of the intellect, such as that produced by old age and disease (difficulty in understanding general ideas, loss of certain groups of recollections, etc.), involves the disappearance of the corresponding affective states: one of the observations already quoted (Case B.) is an instance in point. But we must not thence conclude that the retrogression of the affective life is, by right, always subordinated to that of knowledge. Most cases of degenerescence prove the contrary; it is essentially an organic decadence, a state of physiological poverty, showing itself first of all by alterations in the range of the emotions, tendencies, actions, and movements. The intellect, for its part, is better able to stand the shock, and sometimes remains uninjured. More than this, the adherents of this doctrine have shown that the degenerate are sometimes endowed with brilliant intellectual faculties; while some have even maintained that degenerescence is a necessary condition of high mental originality (“genius a neurosis,” etc).
Apart from all exaggeration, the mass of facts permits us to make the induction that decadence is primarily (not exclusively) that of the affective tendencies and manifestations, since it is on them that degenerescence (taking the word in its least vague sense) first and principally acts.