Conscience & Fanaticism: An Essay on Moral Values

by George Henry Lane Fox Pitt-Rivers

There are few people indeed whose views on religion, politics, art, and the rights and relations of the sexes are not chiefly emotional values. We may think that our convictions are based on logical reasonings, but the force of childish impressions and associations, and the unresisted bias of passions and interests, are the processes by which they have been cultivated, and rational thought has been devoted to the task of finding reasons for the convictions that are ready made.

Emotion, as we have said, is a continuity of complex presentations whose elements are manifold; it is a state of feeling subject to constant modification and expansion while experience develops. First among the causal factors which influence emotion are the instincts, others may be intellectual concepts, many more come from the substrata of consciousness, and of these many are strictly physiological in character; for instance, there may be disturbances of the genital, vasomotor or digestive systems, cerebellar disturbances or latent molecular or biochemical nervous conditions, during which the mind responds to stimuli ignored under other or healthier circumstances; but over all it is the inherent disposition of the immaterial psychic or subjective mind which gives the whole its tone and tendency. We must, indeed, admit with James that "a disembodied human emotion is a sheer nonentity."

With the psycho-physical problem as to whether sensory excitation is antecedent to emotional expression, or emotion gives rise to bodily expression, we are not here directly concerned. Since emotion is a continuous condition of experience, it may reasonably be supposed that organic disturbance is both a contributory cause and the reactionary result of emotion.[71] Most people admit that "each emotion is a resultant of a sum of elements," and that some of those elements are functional and organic, without admitting the contention of Professor James and those who insist with him that emotion is but a sum of organic sensations.[72]

Emotional disturbances lead directly to the overthrow of the mental balance, which divides the normal man from the madman and the neurasthenic. Modern psychiatrists lay stress on the emotional character of the latter affection. The underlying features of "functional neurosis" reveal themselves in symptoms denoting the clash of emotional elements within, together with a corresponding lack of adaptability to outer environment, and are characterized by instability and exaggeration of emotion rather than impaired intellect.[73]

The cultivation of the æsthetic, pleasurable and benevolent emotions on the one hand, and the elimination of violent emotional excitements or discordant and morbid emotions on the other, are conditions as essential for the physical health as for the happiness of the individual. Emotional sensibility is a condition necessary for the full appreciation and enjoyment of art, and of all that is pleasurable and beautiful, but when emotion is allowed to colour reason, the mind is closed to truth, knowledge and logic.

Art gratifies the emotions as truth should gratify the intellect. It is not always fully realized how large a part emotional elements, which may embrace every form of sensory and erotic excitation, as well as the whole tone of the subjective mind, play in the most intellectual criticism of an artistic achievement. Of these elements some may be irrelevant as well as irrational, and by no means realized by the critic at the time of writing his appreciation. Elliot Smith and Pear illustrate this point in a way few people would want to dispute. "Let us suppose that a musical critic, after hearing a new symphony by an unconventional composer, immediately writes a lengthy appreciation of the performance. It is clear that nobody would expect him to be able to give off-hand an account of his reasons for every sentence of the criticism. But it is obvious that a single phrase in this account may be but the apex of a whole pyramid of memories emanating from the critic's technical training, his attitude towards the new departure, experiences highly coloured with emotion which a few notes of music may have evoked, and his mental condition at the time he heard the performance. Nobody denies that these may have shaped or even determined his criticism. But who believes either that they were all conscious at the time of writing the article, or that he could resuscitate them without much time and trouble and perhaps the help of a cross-examiner?"

In addition to the causal, largely emotional, elements might be added a prime determinant in artistic appreciation, namely, cosmic suggestion. In the case of a leading critic, overwhelmingly self-confident and secure of his position, the mere knowledge of the consensus of informed and uninformed opinion being favourable or otherwise might conceivably arouse an equally illogical desire to be esoteric and different at all costs. An antagonistic autosuggestion of this sort unconsciously underlying a critic's attitude would more than negative any body of opinion in one direction.[74] But if such artificial and diverse influences can affect the most highly trained and most honest critic, how much more will they affect the credulous and untrained? Far greater will be the power of authoritative opinion in influencing those whose emotional sensibility is blunt and untrained, who gape in unresponsive perplexity at some artist's canvas, waiting to have the emotions they do not feel suggested to them, and who, when given the lead, infuse by the power of association into the meaningless daub or the subtlest motif alike the same spirit of satisfaction they derive from the garish crudities which alone, unaided, find a responsive echo in their breasts. It is well known that the less tutored the intellect the more real, as a rule, are the creatures of the imagination. Children and savages have a wonderful faculty for believing in the reality of their illusions. Does not this account for the fact that the less clearly a thing is understood the greater is the power of the imagination in supplying a meaning. A certain dimness and mystery or quality of incomprehensibility invariably adds to the respect and awe paid to works of art and their creators, officially labelled as "great." Sometimes mere age or distance produces the requisite dimness. Racine considered this atmosphere of distance a necessary device of stagecraft for the proper presentation of a hero. "On peut dire que le respect que l'on a pour les héros augmente à mesure qu'ils s'éloignent de nous."[75] In the same way the intensity of horror bestowed upon the arch-villain of the piece is increased in proportion to the distance away from which he is regarded; in other words, the less you know about him. But this does not hold good for the heroes of the histrionic stage more truly than for the heroes and arch-villains of the wider stage of the world. The principle can be applied equally to the heroes of art, religion, politics or war. It is not, of course, the dimness or distance per se which magnifies the object of appreciation; unaided that would merely have the opposite effect. The factor of dimness, by placing the object further from the grasp of reason, enables the playwright, politician, or critic, as the case may be, to play with greater ease and certainty upon the emotions of his audience, and by force of suggestion to endue his puppet more completely with the symbolic quality he wishes to present. In spite of Medici prints, oleographic processes and the extension of culture which renders any one liable to receive choice samples of the Italian Masters free with a packet of cigarettes, what William Hazlitt said with reference to Michael Angelo is still literally true. "We know," he writes, "nothing of him but his name. It is an abstraction of fame and greatness. Our admiration of him supports itself, and our idea of his superiority seems self-evident, because it is attached to his name only."

Convention is a very real and wellnigh irresistible power. Not a few of our most cherished valuations—artistic, religious, political and social—are conventional fetishes which have been slowly evolved in the course of a great number of years as the result of determining factors, for the most part accidental and forgotten, and probably called into existence for totally different and unconnected reasons. Yet the appropriate emotional reaction, evoked by the association of an object with such a conventional valuation or sentiment, may be just as keenly and genuinely felt as though it resulted from the awakening of some instinctive or innate law of our nature. Impressionability is not a quality to be despised, but on the contrary to be carefully guarded from contamination. It is by means of emotion that all pleasure and pain, all aversion and attraction, and all sense of the æsthetic is recorded by the senses. Emotional sensibility may be compared to an instrument that may be so finely made that it is capable of registering the most delicate and exact vibrations so that any harsh sound will injure it, while, on the other hand, it may be made of a texture so coarse that it will respond instantly and indiscriminately to any loud and crude noise. This instrument has an inherent quality of excellence with a potentiality of exactness that may be developed in a great variety of directions.

The many factors which play a part in æsthetic appreciation have been abundantly explored by psychological writers.[76] They have traced the great variety of ways in which art can be the means of evoking sympathetic emotions by connecting its subject with the inexhaustible interest in personality. They have cited the part played in inducing pleasurable sensations in music by the association of range, depth of tone and pitch with the expression of human passions; and in pictorial art, the appeal to muscular sensibility by suggested associations with movement and form, or the effect of straight lines and rounded forms in inducing sensations of vigour and repose. More obvious are the appeals to the sexual instincts. There are also associations that give beauty to colours, pleasurableness to those tints that suggest youth, health, vigour and feminine charm.

It is easy to understand the agreeableness of symbols of strength and solidity; the restfulness of economy in presentation, the pleasing effect of contrast and symmetry, variety and unity, of balance and the laws of proportion and musical ratios, or of harmony and regularity. The laws of relativity or comparison and of familiarity and strangeness are factors which play a part in all appreciation. Finally, there is a more exclusively intellectual pleasure in the process of analytical valuation of artistic production.