Studies in the Evolutionary Psychology of Feeling

by Hiram Miner Stanley

The theory of continua, be it observed, in its fulness requires a numberless series of levels and sub-levels supporting one another, for a high form of consciousness pre-supposes an indefinite series of antecedent stages. While any highly differentiated consciousness is going on it must be an actual differentiating of the preceding stage, which is therefore coincident and pre-existent to it, and this latter in turn must have its supporting continuum, and so on down ad infinitum. The theory makes mind a wheel within wheel of bewildering intricacy. Yet mind in this point of view has a certain analogy with the physiological status of the higher organisms, for example, the human body is colonial, is constituted of a multitude of cells, a simple type of organisms, by whose consentaneous activity the whole body is animate.

One objection to this theory is that it confounds functioning with differentiating. Not every act of consciousness is by its very nature a differentiating, a movement toward specialization. Consciousness is on the whole more often regressive than progressive, and very often practically neither, as for example, in all instinctive, habitual, and spontaneous activities.

But again, while differentiating act certainly pre-supposes the undifferentiated, does it require coincidence? For instance, vision as ordinary form, receiving impressions, certainly contains no totum objectivum activity, but also as differentiating act, as intense visual effort reaching to higher development, it generally, at least, seems free from any lower stage, and is engrossed in itself. Since we make the prime cause of all mental development and differentiation in will, we do not need any undifferentiated general ground remaining in consciousness as basic element, nor does analysis of consciousness show this constant element. Successive phases of presentation development are attained through effort, but one does not gradually grow and branch out of the other by a purely inward impetus of its own. I believe, indeed, that the inner life of mind consists in its original forms, and that they remain in late mind not merely as useless survivals but having a distinct functional value; but I do not see how any or all of the general stages of mentality constitute continua for consciousness of higher types. Instead of being constant basal elements they occur and are blotted out with such rapidity that reflection can very rarely identify them (vide p. 63). They are lost and swallowed up in complex consciousness so quickly as to leave no trace upon memory, and they do not subsist or continue throughout the complex forms. They are then the very opposite of continua, being, in fact, the most evanescent of mental phenomena. Consciousness in all higher forms, as the human mind, must and does mount the main steps of its very early growth with marvellous rapidity and leaves them entirely behind. The more primitive the stage the more quickly it vanishes, till often it seems to appear in tendency form only, or be thrown into a subconsciousness. Primitive types exercise a most important but fleeting influence in advanced consciousness which rises through them most rapidly and easily, but in the less advanced the contrary is the case. The Australian savages, as observed by Lumholtz, came to their senses and reached a full awakening in the morning very slowly as compared with civilized men. With dull children likewise we observe how slowly they awaken. All regressive forms reach but slowly to their full consciousness and dwell long in intermediate stages. But in all cases when higher forms enter the lower disappears, when varied perception enters in awakening, then the preceding dim general objectivity is wholly obliterated.

It will be remarked that admitting, as we do, the constant existence in mental life of feeling as pleasure and pain, we thereby make this a real continuum. But we may say that consciousness is never without a pleasure-pain constituent and yet not assert a continuum. Consciousness continually possesses some pleasure-pain element, but this is not a feeling as continuous state, as an underlying differentiating basis pleasures and pains as diverse independent states are essential incentives in all consciousness, but they do not constitute a single continuum.

Of course, every consciousness, as long as it continues, is in this very general sense a continuum, but no form of consciousness, primitive or advanced, can, with one exception, be called a continuum, as a single mode running through and unifying a long stretch of varied consciousnesses. This exception is the complex element of ego-tone. Early mind is no more than a kaleidoscopic jumble, with no one organizing and unifying element. Even when consciousness from happening in purely disconnected flashes attains first a certain limited continuity, this is not by means of some conscious element persisting through a series, but merely signifies that as fast as one consciousness dies out, another takes its place, i.e., the continuity is purely formal and temporal. It is through self-consciousness alone that any real continuum is achieved in and for consciousness, and this ego-tone is far from being primitive.

The sensation and objectifying as discussed in this chapter in connection with feeling, both pain and pleasure, constitutes complex states of consciousness which may be termed a feeling when the pain or pleasure is dominant, or a cognition when the sensing and objectifying is dominant. Thus by a feeling I understand a state of consciousness which is either entirely or dominantly pain or pleasure, the former being pure feeling, the latter mixed feeling. This latter class constitutes the feelings properly so-called, as varied pains and pleasures, the variation element being the cognition in some form. Feeling as being in different kinds is made such by the differentiation of cognition. Thus hunger is neither a pure sensation—that is by pure sensation meaning not absolutely pure, for pleasure or pain is invariable incentive concomitant, but sensation pure from any distinct mode of apprehension, as merely general and undifferentiated—nor yet is hunger pure pain, but it is the combination of a certain definite sensing, beyond the pure stage, with pain. Hunger is a feeling when the pain aspect is dominant, is cognition when sensation aspect is dominant. The confusion in the use of the terms sensation and feeling comes from the difficulty in determining dominancy in given cases. Certainly the exact line where feeling of hunger passes into sensation of hunger can be settled only by the most careful discrimination, but at any great remove from this line the character of the state is very manifest. By no effort can we separate the sensing from the pain so as to have nothing but sensation, though the attributing to bodily affection does in the incipient stages of hunger become dominant, but as hunger increases, pain becomes dominant, and ultimately the end as the beginning is pure pain. We say, “I feel hungry,” for all stages when any sensing is present, and this indiscriminate popular use of the word “feel,” has tended to obscure the real nature of the whole mentality. The same line of remark applies to feeling thirsty, feeling hot, etc.

CHAPTER VI
REPRESENTATION AND EMOTION

“I feel cold,” and “I feel afraid of cold,” are expressions which denote two tolerably distinct feelings. The main characteristic which distinguishes the second feeling as an emotion is obviously representation. In the first case, I have pain with presentation of the cold, in the second, pain with the mere representation of the cold. If I feel cold, I have direct and immediate experience; if I fear the cold, I have an experience in view of experience, pain at pain. When one says, “I have a violent pain in my head,” and a friend answers, “I am deeply pained to hear it,” we recognise at once the fundamental distinction between sensation and emotion. We have in this chapter to discuss some points as to the rise and nature of emotion in its relation to representation.

The theory which we have been elaborating is that pure pleasure and pain are the original and causative elements in the whole realm of mind. Pure feeling is the most direct and necessary, and so the first response in conscious form, to all stimuli, and it is the incitement to all cognitive activity in its inception and growth. The harm and good to organism, are at once, and most quickly realized in terms of pure feeling, and the painful necessities in the struggle for existence, lead to a continuous development from this point. Dominant pleasure and pain, with the different presentation forms, constitute different feelings, as of warmth, hunger, cold, etc., to which some fuller objectification may be added. Adjustment is thereby made manifold, but only with present stimulus. There is no appreciation of the experienceable. All that is attained is immediate present apprehension which in no wise suggests or interprets, but which is strictly self-contained.

We must, indeed, acknowledge that no consciousness, save, of course, the very first, can exist in perfect isolation totally unaffected by any other. The second conscious activity was not a perfect facsimile of the first, and its variation is due at least in the main to the precedent mentality. What is, is determined by what has been, and this universal law is in mind the inductive nature of all experience. The solidarity of all mentality and of all materiality is a scientific postulate, a principle which we must assume, or deny all scientific investigation. The movement of a molecule in the sun, millions of years since, influences the condition of my body to-day, and the flush of pain in some protozoan millions of years since, has had an infinitesimal share in determining my present state of mind. Yet this fact that every psychosis is what it is by reason of the whole line of previous psychoses, does not lead us to suppose that experience cognizes itself from the beginning, and consciously builds itself up. There is for a long time no consciousness of process of mental integration. The whole universe of mind is the necessary prius of each individual manifestation, yet the particular phenomenon in consciousness does not include a sense of, or reaching out to, these conditioning agencies. No sense of dependence is generated. But we ask, How can one conscious state unconsciously effect or determine another? How can consciousness be affected without consciousness of affection? Yet, difficult as it may appear to set clearly before us the nature of this relation of a consciousness to all the preconsciousness, it is still obvious that the intricate nexus of cause and effect in mind does not need to be known of mind or realized in the individual consciousness, and is not, and cannot be. Every consciousness is the derivative resultant of innumerable pre-consciousnesses, and it goes to the determining and qualifying of innumerable post-consciousnesses, yet it is neither consciousness of the future or the past, though it involves both.