The earliest emotions arise, of course, with reference to the bodily functions which have the most direct vital significance, as nutritive, reproductive, and motor activity. Very simple organisms seem to apprehend that a certain object is food before actually consuming, to have sense of the experience, and some emotive disturbance. The pleasure of feeding and incorporating into the bodily tissue is sensational, but any feeling previous or subsequent to this and with reference to this is emotional. A very young child feeds, and does not know food. Gradually it associates the visual sensation of whiteness of the milk with the immediate taste sensation and pleasure feeling. But the sense of whiteness at first arises only with and after the actual taste and pleasure experiences; it only gradually notices what gives it satisfaction or pain, thus repeating the evolution of mind, which is from feeling to sense, and not vice versâ. Only slowly does it attain power of appreciating whiteness previous to actual experience and as indicative of such, that is, a power of representation. Then emotions, as expectancy, and desire, become possible, and will can be stirred to active appropriation of food, a fact of the greatest importance in the struggle for existence. Once attaining the sense of the representative value of its cognitions, the child is enabled to consciously accomplish anticipatory actions.
An element which complicates emotion at a late stage is representation of representation in indefinite regressus. In advanced human consciousness, where mind is very reflective and introspective, this phase is prominent. The nuances of modern emotion are largely due to this mode of complication. Montaigne remarks that what he most fears is fear. As fear implies representation, fear of fear implies representation of representation, which in its turn may be feared, and so on ad infinitum. Spencer terms love of property a re-representative feeling; but this psychosis does not imply representation of representation, but merely representation of desirable realities. Desire of possession is an emotion, but not emotion at emotion. It is not an experience in view of representative experience, but with reference to a direct experience, that of ownership. Since we make representation the basis of emotion, it would be natural to make classes of emotion representative, re-representative, etc.; but this is quite too subtle a distinction to be fruitful or practical.
As there are stages of representation, so there are varying degrees of strength in the sense of representativeness. A colour may be recalled to consciousness several times as neither more nor less red, and precisely of the same quantity, yet the sense of its representation quality may differ greatly at each time. There are all degrees of intensity in this sense, from dimmest feeling, when the representation hovers on the confines of the presentation field, to the point of perfect conviction of representative nature. When consciousness is not exactly sure whether an object is directly seen or only recalled, is a presentation or only a revival, sense of representation is obviously at its lowest degree of intensity.
We have also to remark that in presentation and representation the object is not to be divorced from activity. It is a natural analogy that cognition as subjective-objective is a picturing, the picture and the object pictured seeming to be diverse but co-existent constituents of consciousness. Cognition seems to consist in both the thing as realized and the realizing act. It is an attitude of mind which is a holding on to a something which it has in its grasp. But there is no distinction in consciousness itself of the presented and the presenting, the represented and the representing, of product and process, of content and activity; there is only the presenting, the activity, which is itself the object. Sense of colour conveys, indeed, by the common vice of language that the colour exists for consciousness, and is perceived by consciousness. But, subjectively and psychologically speaking, the object is always no more than the objectifying, the thing no more than the activity. Thus the analysis into content and activity is fundamentally false; it assumes a world of objects which are merely at bottom object-sensings.
Emotion is an arousing and energizing. It is perturbation, disturbance, agitation, excitement. It is a throwing open the throttle and putting on a full head of steam. The whole organism quivers with the sudden inflow of force and life, is quickened to its highest pressure. In all higher psychic life it is a driving force of the utmost importance. However, the trend of evolution is in the direction of economy, and with the highest forms of consciousness emotion accomplishes its work even before arriving at agitation intensity. Feeling of the emotion type, that is, representative, is always at first a rather intense perturbation. Fear, for example, is with the lower minds always fright; with higher minds it often appears as dread. I stand on the railway track when a train is approaching, and a slight fear enables me to take the self-conservative action of stepping from the track; but with my dog, in similar circumstances, I judge by his hasty jump and general expression that his fear is always more intense and more generally disturbing. Emotion being a force which quickly tends to exhaustion, it is obvious that those animals will, ceteris paribus, have the advantage which react with the least expenditure. Thus the tendency of evolution is away from intense emotionalism.
In this emotion conforms to a general law. The earliest occurrences of any given form of psychosis are with strenuousness and with exaltation and excitement of the organism. We speak of fits of anger and gusts of passion, but for early consciousness we might also justly speak of fits of seeing and hearing. Common vision of external objects is for lower consciousness as rarely attained, and requires as much of force as beatific vision of seer and poet in the human mind. The new psychosis is but momentary, and implies high tension and great friction, but progress is toward continuity and ease of working. Emotion is in human life a tolerably constant element, like perception with whose representative side it is correlated, and within certain ranges it rises because of the force of heredity with apparent spontaneity.
We remark that the social significance of emotion is embodied in the word treat, as treat kindly, badly, etc. Our treatment of each other always means activities inspired by some emotion.
We must acknowledge that representation is very complex and difficult of analysis. For our present purpose, however, representation is a revival with sense of revival and unreality, and yet indicative of reality experienceable in pleasure-pain terms, and thus the occasion of emotion as stimulus of self-conservative action. The young child perceives no danger; its pleasures and pains are not related to things, and have not led to the evolution of a world of objects. Pain and pleasure lead it slowly to correlate its senses, so that the burnt child learns to dread the fire; the emotion of fear is aroused with cognition of the experienceable. Objectively, we must divide psychoses into those which directly result from actual engagement of the organism with objects, or the reverberations therefrom; subjectively, into simple self-contained states, and into reflex states which view experience, and so being representations involving emotion. Just how from re-experience sense of re-experience and of its value for experience—sense of pre-experience—arises, is something we have not particularly inquired into, but it is something that appears a mysterious and difficult problem. That the perception of object should ever carry with it sense of possibility or certainty of further experience, painful or pleasurable, is, when candidly considered, a remarkable and singular operation. The problems of origin of consciousness of self, of consciousness of consciousness, and of sense of reality seem unsolved, but I believe that a thorough study of representation would throw much light on these points; but this is not the place to pursue this investigation. When we take up representation—emotion life in detail, we may be able to make suggestions on some moot points.
CHAPTER VII
FEAR AS PRIMITIVE EMOTION[[B]]
It may be considered as plausible that if the first feeling was pain, the first emotion was also of the pain character. The first representation of an object as painful induced that reaction of mind which we term an emotion, and the painful emotion we call fear. That the first emotion to appear was fear, as fright, seems likely when we consider that the general alertness and defensiveness imperatively required in the struggle for existence is thereby most immediately and simply attained. The acquirement of the power to become frightened is plainly a most important requisite for self-preservation, and thus is indicated as a very early factor in conscious life. An animal being devoured by another may merely suffer pain without any perception of the object as pain-giving and to give pain; but if it attains this perception, there may be added to the stimulus of simple pain that of fright. The direct actual pain may be but small, and so inducing but feeble reaction, as when some less sensitive portion is being injured; but if there occurs a vivid representation of potential pain, fright happens and stimulates most strenuous endeavours, and so rids the animal both of the immediately and the prospectively painful. Thus emotion acts as a complement to simple feeling, and also secures practically anticipatory reaction. Animals which must receive actual injury before experiencing pain are clearly inferior to those which experience emotion-pain before the injury is actually received. Other things being equal, the most easily frightened have, in the midst of many destructive agents, the best chance of survival and of perpetuating their kind.