| CHAPTER I | |
| PAGE | |
| On the Introspective Study of Feeling | [1] |
| CHAPTER II | |
| On Primitive Consciousness | [12] |
| CHAPTER III | |
| Theories of Pleasure-Pain | [35] |
| CHAPTER IV | |
| The Relation of Feeling to Pleasure-Pain | [48] |
| CHAPTER V | |
| Early Differentiation | [61] |
| CHAPTER VI | |
| Representation and Emotion | [78] |
| CHAPTER VII | |
| Fear as Primitive Emotion | [93] |
| CHAPTER VIII | |
| The Differentiation of Fear | [108] |
| CHAPTER IX | |
| Despair | [121] |
| CHAPTER X | |
| Anger | [127] |
| CHAPTER XI | |
| Surprise, Disappointment, Emotion of Novelty | [163] |
| CHAPTER XII | |
| Retrospective Emotion | [176] |
| CHAPTER XIII | |
| Desire | [192] |
| CHAPTER XIV | |
| Some Remarks on Attention | [225] |
| CHAPTER XV | |
| Self Feeling | [251] |
| CHAPTER XVI | |
| Induction and Emotion | [282] |
| CHAPTER XVII | |
| The Æsthetic Psychosis | [295] |
| CHAPTER XVIII | |
| The Psychology of Literary Style | [310] |
| CHAPTER XIX | |
| Ethical Emotion | [332] |
| CHAPTER XX | |
| The Expression of Feeling | [345] |
| CHAPTER XXI | |
| Conclusion | [371] |
| Index | [391] |
EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY
CHAPTER I
ON THE INTROSPECTIVE STUDY OF FEELING
Of all the sciences psychology is, perhaps, the most imperfect. If a science is a body of knowledge obtained by special research and accepted by the general consensus of specialists, then psychology is so defective as to scarcely merit the name of science. This want of consensus is everywhere apparent, and must especially impress any one who compares the lack of harmony in manuals of psychology with the practical unanimity in manuals of botany, geology, physics, and other sciences. Even in the most fundamental points there is no agreement, as will be evident in a most summary statement.
It is now something more than a century since the general division of psychic phenomena into intellect, feeling and will, first came into repute, but still some psychologists of note do not agree to this fundamental classification, but would unite feeling and will in a single order. As to the subdivisions of feeling and will we are confessedly wholly at sea. In intellect it is only on the lower side, sensation and perception, that anything of great scientific value has been accomplished; and even now it cannot be said that the classes of sensation have been marked off with perfect certainty. In the higher range of intellect psychology can do scarcely more than accept some ready-made divisions from common observation and logic. And if so little has been settled in the comparatively simple work of a descriptive classification of the facts of mind, we may be assured that still less has been accomplished toward a scientific consensus for the laws of mind. Weber’s law alone seems to stand on any secure basis of experiment, but its range and meaning are still far from being determined. Even the laws of the association of ideas are still the subjects of endless controversy. Also in method there is manifestly the greatest disagreement. The physiological and introspective schools each magnify their own methods, sometimes so far as to discredit all others. Physiological method has won for itself a certain standing, indeed, but just what are its limitations is still far from being settled.
But the grievous lack of generally accepted results is most apparent in the domain of feeling. The discussion of feeling in most manuals is very meagre and unsatisfactory. Professor James’s recent treatise, for instance, gives some 900 pages to the Intellect, and about 100 pages each to Feeling and Will. There is little thorough analysis and no perfected inductive classification. We often, indeed, find essays of literary value which appeal to the authority of literature. But to refer to Shakspeare or Goethe as psychological authorities, or in illustration or proof of psychological laws, is generally a doubtful procedure. The literary and artistic treatment of human nature is quite distinct from the scientific, and literature and art cannot be said to be of much more value for psychology than for physics, chemistry, or biology. To appeal to the Bible or Shakspeare in matters psychological, is usually as misleading as to consult them for light on geology or botany. Even the fuller treatises on the subject of feeling rarely reach beyond literary method and common observation, being for the most part a collection and arrangement of the results of common sense, accepting common definitions, terms, and classifications. Now, science is always more than common sense and common perception, it is uncommon sense; it is an insight and a prolonged special investigation which penetrates beneath the surface of things and shows them in those inner and deeper relations which are entirely hid from general observation. Common views in psychology are likely to be as untrustworthy as in physics or astronomy, or any other department. Science must, indeed, start with common sense, but it does not deserve the name of science till it gets beyond it.
Again, the subject of pleasure, pain, and emotion, is usually discussed with considerable ethical or philosophical bias. The whole subject of feeling has been so naturally associated with ethics and philosophy from the earliest period of Greek thought that a purely colourless scientific treatment is quite difficult. Furthermore, feeling has been too often discussed from an a priori point of view, as in the rigid following out of the Herbartian theory of feeling as connected with hindrance or furtherance of representation. Still further, the physical side of emotion has been so emphasized by the physiological school as to distract attention from purely psychological investigation.
It is obvious, then, on the most cursory review, that very little has been accomplished in the pure psychology of feeling. Here is a region almost unexplored, and which, by reason of the elusiveness and obscurity of the phenomena, has seemed to some quite unexplorable. Dr. Nahlowsky truly remarks, that feeling is a “strange[“strange] mysterious world, and the entrance to it is dark as to Hades of old.” Is there any way out of this darkness and confusion? If the study of feeling is to become scientific, we must, I think, assume that all feeling is a biological function governed by the general laws of life and subject in origin and development to the law of struggle for existence. Assuming this strictly scientific point of view, we have to point out some difficulties in the way of the introspective psychology of feeling as compared with other departments of biological science.
We trace directly and with comparative ease any physiological organ and function from its simplest to its most complex form; for example, in the circulation of the blood there is clearly observable a connected series from the most elementary to the most specialized heart as developed through the principle of serviceability. In some cases, as in the orohippus, a form in the evolution of the horse, we are able to predict an intermediate organism. Psychology is still far from this deductive stage; we have no analogous series of psychic forms, much less are able to supply, a priori, the gaps in a series. The reason for this is mainly the inevitable automorphism of psychological method. In biology we are not driven to understand life solely through analogy with our own life, but in psychology mind in general must be interpreted through the self-observation[self-observation] of the human mind. In biology we see without effort facts and forms of life most diverse from our own; the most strange and primitive types are as readily discernible as the most familiar and advanced, the most simple as the most complex. We study a fish just as readily as a human body, but the fish’s mind—if it has any—seems beyond our ken, at least is not susceptible of direct study, but a matter for doubtful inference and speculation. Whether a given action does or does not indicate consciousness, and what kind of consciousness, this is most difficult to determine. Thus we have the most various interpretations, some, as Clifford, even going so far as to make psychic phenomena universal in matter, others, on the other hand, as Descartes, limiting them to man alone.