Studies in the Evolutionary Psychology of Feeling

by Hiram Miner Stanley

As far then as we can discover in dream consciousness, or in ordinary consciousness, self-consciousness is persistent and pervasive element. In the whole range of consciousness, with the exception of the very evanescent and absolutely primitive pure pleasure-pain series, self-cognition appears. We say, indeed, that a man forgets himself in a rage, but mean merely that the rage object as self-related quite engrosses consciousness to the exclusion of other forms of self-consciousness, as himself related to other selves. Blind with fury to all other objects than the rage object, he does not notice things as related to himself, and he will rush into a stone wall. In the utmost concentration and intensification of emotion, self-consciousness does not disappear, but is itself concentrated and intensified. Even in the delirium of passion, so long as any cognition remains self-consciousness remains. The intensification order in consciousness, that is, where multiple consciousness loses elements through intensifying of some others, bears evidence then to the fundamental nature of self-consciousness. A person roused from sleep by cold, which becomes more and more intense till he loses all consciousness through suffering, is throughout the long series self-conscious with the exception of the initial and the final pang of pain. From the moment when cold made him attain consciousness till the moment when he thereby lost consciousness—that is, practically the time he was conscious—he was self-conscious; this is the verdict of common introspection. Any one who looks back upon his experiences of this intensification nature, finds himself to have been self-conscious throughout.

So far then as I have been able to examine them, the modes of coming to consciousness in dream life and in awaking process, and also the order of disappearing consciousness by intensification, confirm the general result which at the opening of this chapter we deduced from a general consideration of psychism under the conditions of existence, namely, that self-consciousness is necessary and important factor in all cognitive process, the self-relating act giving vital value to all consciousness of external and internal object, whether in sensing or perceiving.

We have already touched on the general function of self-consciousness, the gain which accrues to the individual organism from knowing its own experiences as such by giving self-directivity and special response. The individual is thereby enabled to look after its own interests, to consciously care for itself, and to make the most of itself. The core of psychic life is interest, and the core of interest is self-consciousness. That the psychism has interest, that it feels for itself, is essential to the progress of life. Indeed, the genesis and growth of biological forms and organs lie in their attainment and perfecting as servants to the self in the struggle of existence. We know this to be the case for the sense-organs. The organism evidently came to appreciate light by a definite nisus with self-consciousness, just the same in kind as that by which organ is advanced to-day when straining the eyes to perceive a seventh Pleiad. In short, we do not see because we have eyes, but we have eyes because we see. The seeing activity and effort as a self-activity generates the eye and perfects it. So also it is by locomotive effort that motor organs originate and develop. The young child learning to walk, self-consciously and with effort moving upon its legs, is an intimation of the way in which the limbs themselves arose in active response to environment. The rabbits imported into Australia have, it is reported, learned to climb trees, with a consequent modification of foot structure. Now the real genesis of the morphological change is obviously psychic, the climbing effort as a valuable function to life under the conditions of existence, viz., the scarcity of herbage.

But not only the motor and sensory organs are to be traced in origin and growth to psychic basis in self-consciousness and struggle, but other organs now quite disassociated from will may originally have been developed by will. Thus the stomach may have originated in digestive effort and the heart in circulatory effort. That self-attention to the heart stimulates the action of the heart is well-known, and also that in rare cases the heart’s action is directly controlled by will. This may be survival. Function is built up also as indirect result of will, as when motor effort in running develops heart action. Psychism may thus be interpreted as the basis of all organic development. The body is the offspring of will. Certainly as man surveys progressive adaptation in himself and other evolving organisms, the psychic basis is apparent in feeling and in effort self-conscious; and if in any wise it has apparently become mechanical and spontaneous, as in heart-beat, as in digestion, as in winking the eye, this is to be ascribed to impulse from the past. Self-consciousness quickens reaction, for reaction time is shortened when there is anticipation, and anticipation implies self-consciousness as awareness of experienceability. Self-consciousness also enormously strengthens reaction. Thus the more thoroughly one realizes his own danger, the more powerful the effort to escape. This is true under normal and simple conditions, the only form in which we are considering self-consciousness. Self-consciousness may become abnormal and debilitating in the hypochondriac, but this is a stage beyond our present studies. Primarily in the struggle of life self-relating to one’s own experience is always advantageous function. The most important thing in life is the realization, by the aid of self-consciousness, of the self-experience value of things; to appreciate and understand environment, and so adapt oneself to it and adapt it to oneself, to conserve and extend self, this is the substance of psychism, and its whole history is thence pervaded by self-consciousness.

But we must now turn from these general considerations to specific emotions as related to self-consciousness. In the natural course of things, an organism can never sense or view the self with indifference. In all early psychic stages a dispassionate view of self is uncalled for and does not exist; and, in fact, even if the most educated and thoughtful human adult had a self-sense which is active as evolutionary cause, it may rightly be regarded as ever active. Life forms from the lowest protista to the highest vertebrate are in their development due to active response, and thus morphological development may be looked at as a functional embodiment of psychism. Instead, then, of regarding psychism merely as life factor, we may go farther, and define life as psychism. This is what the doctrine of active response and development thereby, with natural selection, leads to. The phenomena of life, so far as we can interpret them, seem to favour the view that organism is objectification of the will, and, except at the very first stage, will as cognitive, and triply so in object-subject-consciousness cognition. Such evidence as we have points rather to organic body as reflex of mind than mind as reflex of body. That the initiatory, progressive, and creative force in evolution is psychic, we judge from such instances as we can observe of progressive adaptation in ourselves and in lower animals. Where new circumstances affect a species, as the rabbit transferred to Australia, the favouring modification of the foot to climb trees is evidently only attained by severest struggle for self-conservation. If a new mode of force were introduced to this planet, which should powerfully affect life, it would reach it at first only through pleasure-pain, and the growth to a special sense-organ for this new force would very gradually be attained through the struggle for existence.

The prime value of self-consciousness in evolution is in securing an intelligent correlation with environment. All specific reaction and adaptation arose probably through an emotion volitional self-relating of object. It is a biologic psychic law that all emotion is bound up with self-consciousness, and all self-consciousness with emotion, for thus only is there efficiency as intelligent will stimulation. But while sense of self is inherent in all emotion as such, may it not in some cases have a peculiar place, so that we may justly term them self-feelings or emotions of personality?

A child fears the dog and is proud of its new dress. Here are two emotions which both imply self-consciousness, the object is in both related to the self, but they differ in egoistic quality in that in the fear there is sense of the thing as acting on the self, in the pride there is sense of the self as acting on the thing. In the pride it is the object as identified with the self that is the source of emotion. The pride proceeds from within outward, while fear, vice versâ. In fear it is the experience value of the dog, that it will hurt, that gives the emotion quality; but in the pride the essence of the emotion lies, not in the influence of the dress on the self, but that the self is connected with the dress by way of ownership. “See my pretty dress”; “Oh mama! the cross dog”; the emotions thus expressed appear to belong to different orders; the fear being of the thing in its effect on the self, the pride being of the self in the thing. Pride is a glorified self-consciousness, self-consciousness is its substance and immediate spirit, whereas in fear self-consciousness is but an instrument in interpretation of experience value. We observe an interesting example of emotion of personality in a young girl who fears a cow and is yet ashamed of her fear. Here, while self-consciousness is certainly involved in the fear, yet it is peculiarly involved in the emotion at her emotion as such; the shame is at or of herself, the fear is for herself. This peculiar personal feature of pride is signified by the common usage of language; the child is proud of the thing, does not pride the thing, but prides himself on the thing, whereas in fear he fears the thing for himself. I say, indeed, the child is afraid of the dog and proud of his dress, but the force of the preposition is quite general.

It may be said that pride is not peculiarly an emotion of personality simply as being directed toward self; one can hate himself, fear himself, be angry at himself, etc. But the drunkard fearing himself means merely that he fears the results of his own tendencies, delirium tremens, for instance, a perfectly objective fear. And it is evident that one cannot, holding to the term, self, in the same meaning, fear at once himself for himself. The self which is endangered is not the self which endangers. In all such cases as so-called fearing self the action is from without inward, which is the reverse of the mode in personality—emotion where oneself is seen, not as affected by the thing, but as himself in the thing.

The typical and earliest of the emotions of personality is undoubtedly pride. Like all emotions pride includes cognition of object; pride is always proud of something but in the peculiar way before emphasized, in the light which our own personality casts upon it. Pride generally and certainly originally implies sense of something done or possessed by self and that in a manner superior to competitors. It is a self assertion over rivals, an impressing spectators, a being proud of something to some one. If the world contained but one solitary conscious individual, he could never attain to pride, though he might be self-satisfied. Sense of comparative self-magnification is essential to pride. Pride as social in its nature suffers great diminishing when the individual is long kept in solitude, and in some cases men may ultimately lose all standard of comparison and so pride entirely vanishes. If a man were from his earliest remembrance an inhabitant of a desert isle pride would have no opportunity to develop. His achievements might satisfy himself, but they could not make him proud, for he would know nothing of others and their works. Again, this need of sociality is seen in this, that we are not proud of our planet as such. We distinguish it, indeed, as our own, but we have no sense of pride in its finest features as such. I do not feel proud of Amazonian forest or Himalayan mountain merely as earth characters. However, if in the future we secure interplanetary communication, and planets rival each other as cities and countries do now, there will be a stimulus to pride on an astronomical scale. If we could say to the inhabitants of some neighbour sphere that our planet made better time round the sun than theirs, this would be the basis of an intense pride.

The extent of pride is thus equal to the extent of the self-sense, but in its wide ranges pride is relatively weak. I am proud of my country, but, other things being equal, more proud of my state and still more proud of my city. I am proud of the achievements of the Anglo-American race, and I always survey a locomotive with pride, but it is when ownership and achievement comes closer to the ego, as in one’s relatives and family, that pride notably intensifies, and it reaches its maximum in view of one’s own attainments. That which we do without any assistance and which seems to us far beyond the ordinary gives the best and highest incitement to pride.