Studies in the Evolutionary Psychology of Feeling

by Hiram Miner Stanley

But not only is anger and fear shammed as a prominent and primitive play, but it is most common to stimulate to real anger or fear, and then in glee to show the inadequacy of the occasion to the victim. Every one has observed how frequently young animals play by teasing and scaring each other. The tricks of boys and practical jokes of men both point to the deep inbred power of anger and fear in life, and are at the same time symptomatic of their decline in power as dominant life factors. All children delight in scaring one another on pretence, in seeing the real expression and feeling themselves the moving powers in bringing it about. This satisfaction, which is aboriginal, which is the reflex of the original pleasure sanction when power to scare others for one’s own benefit was being evolved in life, makes a large part of the enjoyment of such action. A large part of play-pleasure must, indeed, be set down to reflex of the earliest hard-earned pleasure experience; but a large part is also due to the thrill of excitement and the delight in activity per se. Later forms of plays are largely due to pure imitative propensity, though often helped by reversal tendencies.

We note also that this perceived groundlessness of the action becomes a large element in later forms of play, as wit and humour, but the pleasure is plainly based on the power and the superiority of intelligence implied. It amuses the tyrant to throw his companions into mortal fear by the slightest suggestion, the smaller the occasion the more amusing the fright. And in general the slighter the real cause in relation to the effect produced, the more acute the pleasure, by reason of the supremacy thereby emphasized. It is always more amusing to scare a child by a slight movement of a finger than by a vigorous act of the whole body. It seems to me that it is by this association that disproportion, incongruity, irrelevance, however induced, become in themselves amusing, ludicrous, laughable. So the incongruous, in which I have no part whatever, becomes a comic spectacle and the basis of all comedy, yet also of the tragic and tragedy. In the tragic the discordance between what is and what ought to be, instead of pleasing, pains. What is comic to a coarse mind may seem tragic to the refined. A bird, distressed by the death of its mate, offering it food, might amuse a savage or a boy, but must be a pathetic sight to a civilized and cultured man, though both might be amused to see a child presenting food to its doll.

Not only may the incongruous which is comparatively unrelated to me be amusing as well as that which I myself bring about, but even when I am the victim I may be highly delighted by the intrinsic disproportion of my experience to the exciting cause. With some persons, perhaps rather few in number, the next best thing to playing a joke is having one played on them. This amusement at oneself occurs even among savages. When Stanley was on the Congo, he was at one time greatly annoyed by the number of native visitors. In vain he tried to repel them, but one morning when a crowd had assembled at the river side, at some little distance, waiting an opportunity to board his vessel, some of his men put on lion skins which were at hand, and acted the part so well that the intending visitors fled in abject terror. Having retired to a safe distance they looked back to see the men walking the deck with the lion skins in their hands and laughing most heartily. Seeing then the groundlessness of their alarm the whole crowd burst into roars of laughter and shouted in merriment for a long time. Exhibitions of fright, we may remark, seem to be especially amusing to savages, as when an assembly of Africans of the lowest type went into ecstasies of uproarious delight on seeing a stereopticon picture of a frightened negro hastily climbing a tree to get out of the way of the gaping jaws of a crocodile.

Play is then very largely either a mutual shamming of expression, or a stimulating real expression in one by pretended expression in the other. The pleasure in deceiving others by simulating expression points to ancestral experience, for deceit has been one of the greatest factors in life evolution. That an individual seems to be an entirely different being from what he really is, has often been most advantageous in the struggle for existence, and hence a large variety of simulated expression has been employed. Children then, as repeating in play form the race history, take great delight in masquerading and so deceiving their acquaintances as to their identity, making false pleas for charity, etc. The drama has its roots in this form of play. To make others take us for quite different than we are gives us a high pleasure of power, and early man was often moved, in the breathing spells of the struggle for existence, to play at false personalities simply for the pleasure in itself of being a successful actor. There is also the counter pleasure of the spectators in piercing the simulated expression. It is only in latest phases of dramatic art that simulation comes to be appreciated for its own sake, that there is on both sides full and complete feeling of the illusory nature of the whole transaction, and an enjoyment of the art per se. Simulating expression is the actor’s art; but when the simulation is forgotten by either actor or audience, nature appears and art disappears.

While it is the province of the actor’s art to simulate expression, it is in general the office of fine art to imitate and render the expressive by image, picture, musical notes, etc. The artist is the expresser and simulator par excellence, and complete and perfect expressiveness is his constant aim, though not for utility or amusement, but for the sake of awakening the æsthetic emotion. I cannot then agree with Bosanquet, who, as I understand, makes æsthetic feeling the emotion of expression, expression for expression’s sake. For expression by its very nature is such only as expressive, that is, as going beyond itself, as being a means, and not an end in itself, hence expression for expression’s sake is meaningless phrase. Expression, so far as it attempts to stand merely for itself, is an empty mannerism and a barren technique. Expression is only such as it is backed by the emotion expressed, as significant of some psychosis; and artistic expression or art is the expression of the artistic or æsthetic emotion, a peculiar feeling about things, as apple blossoms, a sunset, a child playing. This emotion is often awakened by cognizance of an expression, as an expression of joy or horror by a child, and may thus be an emotion of or at expression, as also in the case where it is roused by the skill in purposive expression of any kind, æsthetic or other, but expression is obviously not the only way of exciting the emotion, its object may be a mere patch of colour, a pure musical note, etc. Æsthetic emotion tends to manifest or express itself just like all emotions, and in attaining perfect expression it strengthens itself. Likewise language, as an instrument of thought, a logical expression, has strengthened thought, but a purely formal logic is as barren and void as a purely formal æsthetic. Language as expressive of thought and as expressive of æsthetic emotion is equally dependent upon what it expresses, and æsthetics is thus not peculiar in its relation to expression.

The interpretation[interpretation] of expression in nature and art is often a hard matter and has given rise to much variance. For instance, take the much discussed Laokoön group; Winckelmann says the father sheds pity from his eyes like mist upon his sons; Lessing finds grief and noble endurance expressed; Goethe thinks the father shows pity for his youngest son, apprehension for the older son, and terror for himself; Lübke finds only mere pain manifested. Coming to a single feature, the mouth, we find the most diverse interpretation. Winckelmann says that here is an heroic soul who disdains to shriek, and gives forth only “an anxious and suppressed sigh.” Lessing maintains also that here is a shriek softened into a sigh, but not “because a shriek would have betrayed an ignoble soul, but because it would have produced a hideous contortion of the countenance.” Later critics have generally followed Lessing. It is obvious, I think, that the expression of the mouth is not shrieking, but is moaning, groaning, or sighing. On this quite a number of competent witnesses, physicians and psychologists whom I consulted, are practically agreed. However, it has occurred to me that the sighing or moaning of Laokoön may not be a softened form at all, but the actual expression designed by the artists. It is generally supposed that the artist here desired to show mortal agony, and it is assumed that shrieking is the expression of mortal agony. This assumption seems to me correct when extreme pain is suddenly inflicted; but when, as in the case of Laokoön, the mortal wound is received only after the most exhausting struggle, the natural expression is moaning. The realistic sculptor would surely not give any softened form, but, shrinking from nothing, has expressed Laokoön in this death grasp in the very act of giving up the ghost. Though the muscles of the limbs and trunk are still tense, yet the closing eyes, the head falling back, and the arm thrown toward the base of the brain indicate that the struggle is over, and the death moment has come, expressed vocally only by a moan. We do not need to find here then any conflict between realism and the artistic sense, but the simplest and most obvious interpretation is what the expression gives, sighing and moaning, which is the true one under the circumstances, and is so meant by the artist.

CHAPTER XXI
CONCLUSION

In the present haste to construct psychology as a natural science cognate to chemistry, physics, and biology, we note much that is premature and confusing, owing to insufficient reflection upon the quality of the phenomena. A consciousness is a natural phenomenon, but we cannot discover and investigate it as we do phenomena of light and electricity. Anger is a phenomenon occurring millions of times every day, but it is a fact which must be discerned and studied by an altogether different method from facts of crystallization, erosion, or plant growth. Psychology is not a science of inspection, but of introspection. If I know I am angry, I know it by a direct self-awareness; if I see a man strike another, and regard this as expressive of a psychosis, and that of a certain kind, anger, this supposed knowledge is analogical realization. One who never was or could be angry could no more investigate anger than a blind man light, and, other things being equal, the more irascible a man is, the better observer of anger he would be. We are not, however, conscious of all our mental processes, and we may be often blinded to the real nature of such we think we have; and as to the psychoses of other beings, especially of the more unlike and remote, we need to be extremely cautious in forming conclusions. It is likely that the mental constitution of organisms differ as widely as the physical, that the mentality of a fish is as diverse from our own as its physical structure is unlike our own. The fish may have peculiar psychoses of which we may never gain the least inkling, because we cannot examine its consciousness objectively as we do its fins, its air bladder, and its gills. The psychologist must then be myriad-minded; his fitness is the ductility and range of his psychic capacity. The richness and receptivity of his own mental life must be infinite if he is to come to full knowledge of the whole course of psychism. Thus psychology is marked off from all other science as distinct in subject and method. Its being so individual and subjective is the greatest hindrance to its progress, for science is verifiable knowledge, but how shall we have a method of consciousness verification? A man tells me he has a scar on his left knee, and this I can verify by personal examination if I like, but if he says he is angry, I have no such means of verification, I can only guess by expression. A biologist announces the discovery of a pineal eye in a certain embryo, and straightway the fact may be verified by a host of observers; but if a psychologist announces that he has discovered a new mode of consciousness, the verification is by no means so easy. May not the consciousness be entirely peculiar to him? The psychologist who attempts to verify cannot disclaim the fact simply because he cannot find this act of mind in himself. But an introspective consensus, though extremely difficult as compared with the objective consensus required by objective science, is not impossible, but it requires exceptional gifts and training in introspection. Before psychology can reach any standing a method of subjective verification must be formulated and adhered to as rigidly as corresponding verification is required by objective science. The backwardness of psychology is in this most significant, that while a half-dozen recognised biologists may announce a certain fact, and it is immediately accepted as scientific knowledge, no such action can occur in psychology. The uncertainty of subjective verification is the trouble, and the most important step that can be made to-day is a clearly defined basis for an exact verification. That one party should claim there is a feeling of relation, and another that there is no such feeling, marks a crudeness in the most general matters, and points to psychology being about where physiology was when the circulation of the blood was in debate.

But, say the experimental psychologists, subjective verification is impossible; psychology, if it is to become a science, must, like the other sciences, resort to the laboratory, and by definite and exact experiments produce the facts to order, study them by the most approved instruments, and obtain with certainty a knowledge of their laws. Now it is sufficiently easy to experiment on light, sound, and on plant growth in a laboratory, but how can we make consciousness to order with the same certainty? how can we know when we have got a consciousness, what kind it is, etc., except by subjective verification? You certainly cannot see the consciousness or touch it; but you must wholly rely on the subjective report of the individual experimented on as verified by your own consciousness. We have no impassive agent entirely under our control, except in hypnosis, and we cannot secure conditions with the same exactness in testing the intensity of some form of consciousness, as anger, as in testing the tensile strength of iron.

In the physical laboratory we produce certain conditions and we get invariably certain observable and measurable results, but in a psychological laboratory how shall I get with certainty a definite consciousness in a large number of cases and formulate its law? How shall I know at a given moment that the mental act of the agent is what my experiment requires? Moreover, does not experimental psychology by beginning with human consciousness enter rashly upon a very complex field? If it would get results, let it start with the simpler mental life, just as biology has founded itself in a study of simplest elements. But how shall psychology get at the consciousness of a clam with the same exactness as biology investigates the circulation of blood in the clam? It is plain, in short, that if we are to have a fruitful experimental psychology, some very important questions of method must first be settled. A method of getting psychoses to order, to obtain the exact reaction required, and knowing and realizing what it is when got, this is a desideratum not yet attained. Further, we must remark that experimentation is itself a psychic act, and sense of experimentation is a disturbing factor in results; that is, a consciousness which is conscious of being experimented on is thereby complicated over mere observation method. This is markedly the case in self-experimentation. Consciousness is not, like an electric current or a sound wave, an objective fact, readily reproducible in the laboratory. And again ethics may interfere with psychical experiment. How far have we a right to incite psychosis for experiment’s sake? How far may psychical vivisection be carried in the name of science? A scientist who should for his own study make an animal or person angry, would be reprobated as would the artist who should incite anger in his model in order to catch artistic effect. However, that there is a vast scope for experimental psychology cannot be denied, and we may expect an indefinite multiplication of artificial psychoses and combinations comparable to the artificial syntheses and new compounds of the chemical laboratory. Mind may develop and act merely on the scientific motive, and accomplish by tour de force a complex field of artificial consciousness quite distinct in origin and nature from natural consciousness. But for the present, at least, we regard not experiment but observation as the main method. Not laboratory, but field work, is most needed. The psychical scientist must go psychologizing, as the botanist goes botanizing. But there is no simple objective method as in botany. In order to have insight and interpretative power, there must be constant self-observation. He can know the real nature, conditions, and laws of other minds only so far as he realizes them in himself. If he has never feared, he will never know fear, and if he has never analyzed his own fear, he will not know its factors as occurring in others. All external consciousness is but a projection from the observer’s own consciousness.