Principles of literary criticism

by I. A. Richards

In alluding to the cœnesthesia we came very near to giving an account of emotion as an ingredient of consciousness. Stimulating situations give rise to widespread ordered repercussions throughout the body, felt as clearly marked colourings of consciousness. These patterns in organic response are fear, grief, joy, anger and the other emotional states. They arise for the most part when permanent or periodical tendencies of the individual are suddenly either facilitated or frustrated. Thus they depend far less upon the nature of the external stimulus than upon the general internal circumstances of the individual’s life at the time the stimulus occurs. These emotional states, with pleasure and unpleasure, are customarily distinguished under the head of feeling[*] from sensations, which are, as we have seen, very closely dependent for their character upon their stimulus. Thus sensations are ranked together as cognitive elements, concerned, that is, with our knowledge of things rather than with our attitude or behaviour towards them, or our emotion about them. Pleasure, however, and emotion have, on our view, also a cognitive aspect. They give us knowledge; in the case of pleasure, of how our activities are going on, successfully or otherwise; in the case of emotion, knowledge primarily of our attitudes. But emotion may give us further knowledge. It is a remarkable fact that persons with exceptional colour sense apparently judge most accurately whether two colours are the same, for example, or whether they have or have not some definite harmonic relation to one another, not by attentive optical comparison or examination, but by the general emotional or organic reaction which the colours evoke when simply glanced at. This is an indirect way of becoming aware of the specific nature of the external world, but none the less a very valuable way. A similar method is probably involved in those apparently immediate judgments of the moral character of persons met with for the first time which many people make so readily and successfully. They may be quite unable to mention any definite feature of the person upon which their judgment could be based. It is none the less often extraordinarily just and discriminating. The remarkable sensitiveness to its mother’s expression which the infant shows is a striking example. The part played by this kind of judgment in all æsthetic appreciation need not be insisted upon. It is notable that artists are often pre-eminently adepts at such judgments. The topic is usually discussed under the wide and vague heading of intuition; a rubric which completely obscures and befogs the issues.

For such judgments are not a simpler and more direct way of taking cognisance of things, but a more indirect and more complex way. It is not thereby shown to be a less primitive process. On the contrary, simplified ways of thinking are commonly advanced products. The ‘intuitive’ person uses his cœnesthesia as a chemist uses his reagents or a physiologist his galvanometer. As far as the sensations which the colour stimuli excite can be optically discriminated, no difference is perceptible. But an actual yet sensorily imperceptible difference becomes apparent through the difference in organic reaction. The process is merely one of adding further and more delicate signs to the situation, it is analogous to attaching a recording lever to a barograph.

The differences between sensitive or ‘intuitive’ and more ‘rational’ and obtuse individuals may be of two kinds. It may be that the sensitive person’s organic response is more delicate. This is a difficult matter to decide. It is certain, however, that the chief difference (a derivative difference very likely) lies in the fact that the obtuse person has not learned to interpret the changes in his general bodily consciousness in any systematic fashion. The changes may occur and occur systematically, but they mean nothing definite to him.

This kind of intervention of organic sensation in perception plays a part in all the arts. Much neglected, it is probably of very great importance. What here needs to be noticed is that it is not a mode of gaining knowledge which differs in any essential way from other modes. No unique and peculiar relation of ‘feeling’ towards things needs to be introduced to explain it, any more than a unique and peculiar mode of ‘cognitively apprehending’ them needs to be introduced to explain ordinary knowing. In both instances their causes, which have to be assumed in any case, will suffice. When we sense something our sensation is caused by what we sense. When we refer to something absent, a present sensation similar to sensations which in the past have been coincident with it, is thereby a sign for it, and so on, through more and more intricate mnemic sign-situations. Here a present colour sensation gives rise to an organic response which has in the past accompanied a definite colour; the response becomes then a sign of that colour which the sensitive and discriminating person trusts, although he is optically unable to make sure whether that colour is present or merely one very like it. Other cases differ from this in complexity but not in principle. If it is objected that this account of referring or thinking in terms of causes gives us at best but a very indirect way of knowing, the reply is that the prevalence of error is itself a strong argument against a too direct theory of knowledge.

In popular parlance the term ‘emotion’ stands for those happenings in minds which accompany such exhibitions of unusual excitement as weeping, shouting, blushing, trembling, and so on. But in the usage of most critics it has taken an extended sense, thereby suffering quite needlessly in its usefulness. For them it stands for any noteworthy ‘goings on’ in the mind almost regardless of their nature. The true and profound emotions, as spoken of by critics, are often lacking in all the characteristics which govern the more refined linguistic usage of common people, and, as it happens, of psychologists also, for what may perhaps be regarded now as the standard usage in psychology, sets out from the very same bodily changes accompanying experience as were noted above.

Two main features characterise every emotional experience. One of these is a diffused reaction in the organs of the body brought about through the sympathetic systems. The other is a tendency to action of some definite kind or group of kinds. These extensive changes in the visceral and vascular systems, characteristically in respiration and in glandular secretion, commonly take place in response to situations which call some instinctive tendency into play. As a result of all these changes a tide of sensations of internal bodily origin comes into consciousness. It is generally agreed that these sensations make up at least the main part of the peculiar consciousness of an emotion. Whether they are necessary to it or not is disputed. It may perhaps be suggested that insufficient attention has been paid in the theory of emotion to images of such sensations. The fact that fear, for example, may be felt in the absence of any detectable bodily changes of the kind described (a disputed fact) may be explained by supposing images of these sensations to be taking their place.

These sensations, or images of them, are then a main ingredient of an emotional experience and account for its peculiar ‘colour’ or tone, for the voluminousness and massiveness as well as for the extreme acuteness of emotions. But of equal or greater importance are the changes in consciousness due to reactions in the nervous systems which control movement, governing muscular response to the stimulating situation. These range, in the case of fear, from the awakening of a simple tendency, an impulse to run away or hide under the table, to such elaborate readjustments as we make when we prepare to counter a threat against some favourite opinion. As a rule a process of extraordinary complexity takes place between perceiving the situation and finding a mode of meeting it. This complicated process contributes the rest of its peculiar flavour to an emotional experience.

A more detailed discussion from the same angle of the points raised in this and the surrounding chapters will be found in The Meaning of Psychology (1926) by C. K. Ogden, where the author’s view of mental activity is elaborated.

CHAPTER XIV
Memory

Within the surface of Time’s fleeting river