That a man may play with his emotions is a well-known fact, but one which has not to my knowledge been adequately investigated in all its ramifications. While the “luxury of grief” is often referred to, the interesting distinction of its varying degrees has not been gone into. It can not be labelled, I think, simple play with pleasurable sensations, partly because the concentration of attention on the feeling itself instead of on the accompanying sensations and ideas tends to weaken the very feeling in question, and also because the division of consciousness which attends such a survey of one’s own emotional life is less operative in the sphere of pleasure.[341] There must be a distinct recognition that it is genuine pain which we are enjoying before the sense of being a spectator arises, and we can become conscious that we are playing with our emotions. The various feelings which may be involved in this process are physical pain, mental suffering, surprise, and fear. Besides these four, the mixed feeling of suspension between pain and pleasure might be mentioned, but as it has already been referred to it will be included in our treatment of surprise.
1. Physical Pain
I have frequently had occasion to note that we commonly enjoy stimuli whose effect is distinctly disagreeable because they are calculated to satisfy our craving for intense impressions. A sensitive tooth is constantly visited by the tongue, a stiff neck is constantly experimented with, any slight wound is repeatedly pressed and rubbed, etc. Hall[342] and Allin testify that this is especially the case in childhood. We have already noticed the shock of a cold bath and the sting of sharp drinks. The pleasure which we derive from eating pungent horseradish, which brings tears to the eyes, is a relative, distant and humble it is true, but still unmistakably a relative of our enjoyment of tragedy. Our satisfaction in strong, self-produced excitement is so intense as to make physical pain to a great extent enjoyable. It is true that while these phenomena are so far quite normal, secret but direct paths connect them with the realm of pathology. While some individuals display this in a somewhat anomalous desire for taste stimuli, in others pleasure in petty self-torture develops into a sort of sport, having as its object not merely a test of their power of endurance (of that we shall speak in the section on will) but some obscure delight in actual suffering as well. Cardanus confesses in his autobiography to a diseased condition which could not dispense with pain, so that if he found himself perfectly comfortable he was at once moved by an irresistible impulse to torture his body until tears came. Mantegazza tells of a veteran who took a strange delight in scratching the inflamed edges of an old wound in his leg.[343] In some forms of insanity the patient maltreats his person, inflicting the most frightful wounds and mutilations, which would be incredible if his sensibilities were not to a great degree blunted. In the attempt to explain these phenomena some have thought them an exception to the rule that pleasure accompanies only what is in some way useful, but it seems to me that a sufficient explanation of normal cases is found in the utility of the experimental impulse, which in seeking strong stimuli takes a certain amount of pain with the rest. So long as pleasure predominates over pain in the experience, play is possible. In pathological cases sexual excitement is often aroused sufficiently to neutralize the suffering, and where this is not the case we must suppose a perverse directing of the fighting instinct against one’s own body, furthered by the deadening of sensibility to pain.
2. Mental Suffering
Psychologists have given special attention to the enjoyment which is derived from contemplating unpleasant images and subjects. Perhaps the most familiar passage on the subject is that of Spencer’s on the luxury of grief, yet, as he himself admits, his idea of self-pity does not clear it up, and he goes on: “It seems possible that the sentiment which makes a sufferer wish to be alone with his grief, and makes him resist all distraction from it, may arise from dwelling on the contrast between his own worth as he conceives it, and the treatment he has received—either from his fellow-beings or from a power which he is prone to think of anthropomorphically. If he feels that he has deserved much while he has received little, and still more if instead of good there has come evil, the consciousness of this evil is qualified by the consciousness of worth, made pleasurably dominant by the contrast.... That this explanation is the true one, I feel by no means clear. I throw it out simply as a suggestion, confessing that this is a peculiar emotion which neither analysis nor synthesis enables me to understand.”[344] This is indeed an unsatisfactory explanation, and the play idea seems to bring us nearer to one, for here, as in the case of physical pain, it is the deep-rooted need of our nature for intense stimuli which enables us to enjoy our own suffering. That unassuageable longing of Faust which had exhausted the meagre emotional recourses of study, and now dragged him out in search of life and experience, was a longing for both pleasure and pain, since both could stir up life’s deep sea, which now lay stagnant:
“Sturzen wer uns in das Rauschen der Zeit,
Ins Rollen der Begebenheit!
Da mag denn Schmerz und Genuss,
Gelingen und Verdruss
Mit einander wechseln, wie es kann