The object of this chapter is to prove that the disappearance of feelings, when it takes place gradually and continuously, in consequence of age or of some slowly evolved malady (general paralysis, senile dementia, etc.), conforms to the same law. But, by reason of the complexity of the affective life, the question presents some difficulties which we must first of all point out.
The first is this: May not affective retrogression be simply the consequence of an intellectual retrogression? or must we take it as primary, independent, and self-determined, not secondary and consequent upon the decay of intellect? Or else—and this view appears to me the most probable—do both cases occur? It is impossible to give a categorical answer; the two elements, the intellectual and the affective, being closely associated. Yet, as retrogression is irremediable and results from organic decay or waste, the presumption is rather in favour of a gradual extinction of the tendencies.
The second difficulty is at least equally important. We have admitted that in every normal person all the primary tendencies exist; but their coexistence does not imply their equality. Experience proves this. The individual character results from the preponderance of one or more tendencies: the æsthetic or the sexual, the moral or the religious; one man is constitutionally timid, and another choleric. It follows from this that all cases of retrogression are not strictly comparable with one another; for it is evident that the dominant tendency is better able than the rest to withstand shocks and assaults, and to resist destructive action. This, in my opinion, explains how it is that—as in a case mentioned below—the æsthetic sentiment, one of the most delicate and latest in formation, is of very late extinction in an artist. This apparent exception is, in fact, a confirmation of the law.
The ideal case for illustrating our subject would be this: An average man, all of whose tendencies are nearly equipollent, is struck down by a disease involving slow retrogression, so that the order in which the feelings are weakened and extinguished can be noted; then the decadence stops short, and is followed by a restoration of the affective life, which can be followed, step by step, in its gradual ascent, so as to ascertain whether it is or is not the repetition, in reversed order, of the period of dissolution. The search for such a case, however, would be no less than the pursuit of a chimera. The only practical method would be to collect a great number of observations on different patients, and thus draw up a schematic table of decay, analogous to Galton’s composite photographs—formed by the accumulation of resemblances and the elimination of individual differences. This is what I shall try to do, as far as the extreme scarcity of material and the difficulties of an unexplored subject will permit. I shall first examine dissolution properly so called; then, by way of converse proof, the arrest of development.
I.
As the decay of the feelings progresses from the higher to the lower, from complex adaptation to simple adaptation, gradually narrowing the area of the affective life, we may, in this decadence, distinguish four phases, marked by the successive disappearance of (1) the disinterested emotions, (2) the altruistic emotions, (3) the ego-altruistic emotions, and (4) the purely egoistic emotions.
(1.) I class under the first head the æsthetic emotions and the higher forms of intellectual emotions, which aim at no practical or utilitarian end, but are luxuries, not necessaries of life. Æsthetic and scientific cravings are so slightly marked, and so far from imperative in the majority of men, that it is impossible to demonstrate with certainty that they are the first to disappear; but it may be indirectly inferred.
It cannot be denied that those who have a passion for art or science, and for whom these are necessary conditions of life, are extremely rare compared with those who are moved or possessed by love, the desire for riches, or ambition. In the mass of men the æsthetic and intellectual feelings remain in a rudimentary condition, or attain only a slight, at most a medium development, and it cannot be said with certainty when they become extinct, seeing they have never really existed. Compared with the higher forms, they resemble a case of arrested development, i.e., of retrogression; and this arrest of development is the rule, as it must be for all tendencies beyond the bounds of the mere necessities of life.
To this negative proof I may add other positive proofs.
Age and diseases whose effect is retrogressive diminish, if they do not annihilate, zeal, enthusiasm, the impulse towards creation, discovery, or the simple enjoyment of art, and the curiosity which is always on the alert. I omit some very rare exceptions, each of which would require individual examination. In the majority of men weakened vitality at once destroys all taste for the superfluous.