We must also note the decided hostility to all innovations—new forms of art, new discoveries, new ways of stating or treating scientific questions—which comes on with old age. The fact is so well known as to make proof unnecessary. As a general thing, in art especially, every generation rejects that which follows it. The usual explanation of this “misoneism” is that there is a fixed cerebral constitution, organised intellectual habits. Yes—but if the proposed new scientific or artistic ideal caused a true, deep, intense emotion, it would break down and sweep away the barriers of habit. There would be a shock, a turning upside down, a conversion. Cases of a rupture with the artistic or scientific past sometimes occur, but rarely, as they presuppose the possibility of a violent shock and the revival of an imperious passion, but turned in another direction. This repulsion for novelty is rather of emotional than of intellectual origin; it is a sign of the weakening of the affective life, and of a tendency towards diminished effort, repose, inertia.
(2.) The altruistic feelings (social and moral emotions) having a practical value, and being reckoned among the conditions of human existence, it is much easier to fix the moment of their partial or total decay. Now, the preceding groups apart, they are the first to disappear. They may have been altered or extinct for a long period, while the ego-altruistic, and still more the egoistic tendencies, are still intact. We have seen, again and again, how quickly persons become unsociable and ungovernable through dementia, general paralysis, melancholia, epilepsy, hysteria, shock, and injuries to the head.
But their retrogression takes place by gradations to be determined by observation alone.[[254]]
Case 1. "F—— entered the asylum December 20, 1889, suffering from general paralysis, which took the form of dementia. He was an intelligent, well-educated man, capable of filling a brilliant position in society. Being a gifted musician, he became well known as a violoncellist and his playing was long an attraction at the most frequented concerts. What especially struck one in this patient on his admission was his utter indifference to all about him—doctors, nurses, and patients alike. When shown an aged dementia patient who was dying he was neither touched nor disturbed, but simply remarked, ‘There’s one of ’em going to croak’ (‘En voilà un qui va claquer’). To suggestions that he should leave the asylum and mingle again in society, he never returned any other answer than ‘I like my own comfort too well—I wish people would leave me in peace.’ The more general altruistic feelings, therefore, would seem at this date to have vanished; but family affection, especially filial love, is still intact. F—— incessantly speaks of his father, wants to write to him, to see him. On being shown his picture he burst into tears. The personal feelings are still intact, the love of liberty, and the instinct of self-preservation in all its forms.
"Jan. 15, 1891 (a year and a half later). F—— is now in the gâteux ward. The feelings already ruined or destroyed have not reappeared. Retrogression has gone on almost uninterruptedly. F—— no longer speaks of his father, and if spoken to about him he replies with indifference. One day, all his family being assembled at the foot of his bed, he recognised each of his relations and spoke to them by name, but showed no emotion whatever; the moment of separation left him as indifferent as their arrival had found him.
"Even the egoistic feelings are now impaired; he no longer demands freedom of movement. Eating is the only thing that interests him; he devours ravenously, and, after his meals, picks up the crumbs which have fallen on the bed-clothes. The nutritive instinct is the last surviving.
"Yet, in this patient, the artistic feeling long remains unimpaired, for the reason indicated above, viz., that it is the direct expression of his temperament, and an essential part of his ego: because he is an artist.
"Two months after his admission into the asylum, though devoid of social tendencies and generous feeling, he was still able to co-ordinate his movements and play his old tunes on the violoncello. One day, in the garden, he was found gazing ecstatically at the blue sky, flecked with small white clouds; he was saying, ‘How beautiful it is! how beautiful it is!’ Nothing else, by-the-bye, could be got from him that day. Chance having brought the famous violinist X—— as a visitor to the asylum about a month before F.’s death, he was asked to play to the latter. The patient had been, for some time, in the last stage of insanity and was past understanding anything, yet he understood this, and when he heard the familiar airs of old times played on the violin his eye became clear, and for a minute the mind seemed to have found itself again under the influence of art."
Case 2. “Ph. R——, aged 70, suffering from senile dementia, was up to this age an intelligent, peaceable, respectable citizen. At the last elections he presented himself as a candidate for the Chamber, and, in spite of the protests of his family, placed himself at the head of an Anarchist group, and drew up a programme which we will not inflict on the reader. He claimed to have received 700 votes. However that may be, it became necessary to place him in seclusion. His political and social tendencies perished in the first catastrophe, but his domestic feelings still remained intact. He spoke of his family with a touching simplicity. A letter written to his brother-in-law (too long for reproduction here, but very sensible) furnishes throughout irrefragable proofs of this. Gradually these feelings became weaker, the disease progressed rapidly, he became dirty in his habits, and the only function now remaining is the generative instinct in its simplest form, as masturbation.”
In the following cases intellectual retrogression seems to precede and determine the affective evolution:—