In the lowest stage, that of the complete idiot, all instincts are wanting, even that of nutrition. In infancy idiots only learn to take the breast with difficulty. At a more advanced age, there are some who feel neither hunger nor thirst; the sight of food fails to awaken them from their torpor, and without the help of others they would perish of inanition. Ordinary cases, on a higher level than this, show unbounded voracity. Idiots may be capable of feeling nothing but the nutritive cravings, and giving no signs of pleasure or pain except inarticulate growls, shrill cries, or strident laughter.
The complete idiot shows no sign of fear; he cannot fear, because he feels and comprehends nothing. Those less devoid of sensibility dread punishment, especially blows.
With regard to anger, there are the apathetic and insensible, and, above them, in imbeciles, fits of bestial rage, with convulsions, suffocations, violent impulses, and destructive cravings.
Those who pass the purely egoistic stage and do not remain totally indifferent to those about them, show a vague and transient affection for the person who takes care of them. Others, less destitute, “seem amiable and affectionate, and we may compare these patients to the dog who fawns on those who caress him” (Schüle). The highest step attained by them, and that rarely, is a certain sense of injustice. Itard observed this in his famous “savage of the Aveyron,” whom he had purposely punished without cause.[[256]] In short, the social and moral tendencies are rudimentary or non-existent.
With regard to the sex-instinct, it is either entirely absent or there are various perversions and unrestrained erethism.
Lastly, there are some who can rise to a rudimentary manifestation of the superfluous or disinterested feelings. The idiot, as a rule, does not play; he is self-centred, isolated, and has no surplus vitality to expend. That activity which seems to live on itself and costs no effort, but is a source of pleasure without fatigue, is almost, if not quite, unknown to him. Even when invited and induced to play, he does so with little enthusiasm. We find, however, a rudiment of artistic tendency in those who have some taste for drawing or music. We may note, in passing, that the musical faculty being, as we know, one of the first to appear, ought also to be one of the last to disappear.[[257]] But all this is very poor and reduces itself to mere imitation, and even this natural and simple tendency is wanting among the lower grades of the feeble-minded.
Such, briefly, is the balance-sheet of the affective life in these disinherited ones. It is generally admitted that, in this abortive development, there are two main periods: the first lasting from birth till about the third or fourth year, when, if arrest of development takes place, the psychic state remains almost nil; the second, from the fourth year onwards, allows of a less scanty, but a discordant and perverted psychology. In both cases, the evolution, however incomplete, reproduces in all its stages the contrary order to that of decay.
It will be necessary, in concluding this study of decay, to say a few words about a doctrine, much used and abused in these days, and often alluded to in the course of this work, which stands in direct relation to the pathology of the feelings, and, in short, permits us to return some sort of answer to the question put at the beginning of this chapter: the Theory of Degeneration.
When we review the abnormal or morbid forms of the affective life: destructive impulses, phobias, incurable melancholy, sexual perversions, failure of the moral sense, insanity of doubt, etc., and seek their causes, we at once find some which are proximate or immediate. Among the most frequent are physical maladies, injuries to the head, sudden shocks, as in railway accidents; sorrow, whatever its origin, whether love, ambition, ruin, separation; intellectual overwork, and excesses of all sorts. A little reflection, however, shows us that the alleged causes are not the whole cause—that, in fact, they are often, rather, accidental and occasional. One man bears courageously or even cheerfully a loss under which his neighbour succumbs. Many are able to give themselves up with impunity to excesses of pleasure or work, physical or mental. Of the passengers in the same train, at the time of an accident, the greater number will suffer nothing worse than fright, while one perhaps may on this account become insane, or permanently subject to phobias. To explain this difference of results under identical conditions, we must seek a supplementary cause in the constitution of the individual himself. When he offers only a slight resistance, and succumbs to the least shock, we say that he is a degenerate.
The conception of degenerescence as a fundamental cause is due, as every one knows, to Morel, and has flourished famously since his day. Unfortunately, it has been called in to account for occurrences so numerous and so dissimilar that, in the end, it has brought down on itself the suspicions of some writers, who have recently stigmatised it as a “metaphysical,” i.e., vague and transcendental explanation. In fact, different writers seem to understand by this word totally different things. The original propounder of the doctrine had a clear if not a correct notion of degenerescence. “The clearest idea,” says Morel, “which we can form of human degenerescence is by representing it to ourselves as a morbid deviation from a primitive type. This deviation, however simple we may suppose it at its origin, nevertheless contains such elements of transmissibility that he who carries its germ in himself becomes more and more incapable of performing his functions as a member of the human race, and progress, already impaired in his person, is threatened in those of his descendants.... Degenerescence and morbid deviation from the normal type of humanity are therefore, in my idea, one and the same thing.” This is quite clear. Morel, as a Christian, believed in a typical man, perfect as he came from the hands of the Creator: such a belief simplifies many things. This position has been given up. At present, we understand by degenerescence, a morbid predisposition, having its peculiar signs, its physical and psychical “stigmata.”