Up to the present, we have only considered emotional reaction in its relations with nature—i.e., with the physical environment. Its domain is much more extensive; in man, and in many animals, it is adapted to the social environment. At bottom, the mechanism remains the same. A perception, an image, or an idea excites an emotion, because related, directly or indirectly (in the latter case the relation is conceived, inductively or deductively), to the social conditions of the individual. The natural ego has its needs and tendencies; the same is true of the social ego, grafted on the other, or rather, one with it; consequently, the mechanism comes very frequently into play; the circumference is extended, but the centre remains the same.
Let us note the differences between the two periods. In the latter we have (1) a preponderance of representations and concepts—i.e., the superior forms of knowledge; (2) instead of a natural, innate association between certain perceptions and certain emotional reactions—associations which may be called anatomical, because fixed in the individual organism—there are secondary, acquired associations, less solidly fixed, sometimes entirely artificial, which result from experience, from education, from habit, from imitation. I give some examples, by way of elucidation, and in order to avoid repetition.
The feeling of property is derived from a natural condition of existence—nutrition. It is first manifested—in the form of a prevision—in some animals who store up a reserve of food for the future. In primitive man this instinct extends to clothes, weapons, the cave or hut which he inhabits; later on, with the nomadic life, to herds and flocks; then to agricultural products, silver, gold, paper money; finally to that impalpable thing called credit, which has merely an imaginary existence. Thus it gradually takes on a social character. The knowledge of any loss or any gain, actual or possible, produces an emotion in the individual, because it shows him that his adaptation to social conditions is diminished or augmented.
The sentiment of “self-feeling” is innate, primary. Let us imagine ourselves in a society where the questions of rank, precedence, etiquette, are of capital importance—in an aristocratic monarchy like that of Louis XIV.—and we shall see what a ferment of emotions may be raised by an occurrence which, to our eyes, seems futile and irrelevant. If we read Saint-Simon’s Mémoires, we see him boiling over with indignation when a courtier is unduly accorded the privileges of a duke and peer, and his wife is granted a stool in the Queen’s presence. He spends his time in incessant visits, forms coalitions, does all in his power to move the ministers or the Parliament, and finally exults in his victory. However factitious and puerile this agitation may seem, it results from the same physiological mechanism as the simplest emotions: from the instinct of personal preservation—not of his natural ego, but of his ego qua courtier of the Grand Monarque. If he fails, he is injured, depreciated, lessened in his conditions of social existence.
The case already cited, of Malebranche, to whom Descartes’ Traité de l’homme “caused such violent palpitations of the heart that he was obliged continually to leave his book in order to breathe,” called forth Fontenelle’s remark that “Truth, which is invisible and of no practical utility, is not wont to find so much sensibility among men.” No doubt; but to the true man of science the pursuit of truth is one of the necessary conditions of existence. For others it is a mere luxury, to the loss of which they are quite indifferent.
I think we have thus replied to the question previously put—why certain sensations, images, ideas, have the privilege of producing organic and motor changes which, translated into the language of consciousness, constitute the emotional state—and justified our answer. The sensation, the image, the idea, are only occasional causes, incapable by themselves of producing any emotion: it springs from the inmost personality of the individual—from his organisation—expresses it directly, and participates in its stability and its instability.
IV.
The hypothesis of James and Lange—considered, at first, as a paradox—has suggested so many remarks, criticisms, objections, answers, and arguments for and against, that I find it impossible to give a summary of them.[[77]] Yet it is not without precedent. Lange, in his Addenda, mentions as his precursors, Malebranche, Spinoza, and some other less celebrated authors. The legitimate claims of Descartes, in his treatise Sur les Passions de l’Âme, have also since been vindicated.[[78]] The physiologists, too, ought not to be forgotten: Maudsley indicated the same view, without insisting on it.[[79]] The superiority of James and Lange consists in having put it clearly and endeavoured to support it by experimental proofs. I have already said that it seems to me the most probable explanation for those who do not represent the emotions to themselves as psychological entities. The only point in which I differ from these authors relates to their way of putting the proposition, not to its substance.
It is evident that our two authors, whether consciously or not, share the dualist point of view with the common opinion which they are combating; the only difference being in the interversion of cause and effect. Emotion is a cause of which the physical manifestations are the effect, says one party; the physical manifestations are the cause of which emotion is the effect, says the other. In my view, there would be a great advantage in eliminating from the question every notion of cause and effect, every relation of causality, and in substituting for the dualistic position a unitary or monistic one. The Aristotelian formula of matter and form seems to me to meet the case better, if we understand by “matter” the corporeal facts, and by “form” the corresponding psychical state: the two terms, by-the-bye, only existing in connection with each other and being inseparable except as abstract conceptions. It was traditional in ancient psychology to study the relations of “the soul and the body”—the new psychology does not speak of them. In fact, if the question takes a metaphysical form, it is no longer psychology; if it takes an experimental form, there is no reason to treat it separately, because it is treated in connection with everything. No state of consciousness can be dissociated from its physical conditions: they constitute a natural whole, which must be studied as such. Every kind of emotion ought to be considered in this way: all that is objectively expressed by movements of the face and body, by vaso-motor, respiratory, and secretory disturbances, is expressed subjectively by correlative states of consciousness, classed by external observation according to their qualities. It is a single occurrence expressed in two languages. We have previously assimilated the emotions to psycho-physiological organisms; this unitary point of view, being more conformable to the nature of things and to the present tendencies of psychology, seems to me, in practice, to eliminate many objections and difficulties.
Whether we adopt this theory or not, we have in any case acquired the certainty that the organic and motor manifestations are not accessories, that the study of them is part of the study of emotion. We shall therefore have to speak of them in some detail.