For some there is in all these phenomena a rudiment of consciousness. Since the movements are adapted and appropriate, varying according to circumstances, there must be choice they say, and choice involves a psychic element; the mobility is the revelation of an obscure “psyche” endowed with attractive and repulsive tendencies.
For the others (whose opinion I adopt), the whole may be explained on physico-chemical grounds. No doubt there is affinity, attraction and repulsion, but only in the scientific sense; these words are metaphors derived from the language of consciousness which should be purged of all anthropomorphic elements. Several authors have shown by numerous observations and experiments the chemical conditions which determine or prevent this pretended choice (Sachs, Verworn, Löb, Maupas, Bastian, etc.).
On this point, as on all questions of origin, we must decide according to probabilities, and the probabilities appear to be all in favour of the chemical hypothesis. In any case, this matter has only a secondary interest for us here. If we admit conscious tendencies, then the origin of the emotional life coincides with the very origin of physiological life. If we eliminate all psychology, there still remains the physiological tendency, that is to say the motor element, which in some degree, from the lowest to the highest, is never quite wanting.
This excursion into the pre-conscious period—since we so regard it—puts us in possession of one result. At the end of this investigation we find two well-defined tendencies, physico-chemical and organic—the one of attraction, the other of repulsion; these are the two poles of the life of feeling. What is attraction in this sense? Simply assimilation; it blends with nutrition. With sexual attraction, however, we must note that we already reach a higher grade; the phenomenon is more complex, the monocellular being no longer acts to preserve itself but to maintain the species. As to repulsion, we may remark that it is manifested in two ways. On one side it is the opposite of assimilation: the cell or the tissue rejects what does not suit it. On another side, at a somewhat superior stage, it is in some degree already defensive.
We have thus gained a basis for our subject by finding that beneath the conscious life of feeling there exists a very low and obscure region, that of vital or organic sensibility, which is an embryonic form of conscious sensibility and supports it.
II.
We now pass from darkness to light, from the vital to the psychic. But before entering into the conscious period of the life of feeling and following it in the progress of its evolution, this is perhaps the place to examine a sufficiently important question which has usually been wrongly answered in the negative: Are there pure states of feeling—that is to say, states empty of any intellectual element, of every representative content, not connected either with perceptions or images or concepts, simply subjective, agreeable, disagreeable, or mixed? If we reply in the negative, it follows that without exception no kind of feeling can ever exist by itself; it always requires a support; it is never more than an accompaniment. This proposition is held by the majority; it has naturally been adopted by the intellectualists, and Lehmann has recently maintained it in its most radical form; a state of emotional consciousness is never met with; pleasure and pain are always connected with intellectual states.[[3]] If we reply in the affirmative, then the state of feeling is considered as having at least sometimes an independent existence of its own and not as condemned to play for ever the part of acolyte or parasite.
This is a question of fact, and observation alone can settle it. Although there are other reasons to give in favour of the autonomous and even primordial character of the life of feeling, I reserve them for the conclusion of this book, to remain at present in the region of pure and simple experience. There can be no doubt that, as a rule, emotional states accompany intellectual states, but I deny that it can never be otherwise, and that perceptions and representations are the necessary condition of existence, absolutely and without exception, of every manifestation of feeling.
There is a first class of facts which I only refer to in order not to ignore them. Although they have been invoked they seem to me to carry little weight. I refer to the emotions which suddenly break out in animals and are not explicable by any anterior experience. Gratiolet having presented to a very young puppy a fragment of wolf’s skin so worn that it resembled parchment, the animal on smelling it was seized with extreme fright. Kröner, in his book on cœnæsthesia,[[4]] has collected similar facts. It is, however, so difficult to know what passes in the consciousness of an animal, and to ascertain the part of instinct and of hereditary transmission, that I do not insist. Moreover, in all these cases the emotion is excited by an external sensation which touches a spring and sets the mechanism of instinct at work; so that it might be argued that we are not here concerned with a pure and independent state of feeling. To remove all doubt, we require cases in which the state of feeling precedes the intellectual state, not being provoked by, but, on the contrary, provoking it.
The child at the beginning can only possess a purely affective life. During the intra-uterine period he neither hears nor sees nor touches; even after birth it is some weeks before he learns to localise his sensations. His psychic life, however rudimentary it may be, must consist in a vague state of pleasure and pain analogous to ours. He cannot connect them with perceptions, because he is still unable to perceive. It is a widely accredited opinion that the infant enters into life by pain; Preyer has questioned this; we shall see later on what grounds. At present we need not insist upon these facts, since we cannot interpret them except by induction. Adults will furnish us with unquestionable and abundant evidence.