As a general rule, every deep change in the internal sensations is translated in an equivalent fashion into the cœnæsthesia and modifies the tone of feeling. Now the internal sensations are not representative, and this factor, of capital importance, has been forgotten by the intellectualists. Of this purely organic state, which afterwards becomes a state of feeling, and then an intellectual state, we shall later on find numerous examples in studying the genesis of the emotions; it is enough for the moment to note a few of them. Under the influence of haschisch, says Moreau (de Tours), who has studied it so well, “the feeling which is experienced is one of happiness. I mean by this a state which has nothing in common with purely sensual pleasure. It is not the pleasure of the glutton or the drunkard, but is much more comparable to the joy of the miser or that caused by good news.” I once knew well a man who for ten years constantly took haschisch in large doses; he withstood the drug better than might be expected, and finally died insane. I received his oral and written confidences, often to a greater extent than I desired. During this long period I have often noted his feeling of inexhaustible satisfaction, translated now and again into strange inventions or commonplace reflections, but in his opinion invaluable. At the epoch of puberty, when it follows its normal development, we know that there is a profound metamorphosis. Certain conditions, known or unknown, act on the organism and modify its state (first moment); translated into consciousness, these organic conditions give birth to a particular tone of feeling (second moment); this state of feeling produces corresponding representations (third moment). The representative element appears in the last place. Similar phenomena are produced under other conditions, in which the cœnæsthesia is modified by the state of the sexual organs (menstruation, pregnancy). The emotional state is produced first, the intellectual state afterwards. But the most abundant source from which we may draw examples at will is certainly the period of incubation which precedes the appearance of mental diseases. In most cases it is a state of vague sadness. Sadness without a cause, it is commonly said, and rightly, if by that is meant that it is produced neither by an accident nor by bad news nor by ordinary causes; but not causeless, if we take into consideration the internal sensations which in such a case play a part which is unperceived but not the less effective. This inclination to melancholy is also the rule in the neuroses. Sometimes it happens that the state of feeling, instead of being a slow incubation, is an aura of emotional character and short duration (a few minutes to at most a few hours). Some patients, by repeated experience, are aware of this; they know by the change that the attack is approaching. Féré (Les Epilepsies) gives several examples; among others, that of a young man who under these circumstances became totally changed in character, which he expressed in an original manner by saying, “I feel that my heart changes.” That is because in the last stage this state of feeling takes form and becomes fixed in an idea, as may best be seen in persecutional insanity.
Without insisting, as would be easy, on any further enumeration of facts, we may reduce these pure states of feeling to four principal types:
1. Agreeable state (pleasure, joy): that of haschisch and similar drugs, certain stages of general paralysis of the insane, the sense of well-being experienced by the consumptive and the dying; many people who have escaped a death which they considered certain have felt themselves overwhelmed on its approach by a feeling of beatitude, without further definition, which is perhaps only the absence of all suffering.[[5]]
2. Painful state (sadness, annoyance): the incubation period of most diseases, the melancholy of menstrual periods.
3. State of fear: without reason, without apparent causes, without justification, without object; fear of everything and of nothing: a fairly frequent state, which we shall examine in detail when we come to the phobias.
4. State of excitability: connected with anger, frequent in neurosis; it is an unstable and explosive state of being which, at first vague and undetermined, ends by taking form, attaching itself to a representation, and discharging itself on an object.
Finally, there are mixed states, formed by the co-existence or alternation of simple states.
From all which goes before it results that there is a pure and autonomous life of feeling, independent of the intellectual life and having its cause below, in the variations of the cœnæsthesia, which is itself the resultant and concert of vital actions. In the psychology of feeling the part played by external sensations is very scanty compared to that played by internal sensations, and certainly one must be unable to see beyond the first to set up as a rule “that there is no emotional state unconnected with an intellectual state.”
Having made this point clear, we may return to our general picture of the evolution.
1. Above organic sensibility we find the stage of needs—that is to say, of purely vital or physiological tendencies with consciousness added. In man this period only exists at the beginning of life, and is translated by internal sensations (hunger, thirst, need of sleep, fatigue, etc.). It is constituted by a bundle of tendencies essentially physiological in character, and these tendencies have nothing added or external; they are life in action. Each anatomical element, each tissue, each organ has but one end, to exercise its activity; and the physiological individual is nothing but the convergent expression of all these tendencies. They may present themselves under a double form. In the one case they express a lack, a deficiency; the anatomical element, the tissue, the organism has need of something. In this form the tendency is imperious and irresistible; such is the hunger of the carnivorous animal, which swallows its prey alive. In the other case they translate an excess, a superfluity: such are, a gland which needs to secrete, a well-nourished animal which needs to move: this is the embryonic form of the luxurious emotions.