It is evident that pain as a sign of life and function may be especially welcome when the vital sensation has for any reason become weakened. The self-woundings of the heathen and Christian saints, although no doubt fully justified to the sufferers themselves by religious motives, may thus have had their innermost unconscious motive in an endeavour to overcome that anæsthesia which is so usual an accompaniment of hysterical disturbances.[85] It is hard to believe that the tortures which they inflict upon themselves are really felt as neutral or pleasurable. But we can easily understand that such torture, although more or less painful, may afford a kind of satisfaction by compelling the slow and dull senses to function. Professor Lange has in his work on the emotions laid special stress upon this point. “It is a condition of our well-being,” he says, “that our sensorial centres should be in a certain degree of activity called forth by the impressions which reach them through the sensorial nerves from the outside. If from some cause or other—for instance, from a decrease in the functional powers of these centres—there arises an insensibility, anæsthesia, then we feel a longing to force them to their usual activity by addressing to them an abnormally strong appeal, or, in other words, by intensifying the external impressions and thereby neutralising the insensibility.”[86] This principle has, indeed, as applied by Lange to the expressions of anger, been mercilessly ridiculed by Wundt.[87] But it seems to us that the observation itself can scarcely be contested. Whether we explain it as a case of the indispensability of the accustomed or as the result of some peculiar yearning for life—a soul-desire, as Mr. Jefferies would have called it—a deficient consciousness of function is in most cases distinctly unpleasant. And, on the other hand, it seems as if an increased consciousness of function were per se pleasurable. It is of course difficult to prove by exact argument the existence of a feeling which can be observed only as the innermost concealed motive of our life. But on as strong evidence as can ever be adduced on matters of emotional life, we may believe that in every conscious life there operates a dim instinctive craving for fuller and greater consciousness, or, if the expression be preferred, for the most complete self-realisation. Happiness itself has been defined by a philosopher so little inclined to mysticism as Mr. Brinton, as “the increasing consciousness of self.”[88] It is therefore easy to understand why, when this consciousness has been blunted by some cause or other, we may even long for suffering and pain as a means of escaping the dulness, emptiness, and darkness of insensibility. It may seem to be a disturbance of all normal instincts that pain—an element hostile to vital activity—can thus be preferred to a state the unpleasantness of which is only diffuse. But we have to remember that the absence of sensation and function frightens us by its similarity to what we fear more than pain.
The sufferings of insensibility, this highest possible form of tedium, which—if we are to judge from the descriptions in literature and poetry—may in themselves be unbearable enough, must needs be unusually keen in individuals who are given up to philosophic reflection. The feeling of inanity which is caused by a suspense of vital sensations is apt to spread itself over the whole field of sense-experience.[89] In default of strong impressions, with their subsequent reactions, we may lose the sense not only of our own existence, but also of that of the external world.[90] The relatively neutral evidence of our higher senses does not afford us the same assurance of reality as is given by grosser impressions, which affect us more directly in the way of pleasure or pain. On purely physiological grounds there may thus be produced a morbid conception of the universe which, having neither ego nor non-ego to rely on, lacks the conviction either of subjective or objective existence. From this vertiginous inanity, which must bring every philosophic temperament into despair, life delivers us by the same means which Molière uses to confute the Pyrrhonists. Pain is the most convincing reality we can imagine. It may therefore, even when it is not deliberately sought for, afford a welcome support to thought.
“Suffice it thee
Thy pain is a reality.”
(Tennyson, “The Two Voices”).
In this connection, however, we have not to dwell on the philosophical importance of pain. We are here only concerned with its significance for the immediate sense of life. And in this respect we believe that an artificial creation of pain may play some part not only in anger, but in the expression of all high-strung emotions. It is well known that the orgiastic state of mind, whether originally caused by religious exaltation or by erotic delirium, may often, when it has reached its highest stage, express itself in self-laceration. These facts are no doubt difficult to interpret. But it seems justifiable to assume that a tendency towards the creating of pain-sensations may have been derived from the emotional process itself. Explained in this way, orgiastic self-tortures may be adduced as the most remarkable proofs of this desire for an enhanced sense of life which lies at the bottom of all our appetence.
However energetically strong emotions may accentuate our existence, and however deeply we may enjoy the “realisation of ourselves” which we find in the violent excitement accompanying them, high-strung states are naturally bound to be followed by exhaustion and stupor. And thus even the intoxication of life, this most powerful of sensations, sooner or later passes its climax and sinks into dull insensibility. The lower the function by the incitement of which the exaltation is produced, the greater probably is its orgiastic power. But its duration is also so much the shorter. A wild dance, for instance, invariably ends in impotent prostration, during which the power of function and sensation is completely exhausted. As long as the mental desire for increased excitement is unsatisfied, this state must be distinctly disagreeable. Hence all the frenetic manifestations by which man, when raging in insatiable exaltation, strives to awake and rouse his failing powers of enjoyment.
In the whole domain of comparative psychology there can scarcely be adduced an example which throws so much light on the orgiastic state of mind as the Bacchanal frenzy. And the descriptions of this “Dionysischer Zustand” which are to be found in classic literature give us the most complete idea of the various expedients by which the devotee tries to maintain and increase his state of exaltation in spite of the growing tendency to relaxation. By noise, roaring, and loud cries, by frenetic dance and wild actions, the “Maenads” strive to preserve and recover the fading sense of life, which ever baffles their exertions. And as the last, infallible means of excitement, resorted to when all other stimulations have proved unable to stir up the dulled senses, we may explain the tortures which the partly insensible Bacchante inflicts upon herself. “Suum Bacchis non sentit saucia vulnus.”[91]
There are various kinds of orgiastic exaltation connected with self-torture—as that of the tarantella dancers, of the dervishes, of the shamans, and others—in which the creation of pain-sensations may be explained as a desperate device for enhancing the intensity of the emotional state. Acute pain often makes it possible to overcome momentarily the exhaustion or the dulness which unfits us for work. And it is evident that pain may produce a similar excitement when we require an increase of energy, not for the sake of obtaining the greatest possible result from a working activity, but for the sake of extracting the greatest possible enjoyment out of an emotional state.
But if this interpretation be admitted as possible, there will be ample room for discussion as to its application to individual cases. For it is to be remembered that even pain may fulfil the task of relieving a nervous tension. In cases of bodily suffering counter irritation may thus bring about a wholesome diversion of the attention from an otherwise unbearable pain.[92] And it is unquestionable that self-inflicted lacerations during violent emotion often subserve the same purpose. When a savage scarifies himself on receiving bad news, or at a funeral feast, his action is an instinctive effort to procure relief from the overpowering feelings.[93] That he is not simply performing a sacrificial rite,[94] but is merely seeking the relief which experience has taught him may be afforded by pain as well as by the subsequent exhaustion (especially from loss of blood), is proved by the fact that the same expedient is employed in order to overcome humiliation or bodily pain.[95] It is not stimulation, but a lulling of the senses, which is here aimed at.