But among the manifestations described in the foregoing chapters there is none which directly leads us to the artistic activity. As against the Spieltrieb theories it was objected that play never develops of itself into art, so it may now be objected, with as much reason, that all immediate or secondary emotional manifestations, however interesting they may be, give us no information on artistic manifestations. The instinctive tendency to express overmastering feeling, to enhance pleasure, and to seek relief from pain, forms the most deep-seated motive of all human activity. We can therefore derive the distinctive qualities of artistic production from this impulse only when it has been proved that art is better able than any other kind of mental function to serve and satisfy the requirements which arise from this impulse when it occurs in its purest form.
That this is the case, is the fundamental hypothesis upon which this work is based. It was impossible to prove its validity as long as emotional manifestations were treated as phenomena in the psychical life of the individual. For art is in its innermost nature a social activity. In order to elucidate the connection between art-impulse and emotional activities, we must therefore examine the latter as they appear in the social relations of mankind. We do not believe that any new principles are necessary for this purpose. We need only apply to social phenomena the same laws which were found to be valid for the emotional life of the individual. As, however, the legitimacy of such a course may be questioned, we must first devote some pages to a treatment of what we may call—if the expression is allowed—the interindividual life.
This digression brings us into a field of inquiry—that of the psychical conditions of social life—which during recent years has been the object of certain most important scientific researches. The investigations into the psychology of masses, as well as the experiments on suggestive therapeutics, have proved to how great an extent mental states may be transmitted from individual to individual by unconscious imitation of the accompanying movements. The doctrine of universal sympathy, a clear statement of which was given long ago in the ethical theory of Adam Smith,[97] has thus acquired a psychological justification in the modern theories of imitative movement. Contemporary science has at last learned to appreciate the fundamental importance of imitation for the development of human culture.[98] And some authors have even gone so far as to endeavour to deduce all sociological laws from this one principle. At the same time natural history has begun to pay more and more attention to the indispensability of imitation for the full development of instincts, as well as for training in those activities which are the most necessary in life.[99]
It is fortunate for the theory of art that the importance of the imitative functions has thus been simultaneously acknowledged in various departments of science. Whatever one may think of the somewhat audacious generalisations which have been made in the recent application of this new principle, it is incontestable that the æsthetic activities can be understood and explained only by reference to universal tendency to imitate. It is also significant that writers on æsthetic had felt themselves compelled to set up a theory of imitation long before experimental psychologists had begun to turn their attention in this direction. In Germany the enjoyment of form and form-relations has since Vischer’s time been interpreted as the result of the movements by which not only our eye, but also our whole body, follows the outlines of external things.[100] In France Jouffroy stated the condition for the receiving of æsthetic impressions to be a “power of internally imitating the states which are externally manifested in living nature.”[101] In England, finally, Vernon Lee and Anstruther Thompson have founded a theory of beauty and ugliness upon this same psychical impulse to copy in our own unconscious movements the forms of objects.[102] And in the writings of, for instance, Home,[103] Hogarth,[104] Dugald Stewart,[105] and Spencer,[106] there can be found a multitude of isolated remarks on the influence which is in a direct way exercised on our mental life by the perception of lines and forms.
In most of these theories and observations, however, the imitative activity has been noticed only in so far as it contributes to the æsthetic delight which may be derived from sensual impressions. But its importance is by no means so restricted as this; on the contrary, we believe it to be a fundamental condition for the existence of intuition itself. Without all these imperceptible tracing movements with which our body accompanies the adaptation of the eye-muscles to the outlines of external objects, our notions of depth, height, and distance, and so on, would certainly be far less distinct than they are.[107] On the other hand, the habit of executing such movements has, so to say, brought the external world within the sphere of the internal. The world has been measured with man as a standard, and objects have been translated into the language of mental experience. The impressions have hereby gained not only in emotional tone, but also in intellectual comprehensibility.[108]
Greater still is the importance of imitation for our intuition of moving objects. And a difficult movement itself is fully understood only when it has been imitated, either internally or in actual outward activity. The idea of a movement, therefore, is generally associated with an arrested impulse to perform it.[109] Closer introspection will show every one to how great a part our knowledge, even of persons, is built up of motor elements. By unconsciously and imperceptibly copying in our own body the external behaviour of a man, we may learn to understand him with benevolent or malevolent sympathy.[110] And it will no doubt be admitted by most readers that the reason why they know their friends and foes better than they know any one else is that they carry the remembrance of them not only in their eyes, but in their whole body. When in idle moments we find the memory of an absent friend surging up in our mind with no apparent reason, we may often note, to our astonishment, that we have just been unconsciously adopting one of his characteristic attitudes, or imitating his peculiar gestures or gait.
It may, however, be objected that the above-mentioned instances refer only to a particular class of individuals. In other minds, it will be said, the world-picture is entirely built up of visual and acoustic elements. It is also impossible to deny that the classification of minds in different types, which modern psychology has introduced, is as legitimate as it is advantageous for the purposes of research. But we can hardly believe that such divisions have in view anything more than a relative predominance of the several psychical elements.[111] It is easily understood that a man in whose store of memory visual or acoustic images occupy the foremost place may be inclined to deny that motor sensations of unconscious copying enter to any extent into his psychical experience. But an exclusively visual world-image, if such a thing is possible, must evidently be not only emotionally poorer, but also intellectually less distinct and less complete, than an intuition, in which such motor elements are included.
The importance of motor sensations in the psychology of knowledge is by itself of no æsthetic interest. The question has been touched upon in this connection only because of the illustration which it gives to the imitation theory. If, as we believe is the case, it is really necessary, for the purpose of acquiring a complete comprehension of things and events, to “experience” them—that is to say, to pursue and seize upon them, not only with the particular organ of sense to which they appeal, but also by tracing movements of the whole body, then there is no need to wonder at the universality of the imitative impulse. Imitation does not only, according to this view, facilitate our training in useful activities, and aid us in deriving an æsthetic delight from our sensations: it serves also, and perhaps primarily, as an expedient for the accommodating of ourselves to the external world, and for the explaining of things by reference to ourselves. It is therefore natural that imitative movements should occupy so great a place among the activities of children and primitive men. And we can also understand why this fundamental impulse, which has played so important a part in racial as well as in individual education, may become so great as to be a disease and dominate the whole of conscious life.[112] As children we all imitated before we comprehended, and we have learned to comprehend by imitating.[113] It is only when we have grown familiar by imitation with the most important data of perception that we become capable of appropriating knowledge in a more rational way. Although no adult has any need to resort to external imitation in order to comprehend new impressions, it is still only natural that in a pathological condition he should relapse into the primitive imitative reaction. And it is equally natural that an internal, i.e. arrested, imitation should take place in all our perceptions. After this explanation of the universality of this phenomenon we have no further need to occupy ourselves with the general psychology of imitation. We have here only to take notice of its importance for the communication of feeling.
As is well known, it is only in cases of abnormally increased sensibility—for instance, in some of the stages of hypnotism and thought transmission—that the motor counterpart of a mental state can be imitated with such faithfulness and completeness that the imitator is thereby enabled to partake of all the intellectual elements of the state existing in another. The hedonic qualities, on the other hand, which are physiologically conditioned by much simpler motor counterparts, may of course be transmitted with far greater perfection: it is easier to suggest a pleasure than a thought. It is also evident that it is the most general hedonic and volitional elements which have been considered by the German authors on æsthetic in their theories on internal imitation (“Die innere Nachahmung”). They seem to have thought that the adoption of the attitudes and the performance of the movements which usually accompany a given emotional state will also succeed to some extent in producing a similar emotional state. This assumption is perfectly legitimate, even if the connection between feeling and movement be interpreted in the associative way. And it needs no justification when the motor changes are considered as the physiological correlate of the feeling itself.
Everyday experience affords many examples of the way in which feelings are called into existence by the imitation of their expressive movements. A child repeats the smiles and the laughter of its parents, and can thus partake of their joy long before it is able to understand its cause.[114] Adult life naturally does not give us many opportunities of observing this pure form of direct and almost automatic transmission. But even in adult life we may often meet with an exchange of feeling which seems almost independent of any intellectual communication. Lovers know it, and intimate friends like the brothers Goncourt,[115] to say nothing of people who stand in so close a rapport with each other as a hypnotiser and his subject.[116] And even where there is no previous sympathetic relation, a state of joy or sadness may often, if it is only distinctly expressed, pass over, so to say, from the individual who has been under the influence of its objective cause, to another who, as it were, borrows the feeling, but remains unconscious of its cause. We experience this phenomenon almost daily in the influence exerted upon us by social intercourse, and even by those aspects of nature—for instance, blue open sky or overhanging mountains—which naturally call up in us the physical manifestation of emotional states. The coercive force with which our surroundings—animate or inanimate—compel us to adopt the feelings which are suggested by their attitudes, forms, or movements, is perhaps as a rule too weak to be noticed by a self-controlled, unemotional man. But if we want an example of this influence at its strongest, we need but remember how difficult it is for an individual to resist the contagion of collective feeling.[117] On public occasions the common mood, whether of joy or sorrow, is often communicated even to those who were originally possessed by the opposite feeling. So powerful is the infection of great excitement that—according to M. Féré—even a perfectly sober man who takes part in a drinking bout may often be tempted to join in the antics of his drunken comrades in a sort of second-hand intoxication, “drunkenness by induction.”[118] In the great mental epidemics of the Middle Ages this kind of contagion operated with more fatal results than ever before or afterwards. But even in modern times a popular street riot may often show us something of the same phenomenon. The great tumult in London in 1886 afforded, it is said, a good opportunity of observing how people who had originally maintained an indifferent attitude were gradually carried away by the general excitement, even to the extent of joining in the outrages.[119] In this instance the contagious effect of expressional movements was undoubtedly facilitated by their connection with so primary an impulse as that of rapine and destruction. But the case is the same with all the activities which appear as the outward manifestations of our strongest feeling-states. They all consist of instinctive actions with which every one is well familiar from his own experience. It is therefore natural that anger, hate, or love may be communicated almost automatically from an individual to masses, and from masses to individuals.