A similar instinct ought, one would expect, to operate in sensations of acute pain. In point of fact, an obscure consciousness of the limitation of functional energy, or, to put it in psychological terms, of attentive power, leads us to seek and find relief from pain in violent movement. Some of the frantic dances of savage tribes undoubtedly serve to deaden the sufferings inflicted by ritual tortures. But it is, of course, only in exceptional cases that these anæsthetic expedients are intentionally resorted to. As a rule they are to be considered as a radiation of nervous tension, and are so little conscious that we can scarcely even call them instinctive. Besides all the motor manifestations which thus follow upon a sensation of severe pain in almost direct physiological sequence, some pantomimic activity of defence or avoidance will generally be called forth by the notion of an objective source of pain. Owing to associations derived from earlier similar states, this reaction may often appear even when there is no definite object which can be assigned as the cause of the feeling. Among primitive people the pantomime of pain undoubtedly has its ground in a mythological conception of the nature of feeling. Pain is regarded as a concrete thing which the body may be capable of shaking off or avoiding. Crude as it may seem, this illusion is so closely bound up with our instinctive reactions that even the most enlightened man can never completely emancipate himself from its influence. There is thus nearly always an intellectual factor which co-operates with the physical tendency towards energetic reaction to pain.
Thus pain, notwithstanding its inhibitive character, may act, especially when it is acute, as a motor incitement. Hence the curious cases of favourable medical effects produced by severe physical suffering, which may serve not only as a distraction of the attention, but also as a positive stimulation of sinking vitality. Hence also the enhanced intellectual activity which often follows upon pain.[56] There was perhaps more malignity than truth in the remark of Michelet that Flaubert might imperil his talent by curing his boils;[57] but there are unquestionable instances to prove that wounds and acute diseases have exercised a powerful exciting influence on certain artistic temperaments.
All these stimulating effects of pain must naturally be taken into account in every emotional theory. But they can by no means be adduced, as Fechner thinks, as an argument against the definition which we have already given.[58] Reactions to pain follow, indeed, so immediately upon the sensation, that they cannot be separated in time from its proper expression. But it must always be remembered that the activities, whether of writhing under the influence of pain or of combating it, are secondary manifestations by which the feeling-tone is gradually weakened. Whether the stimulating effects appear at the very moment of impression or only when the sensation has become fully conscious, pain is always, we believe, at its keenest when the outward development of energy is lowest. If the notion “expression” is conceived in its strictest sense, i.e. as the physiological counterpart of the emotional state, then pain has only one expression—inhibition.
With regard to states of pleasure it is more difficult to make any distinction between primary and secondary manifestations. Every new movement is a new expression of the same feeling which—as long as fatigue does not set up its peculiar pain—is only enhanced by these repeated “somatic resonances.” If pleasure is originated by the increased function of one individual organ, then this stimulation must, owing to the solidarity of the functions, gradually extend over wider areas in the system. The more numerous the organs which take part in the activity, the more numerous also are our sensations of function, and the greater the gain of our pleasure in richness and variety. An undefined feeling of vigour, assurance, or power can only acquire distinctness and intensity by expressing itself in some mode of physical or mental activity. But while stimulation is thus directly connected with the feeling-tone of pleasurable states, it must be admitted, on the other hand, that—as has been remarked above—associative influences also contribute towards enhancing their active manifestations. By these secondary motor-impulses, however, the original feeling is only increased. It can therefore be said that pleasure feeds and nurtures itself by expression. Pain, on the contrary, increases in strength in the same degree as the inhibition extends over the organism. But it can only be weakened by active manifestations. Movements, as we have shown, deliver us from the massive, indistinct pains of restriction as well as mitigate our acute sufferings.
The life-preserving tendency which, under the feeling of pleasure, leads us to movements which intensify the sensation and make it more distinct for consciousness, compels us in pain to seek for relief and deliverance in violent motor discharge. In either case the activity is called expressional, and it seems difficult to avoid this equivocal usage. But it is indispensable to make a strict distinction between the expression which operates in the direction of the initial feeling itself, and the expression by which this feeling is weakened.
This distinction will appear with greater clearness in the following chapter, where we shall apply the laws of expression to the complex emotional states. Then it will also be possible for us to point out some æsthetic result of the psychological survey which perhaps may seem for the moment a departure from our proper subject.
CHAPTER IV
THE EMOTIONS
The discussion of complex emotional states on which we enter in the present chapter will be subject to the same reservation as was our previous discussion of simple sensation-feeling. It is not proposed to attempt a definitive explanation of the nature of emotion, nor even to criticise the various emotion-theories which have been advanced in psychological literature. For the purposes of an æsthetic investigation we are only concerned with the external aspects, the outward manifestations, of mental states. We need not therefore dilate upon the controversies as to the exact relation between simple feeling and emotion. It is enough for us that all authors—those who consider pain and pleasure as elements sui generis as well as those who count them among sensations or emotions—agree in emphasising the prominent hedonic element which enters into all our emotions. Starting from this universally recognised fact, we shall try to explain the impulse to expression, as it appears in complex emotions, by the same laws which we deduced from an examination of simple hedonic states.
The legitimacy of such a course will scarcely be contested by any one who admits the vital and necessary connection between emotional states and movement-sensations. And in point of fact, this connection does not seem to be denied by many modern psychologists. There is indeed much controversy as to the best mode of formulating the well-known theory due to James and Lange, and there is also much to discuss in its general theoretic aspect. But the observation on which this theory was based by James, viz. that it is impossible for us to imagine any emotion which is not connected with feelings of bodily symptoms, seems nowadays to be pretty safe against attack. Before and after James, the fundamental importance of bodily changes has been acknowledged by almost all authors who have specially studied the emotional states. We need only refer to Bain, Ribot, Féré, Paulhan, and Godfernaux.[59] Even Professor Stout, who on general grounds takes exception to the views of James, leaves unassailed the thesis from which the latter starts in his chapter on the emotions.[60] And it is even somewhat superfluous to adduce all these authorities in support of a fact which must have been noted by every one who pays any attention to his own mental states. We never experience any intense emotion, such as fear, anger, or sorrow, without at the same time experiencing some distinct sensation of change in our functions of respiration and circulation, as well as in the activities of our voluntary muscles. In the case of emotions of slight intensity, where no changes of this character are perceptible, we are justified in assuming that they do nevertheless occur, only on a much smaller scale, and possibly in different organs. The clinical and experimental researches of medical science, as well as experiments undertaken in psychological laboratories, tend to prove that all ideas, even of the most abstract kind, are accompanied by modifications of organic activity, similar to, but weaker than, those which accompany the simple sensations. It is only natural, therefore, to conclude that the feeling-element in emotions and sentiments, as well as in simple pain and pleasure, is correlated with the quality—stimulating or inhibitive—and intensity of these modifications. All hedonic states, whether called forth directly by a simple physiological stimulus, or indirectly by the mediation of perceptions, memories, and ideas, can thus, in so far as they are feelings, be considered as essentially alike. The complete emotion, such as joy or anger, with all its elements of thought and conscious or unconscious volition, is of course something quite different from the simple feeling-tone of mere pleasure or pain. Physiological psychology does not, as its opponents maintain, assimilate gratifications of the sense of taste to æsthetic enjoyment or religious exaltation. We allow rank to a sentiment in virtue of the mental conceptions by which it is justified in the breast of the person who feels it. But the strength of such a sentiment, as feeling, we deem to be proportioned to the organic changes by which enthusiasm and devotion, just as much as sensual pleasure, are always accompanied. We do not assert that these organic changes are always identical in kind. In the simplest forms of hedonic sensation—sensation proper—they have their main equivalent in changes of the vegetative functions; in the emotions they are accompanied by movements of our voluntary muscles; and in the sentiments they may correspond to an activity which takes place chiefly in the organ of thought. And from these differences arise other important differences in duration as well as in intensity of the pleasure-pain. But all these various limitations cannot modify the essential fact, which is, that pleasure is always connected with an enhancement, and pain with a depression, of the vital functions.
For a satisfactory explanation of our emotions it would no doubt be desirable to have all the complicated physiological concomitants reduced to simple terms of functional enhancement and functional arrest. Such a reduction can, however, be undertaken only in a few favourable cases. We can easily see, for instance, that in pride and humiliation a series of perceptions and ideas have brought about conditions of facilitated and checked activity similar to those which, in sensational pleasure-pain, are created by simple physiological stimuli.[61] We may also agree with Lehmann when he endeavours to prove that the pain a child experiences when its mother leaves its bedside can be reduced to a sensation of arrested activity.[62] And we may in the same way explain our own feelings after losses which, from our point of view, are more serious, as largely due to the fact that an occasion of activity for our senses, thoughts, or bodily powers has been suddenly withdrawn. But it would be too laborious to enter upon such an analysis of all our compound emotions, and it is also superfluous. Even when the organic conditions of pleasure and pain cannot be detected among the intricate mass of intellectual and volitional elements which make up what we can observe of an emotion, we must still, from analogy, conclude that some kind of functional enhancement or arrest corresponds to the feeling-tone.