William James published the article What is an emotion? in the journal Mind in 1884.
In a sense, this was the major statement of the James-Lange theory of emotion: "I see a bear, I run, I am afraid." This sentence succintly expresses a major philosophical position concerning the dichotomy emotion-feeling and hence this constitutes a very relevant milestone in the "emotional machine" research track.
The James-Lange theory refers to an hypothesis on the origin and nature of emotions developed independently by two 19th-century scholars, William James and Carl Lange.
The theory states that within human beings, as a response to experiences in the world, the autonomic nervous system creates physiological events such as muscular tension, a rise in heart rate, perspiration, and dryness of the mouth. Emotions, then, are feelings which come about as a result of these physiological changes, rather than being their cause. The bodily change prepares us for action, as in the fight-or-flight reaction.
Both William James and Carle Lange arrived at the theory independently, wit different degrees of precision (e.g. Lange specifically stated that vasomotor changes are emotions).
What is an Emotion?
William James (1884)
First published in Mind, 9, 188-205.
The physiologists who, during the past few years, have been so
industriously
exploring the functions of the brain, have limited their attempts at
explanation
to its cognitive and volitional performances. Dividing the brain into
sensorial
and motor centres, they have found their division to be exactly
paralleled
by the analysis made by empirical psychology, of the perceptive and
volitional
parts of the mind into their simplest elements. But the aesthetic sphere
of the mind, its longings, its pleasures and pains, and its emotions,
have
been so ignored in all these researches that one is tempted to suppose
that if either Dr. Ferrier or Dr. Munk were asked for a theory in
brain-terms
of the latter mental facts, they might both reply, either that they had
as yet bestowed no thought upon the subject, or that they had found it
so difficult to make distinct hypotheses, that the matter lay for them
among the problems of the future, only to be taken up after the simpler
ones of the present should have been definitively solved.
And yet it is even now certain that of two things concerning the
emotions,
one must be true. Either separate and special centres, affected to them
alone, are their brain-seat, or else they correspond to processes
occurring
in the motor and sensory centres, already assigned, or in others like
them,
not yet mapped out. If the former be the case we must deny the current
view, and hold the cortex to be something more than the surface of
"projection"
for every sensitive spot and every muscle in the body. If the latter be
the case, we must ask whether the emotional "process" in the sensory or
motor centre be an altogether peculiar one, or whether it resembles the
ordinary perceptive processes of which those centres are already
recognised
to be the seat. The purpose of the following pages is to show that the
last alternative comes nearest to the truth, and that the emotional
brain-processes
no only resemble the ordinary sensorial brain-processes, but in very
truth
are nothing but such processes variously combined. The main
result
of this will be to simplify our notions of the possible complications
of
brain-physiology, and to make us see that we have already a
brain-scheme
in our hands whose appli [p.189] cations are much wider than its
authors
dreamed. But although this seems to be the chief result of the
arguments
I am to urge, I should say that they were not originally framed for the
sake of any such result. They grew out of fragmentary introspective
observations,
and it was only when these had already combined into a theory that the
thought of the simplification the theory might bring to cerebral
physiology
occurred to me, and made it seem more important than before.
I should say first of all that the only emotions I propose expressly
to consider here are those that have a distinct bodily expression. That
there are feelings of pleasure and displeasure, of interest and
excitement,
bound up with mental operations, but having no obvious bodily
expression
for their consequence, would, I suppose, be held true by most readers.
Certain arrangements of sounds, of lines, of colours, are agreeable,
and
others the reverse, without the degree of the feeling being sufficient
to quicken the pulse or breathing, or to prompt to movements of either
the body or the face. Certain sequences of ideas charm us as much as
others
tire us. It is a real intellectual delight to get a problem solved, and
a real intellectual torment to have to leave it unfinished. The first
set
of examples, the sounds, lines, and colours, are either bodily
sensations,
or the images of such. The second set seem to depend on processes in
the
ideational centres exclusively. Taken together, they appear to prove
that
there are pleasures and pains inherent in certain forms of nerve-action
as such, wherever that action occur. The case of these feelings we will
at present leave entirely aside, and confine our attention to the more
complicated cases in which a wave of bodily disturbance of some kind
accompanies
the perception of the interesting sights or sounds, or the passage of
the
exciting train of ideas. Surprise, curiosity, rapture, fear, anger,
lust,
greed, and the like, become then the names of the mental states with
which
the person is possessed. The bodily disturbances are said to be the
"manifestation"
of these several emotions, their "expression" or "natural language";
and
these emotions themselves, being so strongly characterized both from
within
and without, may be called the standard emotions.
Our natural way of thinking about these standard emotions is that
the
mental perception of some fact excites the mental affection called the
emotion, and that this latter state of mind gives rise to the bodily
expression.
My thesis on the contrary is that the bodily changes follow
directly
the PERCEPTION of the exciting fact, and
that
our feeling of the [p.190] same changes as they occur IS
the emotion. Common sense says, we lose our fortune, are sorry
and
weep; we meet a bear, are frightened and run; we are insulted by a
rival,
are angry and strike. The hypothesis here to be defended says that this
order of sequence is incorrect, that the one mental state is not
immediately
induced by the other, that the bodily manifestations must first be
interposed
between, and that the more rational statement is that we feel sorry
because
we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble, and not
that
we cry, strike, or tremble, because we are sorry, angry, or fearful, as
the case may be. Without the bodily states following on the perception,
the latter would be purely cognitive in form, pale, colourless,
destitute
of emotional warmth. We might then see the bear, and judge it best to
run,
receive the insult and deem it right to strike, but we could not
actually
feel afraid or angry.
Stated in this crude way, the hypothesis is pretty sure to meet with
immediate disbelief. And yet neither many nor far-fetched
considerations
are required to mitigate its paradoxical character, and possibly to
produce
conviction of its truth.
To begin with, readers of the Journal do not need to be reminded
that
the nervous system of every living thing is but a bundle of
predispositions
to react in particular ways upon the contact of particular features of
the environment. As surely as the hermit-crab's abdomen presupposes the
existence of empty whelk-shells somewhere to be found,so surely do the
hound's olfactories imply the existence, on the one hand, of deer's or
foxes' feet, and on the other, the tendency to follow up their tracks.
The neural machinery is but a hyphen between determinate arrangements
of
matter ourtside the body and determinate impulses to inhibition or
discharge
within its organs. When the hen sees a white oval object on the ground,
she cannot leave it; she must keep upon it and return to it, until at
last
its transformation into a little mass of moving chirping down elicits
from
her machinery an entirely new set of performances. The love of man for
woman, or of the human mother for her babe, our wrath at snakes and our
fear of precipices, may all be described similarly, as instances of the
way in which peculiarly conformed pieces of the world's furniture will
fatally call forth most particular mental and bodily reactions, in
advance
of, and often in direct opposition to, the verdict of our deliberate
reason
concerning them. The labours of Darwin and his successors are only just
beginning to reveal the universal parasitism of each creature upon
other
special things, [p.191] and the way in which each creature brings the
signature
of its special relations stampted on its nervous system with it upon
the
scene.
Every living creature is in fact a sort of lock, whose wards and
springs
presuppose special forms of key, - which keys however are not born
attached
to the locks, but are sure to be found in the world near by as life
goes
on. And the locks are indifferent to any but their own keys. The egg
fails
to fascinate the hound, the bird does not fear the precipice, the snake
waxes not wroth at his kind, the deer cares nothing for the woman or
the
human babe. Those who wish for a full development of this point of
view,
should read Schneider's Der thierische Wille, - no other book
shows
how accurately anticipatory are the actions of animals, of the specific
features of the environment in which they are to live.
Now among these nervous anticipations are of course to be reckoned
the
emotions, so far as these may be called forth directly by the
perception
of certain facts. In advance of all experience of elephants no child
can
but be frightened if he suddenly find one trumpeting and charging upon
him. No woman can see a handsome little naked baby without delight, no
man in the wilderness see a human form in the distance without
excitement
and curiosity. I said I should consider these emotions only so far as
they
have bodily movements of some sort for their accompaniments. But my
first
point is to show that their bodily accompaniments are much more
far-reaching
and complicated than we ordinarily suppose.
In the earlier books on Expression, written mostly from the artistic
point of view, the signs of emotion visible from without were the only
ones taken account of. Sir Charles Bell's celebrated Anatomy of
Expression
noticed the respiratory changes; and Bain's and Darwin's treatises
went more thoroughly still into the study of the visceral factors
involved,-
changes in the functioning of glands and muscles, and in that of the
circulatory
apparatus. But not even a Darwin has exhaustively enumerated all the
bodily affections characteristic of any one of the standard emotions.
More
and more, as physiology advances, we begin to discern how almost
infinitely
numerous and subtle they must be. The researches of Mosso with the
plethysmograph
have shown that not only the heart, but the entire circulatory system,
forms a sort of sounding-board, which every change of our
consciousness,
however slight, may make reverberate. Hardly a sensation comes to us
without
sending waves of [p.192] alternate constriction and dilatation down the
arteries of our arms. The blood-vessels of the abdomen act reciprocally
with those of the more outward parts. The bladder and bowels, the
glands
of the mouth, throat, and skin, and the liver, are known to be affected
gravely in certain severe emotions, and are unquestionably affected
transiently
when the emotions are of a lighter sort. That the heart-beats and the
rhythm
of breathing play a leading part in all emotions whatsoever, is a
matter
too notorious for proof. And what is really equally prominent, but less
likely to be admitted until special attention is drawn to the fact, is
the continuous co-operation of the voluntary muscles in our emotional
states.
Even when no change of outward attitude is produced, their inward
tension
alters to suit each varying mood, and is felt as a difference of tone
or
of strain. In depression the flexors tend to prevail; in elation or
belligerent
excitement the extensors take the lead. And the various permutations
and
combinations of which these organic activities are susceptible, make it
abstractly possible that no shade of emotion, however slight, should be
without a bodily reverberation as unique, when taken in its totality,
as
is the mental mood itself.
The immense number of parts modified in each emotion is what makes
it
so difficult for us to reproduce in cold blood the total and integral
expression
of any one of them. We may catch the trick with the voluntary muscles,
but fail with the skin, glands, heart, and other viscera. Just as an
artificially
imitated sneeze lacks something of the reality, so the attempt to
imitate
an emotion in the absence of its normal instigating cause is apt to be
rather "hollow".
The next thing to be noticed is this, that every one of the bodily
changes,
whatsoever it be, is felt, acutely or obscurely, the moment it
occurs.
If the reader has never paid attention to this matter, he will be both
interested and astonished to learn how many different local bodily
feelings
he can detect in himself as characteristic of his various emotional
moods.
It would be perhaps too much to expect him to arrest the tide of any
strong
gust of passion for the sake of any such curious analysis as this; but
he can observe more tranquil states, and that may be assumed here to be
true of the greater which is shown to be true of the less. Our whole
cubic
capacity is sensibly alive; and each morsel of it contributes its
pulsations
of feeling, dim or sharp, pleasant, painful, or dubious, to that sense
of personality that every one of us unfailingly carries with him. It is
surprisingly what little items give accent to these complexes of
sensibility.
[p.193] When worried by any slight trouble, one may find that the
focus
of one's bodily consciousness is the contraction, often quite
inconsiderable,
of the eyes and brows. When momentarily embarrassed, it is something in
the pharynx that compels either a swallow, a clearing of the throat, or
a slight cough; and so on for as many more instances as might be named.
Our concern here being with the general view rather than with the
details,
I will not linger to discuss these but, assuming the point admitted
that
every change that occurs must be felt, I will pass on.[1]
I now proceed to urge the vital point of my whole theory, which is
this.
If we fancy some strong emotion, and then try to abstract from our
consciousness
of it all the feelings of its characteristic bodily symptoms, we find
we
have nothing left behind, no "mind-stuff" out of which the emotion can
be constituted, and that a cold and neutral state of intellectual
perception
is all that remains. It is true, that although most people, when asked
say that their introspection verifies this statement, some persist in
saying
theirs does not. Many cannot be made to understand the question. When
you
beg them to imagine away every feeling of laughter and of tendency to
laugh
from their consciousness of the ludicrousness of an object, and then to
tell you what the feeling of its ludicrousness would be like, whether
it
be anything more than the perception that the object belongs to the
class
"funny," they persist in replying that the thing proposed is a physical
impossibility, and that they always must laugh, if they see a
funny
object. Of course the task proposed is not the practical one of seeing
a ludicrous object and annihilating one's tendency to laugh. It is the
purely speculative one of subtracting certain elements of feeling from
an emotional state supposed to exist in its fulness, and saying what
the
residual elements are. I cannot help thinking that all who rightly
apprehend
this problem will agree with the proposition above laid down. What kind
of an emotion of fear would be left, if the feelings [p.194] neither of
quickened heart-beats nor of shallow breathing, neither of trembling
lips
nor of weakened limbs, neither of goose-flesh nor of visceral
stirrings,
were present, it is quite impossible to think. Can one fancy the state
of rage and picture no ebullition of it in the chest, no flushing of
the
face, no dilatation of the nostrils, no clenching of the teeth, no
impulse
to vigorous action, but in their stead limp muscles, calm breathing,
and
a placid face? The present writer, for one, certainly cannot. The rage
is as completely evaporated as the sensation of its so-called
manifestations,
and the only thing that can possibly be supposed to take its place is
some
cold-blooded and dispassionate judicial sentence, confined entirely to
the intellectual realm, to the effect that a certain person or persons
merit chastisement for their sins. In like manner of grief: what would
it be without its tears, its sobs, its suffocation of the heart, its
pang
in the breast-bone? A feelingless cognition that certain circumstances
are deplorable, and nothing more. Every passion in turn tells the same
story. A purely disembodied human emotion is a nonentity. I do not say
that it is a contradiction in the nature of things, or that pure
spirits
are necessarily condemned to cold intellectual lives; but I say that
for
us, emotion dissociated from all bodily feeling is
inconceivable.
The more closely I scrutinise my states, the more persuaded I become,
that
whatever moods, affections, and passions I have, are in very truth
constituted
by, and made up of, those bodily changes we ordinarily call their
expression
or consequence; and the more it seems to me that if I were to become
corporeally
anaesthetic, I should be excluded from the life of the affections,
harsh
and tender alike, and drag out an existence of merely cognitive or
intellectual
form. Such an existence, although it seems to have been the ideal of
ancient
sages, is too apathetic to be keenly sought after by those born after
the
revival of the worship of sensibility, a few generations ago.
But if the emotion is nothing but the feeling of the reflex bodily
effects
of what we call its "objects," effects due to the connate adaptation of
the nervous system to that object, we seem immediately faced by this
objection:
most of the objects of civilised men's emotions are things to which it
would be preposterous to suppose their nervous systems connately
adapted.
Most occasions of shame and many insults are purely conventional, and
vary
with the social environment. The same is true of many matters of dread
and of desire, and of many occasions of melancholy and regret. In these
cases, at least, it would seem that the [p.195] ideas of shame, desire,
regret, &c., must first have been attached by education and
association
to these conventional objects before the bodily changes could possibly
be awakened. And if in these cases the bodily changes follow
the
ideas, instead of giving rise to them, why not then in all cases?
To discuss thoroughly this objection would carry us deep into the
study
of purely intellectual Aesthetics. A few words must here
suffice.
We will say nothing of the argument's failure to distinguish between
the
idea of an emotion and the emotion itself. We will only recall the
well-known
evolutionary principle that when a certain power has once been fixed in
an animal by virtue of its utility in presence of certain features of
the
environment, it may turn out to be useful in presence of other features
of the environment that had originally nothing to do with either
producing
or preserving it. A nervous tendency to discharge being once there, all
sorts of unforeseen things may pull the trigger and let loose the
effects.
That among these things should be conventionalities of man's contriving
is a matter of no psychological consequence whatever. The most
important
part of my environment is my fellow-man. The consciousness of his
attitude
towards me is the perception that normally unlocks most of my shames
and
indignations and fears. The extraordinary sensitiveness of this
consciousness
is shown by the bodily modifications wrought in us by the awareness
that
our fellow-man is noticing us at all. No one can walk across
the
platform at a public meeting with just the same muscular innervation he
uses to walk across his room at home. No one can give a message to such
a meeting without organic excitement. "Stage-fright" is only the
extreme
degree of that wholly irrational personal self-consciousness which
every
one gets in some measure, as soon as he feels the eyes of a number of
strangers
fixed upon him, even though he be inwardly convinced that their feeling
towards him is of no practical account [2] . This
being
so, it is not surprising that the additional persuasion that my
fellow-man's
attitude means either well or ill for me, should awaken stronger
emotions
still. In primitive societies "Well" may mean handing me a piece of
beef,
and "Ill" may mean aiming a blow at my skull. In our "cultured [p.196]
age," "Ill" may mean cutting me in the street, and "Well," giving me an
honorary degree. What the action itself may be is quite insignificant,
so long as I can perceive in it intent or animus. That is
the emotion-arousing perception; and may give rise to as strong bodily
convulsions in me, a civilised man experiencing the treatment of an
artificial
society, as in any savage prisoner of war, learning whether his captors
are about to eat him or to make him a member of their tribe.
But now, this objection disposed of, there arises a more general
doubt.
Is there any evidence, it may be asked, for the assumption that
particular
perceptions do produce widespread bodily effects by a sort of
immediate
physical influence, antecedent to the arousal of an emotion or
emotional
idea?
The only possible reply is, that there is most assuredly such
evidence.
In listening to poetry, drama, or heroic narrative, we are often
surprised
at the cutaneous shiver which like a sudden wave flows over us, and at
the heart-swelling and the lachrymal effusion that unexpectedly catch
us
at intervals. In listening to music, the same is even more strikingly
true.
If we abruptly see a dark moving form in the woods, our heart stops
beating,
and we catch our breath instantly and before any articulate idea of
danger
can arise. If our friend goes near to the edge of a precipice, we get
the
well-known feeling of "all-overishness," and we shrink back, although
we
positively know him to be safe, and have no distinct
imagination
of his fall. The writer well remembers his astonishment, when a boy of
seven or eight, at fainting when he saw a horse bled. The blood was in
a bucket, with a stick in it, and, if memory does not deceive him, he
stirred
it round and saw it drip from the stick with no feeling save that of
childish
curiosity. Suddenly the world grew black before his eyes, his ears
began
to buzz, and he knew no more. He had never heard of the sight of blood
producing faintness or sickness, and he had so little repugnance to it,
and so little apprehension of any other sort of danger from it, that
even
at that tender age, as he well remembers, he could not help wondering
how
the mere physical presence of a pailful of crimson fluid occasion in
him
such formidable bodily effects.
Imagine two steel knife-blades with their keen edges crossing each
other
at right-angles, and moving too and fro. Our whole nervous organisation
is "on-edge" at the thought; and yet what emotion can be there except
the
unpleasant nervous feeling itself, or the dread that more of it may
come?
[p.197] The entire fund and capital of the emotion here is the
senseless
bodily effect the blades immediately arouse. This case is typical of a
class: where an ideal emotion seems to precede the bodily symptoms, it
is often nothing but a representation of the symptoms themselves. One
who
has already fainted at the sight of blood may witness the preparations
for a surgical operation with uncontrollable heart-sinking and anxiety.
He anticipates certain feelings, and the anticipation precipitates
their
arrival. I am told of a case of morbid terror, of which the subject
confessed
that what possessed her seemed, more than anything, to be the fear of
fear
itself. In the various forms of what Professor Bain calls "tender
emotion,"
although the appropriate object must usually be directly contemplated
before
the emotion can be aroused, yet sometimes thinking of the symptoms of
the
emotion itself may have the same effect. In sentimental natures, the
thought
of "yearning" will produce real "yearning". And, not to speak of
coarser
examples, a mother's imagination of the caresses she bestows on her
child
may arouse a spasm of parental longing.
In such cases as these, we see plainly how the emotion both begins
and
ends with what we call its effects or manifestations. It has no mental
status except as either the presented feeling, or the idea, of
the
manifestations; which latter thus constitute its entire material, its
sum
and substance, and its stock-in-trade. And these cases ought to make us
see how in all cases the feeling of the manifestations may play a much
deeper part in the constitution of the emotion than we are wont to
suppose.
If our theory be true, a necessary corollary of it ought to be that
any voluntary arousal of the so-called manifestations of a special
emotion
ought to give us the emotion itself. Of course in the majority of
emotions,
this test is inapplicable; for many of the manifestations are in organs
over which we have no volitional control. Still, within the limits in
which
it can be verified, experience fully corroborates this test. Everyone
knows
how panic is increased by flight, and how the giving way to the
symptoms
of grief or anger increases those passions themselves. Each fit of
sobbing
makes the sorrow more acute, and calls forth another fit stronger
still,
until at last repose only ensues with lassitude and with the apparent
exhaustion
of the machinery. In rage, it is notorious how we "work ourselves up"
to
a climax by repeated outbreaks of expression. Refuse to express a
passion,
and it dies. Count ten before venting your anger, and it occasion seems
ridiculous.
[p.198] Whistling to keep up courage is no mere figure of speech. On
the other hand, sit all day in a moping posture, sigh, and reply to
everything
with a dismal voice, and your melancholy lingers. There is no more
valuable
precept in moral education than this, as all who have experience know:
if we wish to conquer undesirable emotional tendencies in ourselves, we
must assiduously, and in the first instance cold-bloodedly, go through
the outward motions of those contrary dispositions we prefer
to
cultivate. The reward of persistency will infallibly come, in the
fading
out of the sullenness or depression, and the advent of real
cheerfulness
and kindliness in their stead. Smooth the brow, brighten the eye,
contract
the dorsal rather than the ventral aspect of the frame, and speak in a
major key, pass the genial compliment, and your heart must be frigid
indeed
if it do not gradually thaw!
The only exception to this are apparent, not real. The great
emotional
expressiveness and mobility of certain persons often lead us to say
"They
would feel more if they talked less". And in another class of persons,
the explosive energy with which passion manifests itself on critical
occasions,
seems correlated with the way in which they bottle it up during the
intervals.
But these are only eccentric types of character, and within each type
the
law of the last paragraph prevails. The sentimentalist is so
constructed
that "gushing" is his or her normal mode of expression. Putting a
stopper
on the "gush" will only to a limited extent cause more "real"
activities
to take its place; in the main it will simply produce listlessness. On
the other hand the ponderous and bilious "slumbering volcano," let him
repress the expression of his passions as he will, will find them
expire
if they get no vent at all; whilst if the rare occasions multiply which
he deems worthy of their outbreak, he will find them grow in intensity
as life proceeds.
I feel persuaded there is no real exception to the law. The
formidable
effects of suppressed tears might be mentioned, and the calming results
of speaking out your mind when angry and having done with it. But these
are also but specious wanderings from the rule. Every perceptions must
lead to some nervous result. If this be the normal emotional
expression,
it soon expends itself, and in the natural course of things a calm
succeeds.
But if the normal issue be blocked from any cause, the currents may
under
certain circumstances invade other tracts, and there work different and
worse effects. Thus vengeful brooding may replace a burst of
indignation;
a dry heat may consume the [p.199] frame of one who fain would weep, or
he may, as Dante says, turn to stone within; and then tears or a
storming-fit
may bring a grateful relief. When we teach children to repress their
emotions,
it is not that they may feel more, quite the reverse. It is
that
they may think more; for to a certain extent whatever
nerve-currents
are diverted from the regions below, must swell the activity of the
thought-tracts
of the brain. [3]
The last great argument in favour of the priority of the bodily
symptoms
to the felt emotion, is the ease with which we formulate by its means
pathological
cases and normal cases under a common scheme. In every asylum we find
examples
of absolutely unmotived fear, anger, melancholy, or conceit; and others
of an equally unmotived apathy which persists in spite of the best of
outward
reasons why it should give way. In the former cases we must suppose the
nervous machinery to be so "labile" in some one emotional direction,
that
almost every stimulus, however inappropriate, will cause it to upset in
that way, and as a consequence to engender the particular complex of
feelings
of which the psychic body of the emotion consists. Thus, to take one
special
instance, if inability to draw deep breath, fluttering of the heart,
and
that peculiar epigastric change felt as "precordial anxiety," with an
irresistible
tendency to take a somewhat crouching attitude and to sit still, and
with
perhaps other visceral processes not now known, all spontaneously occur
together in a certain person; his feeling of their combination is the
emotion of dread, and he is the victim of what is known as morbid fear.
A friend who has had occasional attacks of this most distressing of all
maladies, tells me that in his case the whole drama seems to centre
about
the region of the heart and respiratory apparatus, that his main effort
during the attacks is to get control of his inspirations and to slow
his
heart, and that the moment he attains to breathing deeply and to
holding
himself erect, the dread, ipso facto, seems to depart [4]
[p.200] The account given to Brachet by one of his own patients of
her
opposite condition, that of emotional insensibility, has been often
quoted,
and deserves to be quoted again:-
"I still continue (she says) to suffer constantly ; I have not a
moment
of comfort, and no human sensations. Surrounded by all that can render
life happy and agreeable, still to me the faculty of enjoyment and of
feeling
is wanting - both have become physical impossibilities. In everything,
even in the most tender caresses of my children, I find only
bitterness.
I cover them with kisses, but there is something between their lips and
mine; and this horrid something is between me and all the enjoyments of
life. My existence is incomplete. The functions and acts of ordinary
life,
it is true, still remain to me; but in every one of them there is
something
wanting-to wit, the feeling which is proper to them, and the pleasure
which
follows them…Each of my senses, each part of my proper self, is as
it
were separated from me and can no longer afford me any feeling; this
impossibility
seems to depend upon a void which I feel in the front of my head, and
to
be due to the diminution of the sensibility over the whole surface of
my
body, for it seems to me that I never actually reach the objects which
I touch…I feel well enough the changes of temperature on my skin, but I
no longer experience the internal feeling of the air when I breathe…All
this would be a small matter enough, but for its frightful result,
which
is that of the impossibility of any other kind of feeling and of any
sort
of enjoyment, although I experience a need and desire of them that
render
my life an incomprehensible torture. Every function, every action of my
life remains, but deprived of the feeling that belongs to it, of the
enjoyment
that should follow it. My feet are cold, I warm them, but gain no
pleasure
from the warmth. I recognise the taste of all I eat, without getting
any
pleasure from it….My children are growing handsome and healthy,
everyone
tells me so, I see it myself, but the delight, the inward comfort I
ought
to feel, I fail to get. Music has lost all charm for me, I used to love
it dearly. My daughter plays very well, but for me it is mere noise.
That
lively interest which a year ago made me hear a delicious concert in
the
smallest air their fingers played,-that thrill, that general vibration
which made me shed such tender tears,-all that exists no more". [5]
Other victims describe themselves as closed in walls of [p.201] ice
or covered with an india-rubber integument, through which no impression
penetrates to the sealed-up sensibility.
If our hypothesis is true, it makes us realise more deeply than ever
how much our mental life is knit up with our corporeal frame, in the
strictest
sense of the term. Rapture, love , ambition, indignation, and pride,
considered
as feelings, are fruits of the same soil with the grossest bodily
sensations
of pleasure and of pain. But it was said at the outset that this would
be affirmed only of what we then agreed to call the "standard"
emotions;
and that those inward sensibilities that appeared devoid at first sight
of bodily results should be left out of our account. We had better,
before
closing, say a word or two about these latter feelings.
They are, the reader will remember, the moral, intellectual, and
aesthetic
feelings. Concords of sounds, of colours, of lines, logical
consistencies,
teleological fitnesses, affect us with a pleasure that seems ingrained
in the very form of the representation itself, and to borrow nothing
from
any reverberation surging up from the parts below the brain. The
Herbartian
psychologists have tried to distinguish feelings due to the form in
which ideas may be arranged. A geometrical demonstration may be as
"pretty,"
and an act of justice as "neat" as a drawing or a tune, although the
prettiness
and neatness seem here to be a pure matter of sensation, and there to
have
nothing to do with sensation. We have then, or some of us seem to have,
genuinely cerebral forms of pleasure and displeasure,
apparently
not agreeing in their mode of production with the so-called "standard"
emotions we have been analysing. And it is certain that readers whom
our
reasons have hitherto failed to convince, will now start up at this
admission,
and consider that by it we give up our whole case. Since musical
perceptions,
since logical ideas, can immediately arouse a form of emotional
feeling,
they will say, is it not more natural to suppose that in the case of
the
so-called "standard" emotions, prompted by the presence of objects or
the
experience of events, the emotional feeling is equally immediate, and
the
bodily expression something that comes later and is added on?
But a sober scrutiny of the cases of pure cerebral emotion gives
little
force to this assimilation. Unless in them there actually be coupled
with
the intellectual feeling a bodily reverberation of some kind, unless we
actually laugh at the neatness of the mechanical device, thrill at the
justice of the act, or tingle at the perfection of the musical form,
our
mental condition is more allied to a judgment of right than
[p.202]
to anything else. And such a judgment is rather to be classed among
awarenesses
of truth: it is a cognitive act. But as a matter of fact the
intellectual
feeling hardly ever does exist thus unaccompanied. The bodily
sounding-board
is at work, as careful introspection will show, far more than we
usually
suppose. Still, where long familiarity with a certain class of effects
has blunted emotional sensibility thereto as much as it has sharpened
the
taste and judgment, we do get the intellectual emotion, if such it can
be called, pure and undefiled. And the dryness of it, the paleness, the
absence of all glow, as it may exist in a thoroughly expert critic's
mind,
not only shows us what an altogether different thing it is from the
"standard"
emotions we considered first, but makes us suspect that almost the
entire
difference lies in the fact that the bodily sounding-board, vibrating
in
the one case, is in the other mute. "Not so very bad" is, in a person
of
consummate taste, apt to be the highest limit of approving expression.
"Rien ne me choque" is said to have been Chopin's superlative of
praise of new music. A sentimental layman would feel, and ought to
feel,
horrified, on being admitted into such a critic's mind, to see how
cold,
how thin, how void of human significance, are the motives for favour or
disfavour that there prevail. The capacity to make a nice spot on the
wall
will outweigh a picture's whole content; a foolish trick of words will
preserve a poem; an utterly meaningless fitness of sequence in one
musical
composition set at naught any amount of "expressiveness" in another.
I remember seeing an English couple sit for more than an hour on a
piercing
February day in the Academy at Venice before the celebrated
"Assumption"
by Titian; and when I , after being chased from room to room by the
cold,
concluded to get into the sunshine as fast as possible and let the
pictures
go, but before leaving drew reverently near to them to learn with what
superior forms of susceptibility they might be endowed, all I overheard
was the woman's voice murmuring : "What a deprecatory expression
her face wears! What a self-abnegation! How unworthy she feels
of
the honour she is receiving!" Their honest hearts had been kept warm
all
the time by a glow of spurious sentiment that would have fairly made
old
Titian sick. Mr. Ruskin somewhere makes the (for him) terrible
admission
that religious people as a rule care little for pictures, and that when
they do care for them they generally prefer the worst ones to the best.
Yes! In every art, in every science, there is the keen perception of
certain
relations being right or not, [p.203] and there is the
emotional
flush and thrill consequent thereupon. And these are two things, not
one.
In the former of them it is that experts and masters are at home. The
latter
accompaniments are bodily commotions that they may hardly feel, but
that
may be experienced in their fulness by Crétins and
Philistines
in whom the critical judgment is at its lowest ebb. The "marvels" of
Science,
about which so much edifying popular literature is written, are apt to
be "caviare" to the men in the laboratories. Cognition and emotion are
parted even in this last retreat, - who shall say that their antagonism
may not just be one phase of the world-old struggle known as that
between
the spirit and the flesh? - a struggle in which it seems pretty certain
that neither party will definitively drive the other off the field.
To return to our starting point, the physiology of the brain. If we
suppose its cortex t contain centres for the perception of changes in
each
special sense-organ, in each portion of the skin, in each muscle, each
joint, and each viscus, and to contain absolutely nothing else, we
still
have a scheme perfectly capable of representing the process of the
emotions.
An object falls on a sense-organ and is apperceived by the appropriate
cortical centre; or else the latter, excited in some other way, gives
rise
to an idea of the same object. Quick as a flash, the reflex currents
pass
down through their pre-ordained channels, alter the condition of
muscle,
skin and viscus; and these alterations, apperceived like the original
object,
in as many specific portions of the cortex, combine with it in
consciousness
and transform it from an object-simply-apprehended into an
object-emotionally-felt.
No new principles have to be invoked, nothing is postulated beyond the
ordinary reflex circuit, and the topical centres admitted in one shape
or another by all to exist.
It must be confessed that a crucial test of the truth of the
hypothesis
is quite as hard to obtain as its decisive refutation. A case of
complete
internal and external corporeal anaesthesia, without motor alteration
or
alteration of intelligence except emotional apathy, would afford, if
not
a crucial test, at least a strong presumption, in favour of the truth
of
the view we have set forth; whilst the persistence of strong emotional
feeling in such a case would completely overthrow our case. Hysterical
anaesthesias seem never to be complete enough to cover the ground.
Complete
anaesthesias from organic disease, on the other hand, are excessibely
rare.
In the famous case of Remigius Leims, no mention is made by [p.204] the
reporters of his emotional condition, a circumstance which by itself
affords
no presumption that it was normal, since as a rule nothing ever is noticed
without a pre-existing question in the mind. Dr. Georg Winter has
recently
described a case somewhat similar, [6] and in reply
to
a question, kindly writes to me as follows:-"The case has been for a
year
and a half entirely removed from my observation. But so far as I am
able
to state, the man was characterised by a certain mental inertia and
indolence.
He was tranquil, and had on the whole the temperament of a phlegmatic.
He was not irritable, not quarrelsome, went quietly about his
farm-work,
and left the care of his business and housekeeping to other people. In
short, he gave one the impression of a placid countryman, who has no
interests
beyond his work." Dr. Winter adds that in studying the case he paid no
particular attention to the man's psychic condition, as this seemed "nebensächlich"
to his main purpose. I should add that the form of my question to Dr.
Winter
could give him no clue as to the kind of answer I expected.
Of course, this case proves nothing, but it is to be hoped that
asylum-physicians
and nervous specialists may begin methodically to study the relation
between
anaesthesia and emotional apathy. If the hypothesis here suggested is
ever
to be definitively confirmed or disproved it seems as if it must be by
them, for they alone have the data in their hands.
P.S.- By an unpardonable forgetfulness at the time of despatching my
MS. to the Editor, I ignored the existence of the extraordinary case of
total anaesthesia published by Professor Strümpell in Ziemssen's
Deutsches Archiv für klinische Medicin xxii., 321, of which I
had nevertheless read reports at the time of its publication. [Cf. first
report of the case in Mind X., 263, translated from Pflüger's
Archiv.Ed.]
I believe that it constitutes the only remaining case of the sort in
medical
literature, so that with is our survey is complete. On referring to the
original, which is important in many connexions, I found that the
patient,
a shoemaker's apprentice of 15, entirely anaesthetic, inside and out,
with
the exception of one eye and one ear, had shown shame on the
occasion
of soiling his bed, and grief, when a formerly favourite dish
was
set before him, at the thought that he could no longer taste its
flavour.
As Dr. Strümpell seemed however to have paid no special attention
to his psychic states, so far as these are matter for our theory, I
wrote
to him in a few words what the essence of the theory was, and asked him
to say whether he felt sure the grief and shame mentioned were real
feelings
in the boy's mind, or only the reflex manifestations provoked by
certain
perceptions, manifestations that an outside observer might note, but to
which the boy himself might be insensible.
Dr. Strümpell has sent me a very obliging reply, of which I
translate
the most important passage.
"I must indeed confess that I naturally failed to institute with my
Anoesthetiker observations as special as the sense of your
theory
would require. Nevertheless I think I can decidedly make the statement,
that he was by no means completely lacking in emotional affections. In
addition to the feelings of grief and shame mentioned
in
my paper, I recall distinctly that he showed e.f., anger, and
frequently
quarrelled with the hospital attendants. He also manifested fear lest
I should punish him. In short, I do not think that my case speaks
exactly
in favour of your theory. On the other hand, I will not affirm that it
positively refutes your theory. For my case was certainly one of a very
centrally conditioned anaesthesia (perception-anaesthesia, like that of
hysterics) and therefore the conduction of outward impressions may in
him
have been undisturbed."
I confess that I do not see the relevancy of the last consideration,
and this makes me suspect that my own letter was too briefly or
obscurely
expressed to put my correspondent fully in possession of my own
thought.
For his reply still makes no explicit reference to anything but the
outward
manifestations of emotion in the boy. Is it not at least conceivable
that,
just as a stranger, brought into the boy's presence for the first time,
and seeing him eat and drink and satisfy other natural necessities,
would
suppose him to have the feelings of hunger, thirst, &c., until
informed
by the boy himself that he did all these things with no feeling at all
but that of sight and sound-is it not, I say, at least possible, that
Dr.
Strümpell, addressing no direct introspective questions to his
patient,
and the patient not being of a class from which one could expect
voluntary
revelations of that sort, should have similarly omitted to discriminate
between a feeling and its habitual motor accompaniment, and erroneously
taken the latter as proof that the former was there? Such a mistake is
of course possible, and I must therefore repeat Dr. Strümpell's
own
words, that his case does not yet refute my theory. Should a similar
case
recur, it ought to be interrogated as to the inward emotional state
that
co-existed with the outward expressions of shame, anger, &c. And if
it then turned out that the patient recognised explicitly the same mood
of feeling known under those names in his former normal state, my
theory
would of course fall. It is, however, to me incredible that the patient
should have an identical feeling, for the dropping out of the
organic
sounding-board would necessarily diminish its volume in some way. The
teacher
of Dr. Strümpell's patient found a mental deficiency in him during
his anaesthesia, that may possibly have been due to the consequences
resulting
to his general intellectual vivacity from the subtraction of so
important
a mass of feelings, even though they were not the whole of his
emotional
life. Whoever wishes to extract from the next case of total anaesthesia
the maximum of knowledge about the emotions, will have to interrogate
the
patient with some such notion as that of my article in his mind. We can
define the pure psychic emotions far better by starting from such an
hypothesis
and modifying it in the way of restriction and subtraction, than by
having
no definite hypothesis at all. Thus will the publication of my article
have been justified, even thought the theory it advocates, rigorously
taken,
be erroneous. The best thing I can say for it is, that in writing it, I
have almost persuaded myself it may be true.
Footnotes
[1] Of course the physiological question arises, how
are the changes felt? -after they are produced, by the
sensory
nerves of the organs bringing back to the brain a report of the
modifications
that have occurred? or before they are produced, by our being
conscious
of the outgoing nerve-currents starting on their way downward towards
the
parts they are to excite? I believe all the evidence we have to be in
favour
of the former alternative. The question is too minute for discussion
here,
but I have said something about it in a paper entitled "The Feeling of
Effort," in the Anniversary Memoirs of the Boston Natural History
Society,
1880 (translated in La Critique Philosophique for that year,
and
summarised in MIND XX., 582). See also G.E.
Müller's
Grundlegung der Psychophysik, 110.
[2] Let it be noted in passing that this personal
self-consciousness
seems an altogether bodily affair, largely a consciousness of our
attitude,
and that, like other emotions, it reacts on its physical condition, and
leads to modifications of the attitude,-to a certain rigidity in most
men,
but in children to a regular twisting and squirming fit, and in women
to
various gracefully shy poses.
[3] This is the opposite of what happens in
injuries
to the brain, whether from outward violence, inward rupture or tumor,
or
mere starvation from disease. The cortical permeability seems reduced,
so that excitement, instead of propagating itself laterally through the
ideational channels as before, tends to take the downward track into
the
organs of the body. The consequences is that we have tears, laughter,
and
temper-fits, on the most insignificant provocation, accompanying a
proportional
feebleness in logical thought and the power of volitional attention and
decision.
[4] It must be confessed that there are cases of
morbid
fear in which objectively the heart is not much perturbed. These
however
fail to prove anything against our theory, for it is of course possible
that the cortical centres normally percipient of dread as a complex of
cardiac and other organic sensations due to real bodily change, should
become primarily excited in brain-disease, and give rise to an
hallucination
of the changes being there,-an hallucination of dread, consequently,
coexistent
with a comparatively calm pulse, &c. I say it is possible, for I am
ignorant of observations which might test the fact. Trance, ecstasy,
&c.,
offer analogous examples,-not to speak of ordinary dreaming. Under all
these conditions one may have the liveliest subjective feelings, either
of eye or ear, or of the more visceral and emotional sort, as a result
of pure nerve-central activity, with complete peripheral repose.
Whether
the subjective strength of the feeling be due in these cases to the
actual
energy of the central disturbance, or merely to the narrowing of the
field
of consciousness, need not concern us. In the asylum cases of
melancholy,
there is usually a narrowing of the field.
[5] Quoted by Semal: De la Sensibilité
générale
dans les Affections mélancoliques, Paris, 1876, pp.
130-135.
[6] "Ein Fall von allgemeiner Anaesthesie," Inaugural-Dissertation.
Heidelberg, Winter, 1882.
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