Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/84

Rh PSYCHOLOGY tions, however, we may presently find to be apparent only. At any rate the principle is obviously true before reflexion begins, true so long as we are dealing with actually present sources of feeling, and not with their re-presenta- tions. But to admit this is psychologically to admit everything, at least if mind is to be genetically explained. Assuming, then, that we start with only quantitative variations of feeling, we have to attempt to explain the development of formal and qualitative differences in the grounds of feeling. But, if aversions and pursuits result from incommensurable states of pain and pleasure, there seems no other way of saving the unity and continuity of the subject except by a speculative assumption, the doc- trine known as the freedom of the will. The one position involves the other, and the more scientific course is to avoid both as far as we can. The question, then, is : How, if action depends in the last resort on a merely quantitative difference, could it ever come about that what we call the higher sources of feeling should supersede the lower ? If it is only quantity that turns the scales, where does quality come in, for we cannot say, e.g., that the astronomer experiences a greater thrill of delight when a new planet rewards his search than the hungry savage in finding a clump of pig-nuts ? Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis contains the answer in brief. We shall understand this answer better if we look at a parallel case, or what is really our own from another point of view. We distinguish between higher and lower forms of life: we might say there is more life in a large oyster than in a small one, other things being equal, but we should regard a crab as possessing not necessarily more life as measured by waste of tissue but certainly as manifesting life in a higher form. How, in the evolution of the animal kingdom, do we suppose this advance to 1 ave been made? The tendency at any one moment is simply towards more life, simply growth ; but this process of self-preservation imperceptibly but steadily modifies the self that is preserved. The creature is bent only on filling its skin ; but in doing this as easily as may be it gets a better skin to fill, and accordingly seeks to fill it differently. Though cabbage and honey are what they were before, they have changed relatively to the grub now it has become a butterfly. So, while we are all along preferring a more pleasurable state of consciousness before a less, the content of our conscious- ness is continually changing; the greater pleasure still outweighs the less, but the pleasures to be weighed are either wholly different, or at least are the same for us no more. What we require, then, is not that the higher pleasures shall always afford greater pleasure than the lower did, but that to advance to the level of life on which pleasure is derived from higher objects shall on the whole be more pleasurable and less painful than to remain behind. And this condition seems provided in the fact of accommodation above referred to (p. 69) and in the important fact that attention can be more effect- ively expended by what we may therefore call improve ments in the form of the field of consciousness. But when all is said and done a certain repugnance is apt to arise against any association of the differences between the higher and lower feelings with differences of quantity Yet such repugnance is but another outcome of the com mon mistake of supposing that the real is obtained bj pulling to pieces rather than by building up. " Do not all charms fly At the mere touch of cold philosophy ? " But no logical analysis nay, further, no logical synthesi is adequate to the fulness of things. For the rest, sucl aversion is wholly emotional, and has no more an intel
 * ctual element in it than has the disgust we feel on first

vitnessing anatomical dissections. 1 Emotional and Conative Action. We turn now from the causes of feeling to its manifesta- EFFECT ions or effects, and have here in like manner to inquire y FEK vhether there is in these also any contrast corresponding IN o the opposing extremes of pleasure and pain. We have lready seen reasons for dismissing reflex movements or movements not determined by feeling as psychologically secondary, the effects of habit and heredity, and for re- garding those diffusive movements that are immediately expressive of feeling as primordial, such movements as are strictly purposive being gradually selected or elaborated rom them. But some distinction is called for among the various movements expressive of emotion; for there is more in these than the direct effect of feeling regarded as merely pleasure or pain. It has been usual with psycho- ogists to confound emotions with feeling, because intense 'eeling is essential to emotion. But, strictly speaking, a state of emotion is a complete state of mind, a psychosis, and not a psychical element, if we may so say. Thus in anger we have over and above pain a more or less definite object as its cause, and a certain characteristic reactive display frowns, compressed lips, erect head, clenched ists, in a word, the combative attitude as its effect, and similarly of other emotions ; so that generally in the par- ticular movements indicative of particular emotions the primary and primitive effects of feeling are overlaid by what Darwin has called serviceable associated habits. The purposive actions of an earlier stage of development become, though somewhat atrophied as it were, the emo- tive outlet of a later stage : in the circumstances in which our ancestors worried their enemies we only show our teeth. We must, therefore, leave aside the more complex emotional manifestations and look only to the simplest effects of pleasure and of pain, if we are to discover any fundamental contrast between them. 2 Joy finds expression in dancing, clapping the hands, Emo- and meaningless laughter, and these actions are not only t pleasurable in themselves but such as increase the existing Jg pleasure. Attention is not drafted off or diverted ; but rather the available resources seem reinforced, so that the old expenditure is supported as well as the new. To the pleasure on the receptive side is added pleasure on the active side. The violent contortions due to pain, on the other hand, are painful in themselves, though less intense than the pains from which they withdraw attention : they are but counter-irritants that arrest or inhibit still more painful thoughts or sensations. Thus, according to Darwin, "sailors who are going to be flogged sometimes take a piece of lead into their mouths in order to bite it with their utmost force, and thus to bear the pain." When in this way we take account of the immediate effects as well 1 "To look at anything in its elements makes it appear inferior to what it seems as a whole. Resolve the statue or the building into stone and the laws of proportion, and no worthy causes of the former beautiful result seem now left behind. So, also, resolve a virtuous act into the passions and some quantitative law, and it seems to be rather destroyed than analysed, though after all what was there else it could be resolved into?" Sir A. Grant, Aristotle's Ethics, Essay IV., "The Doctrine of the Mean," vol. i. p. 210 (2d ed.)- 2 Of the three principles Darwin advances in explanation of emo- tional expression that which he places last perhaps because it admits of less definite illustration seems both psychologically and physio- logically more fundamental than the more striking principle of service- able associated habits which he places first ; indeed the following, which is his statement of it, implies as much : " Certain actions which we recognize as expressive of certain states of mind are the direct result of the constitution of the nervous system, and have been from the first independent of the will, and to a large extent of habit " (Expression of the Emotions, p. 66). It is in illustration of this principle too that Darwin describes the movements expressive of joy and grief, emotions which in some form or other are surely the most primitive of any.