Philosophy

Hitherto, in our investigation of man from within, we have considered only the cognitive aspect, which is, in fact, the most important to philosophy. But now we must turn our attention to the other sides of human nature. If we treat them more briefly than the cognitive side, it is not because they are less important, but because their main importance is practical and our task is theoretical. Let us begin with the emotions.

The theory of the emotions has been radically transformed by the discovery of the part played by the ductless glands. Cannon’s Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear and Rage is a book whose teaching has come to be widely known, though not more so than its importance warrants. It appears that certain secretions from the glands into the blood are the essential physiological conditions of the emotions. Some people say that the physiological changes correlated with these secretions are the emotions. I think this view must be received with some caution. As everyone knows, the adrenal glands secrete adrenin, which produces the bodily symptoms of fear or rage. On one occasion my dentist injected a considerable amount of this substance into my blood, in the course of administering a local anæsthetic. I turned pale and trembled, and my heart beat violently; the bodily symptoms of fear were present, as the books said they should be, but it was quite obvious to me that I was not actually feeling fear. I should have had the same bodily symptoms in the presence of a tyrant about to condemn me to death, but there would have been something extra which was absent when I was in the dentist’s chair. What was different was the cognitive part: I did not feel fear because I knew there was nothing to be afraid of. In normal life, the adrenal glands are stimulated by the perception of an object which is frightful or enraging; thus there is already a cognitive element present. The fear or rage attaches itself to the object which has stimulated the glands, and the full emotion arises. But when adrenin is artificially administered, this cognitive element is absent, and the emotion in its entirety fails to arise. Probably if it were administered in sleep it would produce a dream of terror, in which the dreamer’s imagination would supply an object for fear. The same thing might happen on waking life with animals or young children. But with an adult of average rationality, the knowledge that there is nothing to be afraid of inhibits the full development of the emotion. Fear and rage are both active emotions, demanding a certain kind of behaviour towards an object; when this behaviour is obviously not called for, it is impossible to feel either emotion fully.

There are, however, other emotions, such as melancholy, which do not demand an object. These, presumably, can be caused in their entirety by administering the proper secretions. A disordered liver may cause melancholy which is not relieved by knowledge of its source. The emotions which do not require an object are those which do not call for any appropriate line of action.

Emotions are subject to “conditioning”, so that the stimuli which call them out become more various as a result of experience. Dr. Watson has found only two original stimuli to fear in young infants, namely loud noises, and lack of support; but anything associated with either of these may become terrifying.

The separation of an emotional element in our integral reaction to a situation is more or less artificial. No doubt there is a definite physiological concomitant, namely stimulation of a gland; but fear, for example, involves a mode of action towards an object, for which mode of action the secretion of adrenin is helpful. There is, however, something in common among a number of occasions that have a given emotional tone; this may be seen from the fact that they are associated. When we are feeling some emotion strongly, we tend to think of other occasions when we have had similar feelings. Association by means of emotional similarity is a characteristic of a great deal of poetry. And this accounts for the fact that, if our blood is in a state usually associated with terror, we shall, if our critical faculty is in abeyance, be very likely to imagine some cause of fear so vividly as to believe that it is really present:

But in a rational man, if he is not drunk or sleepy, other associations are too strong for this production of imaginary terrors. That is why it is possible to show the physical symptoms of fear under the influence of adrenin, without actually feeling the emotion.

The emotions are what makes life interesting, and what makes us feel it important. From this point of view, they are the most valuable element in human existence. But when, as in philosophy, we are trying to understand the world, they appear rather as a hindrance. They generate irrational opinions, since emotional associations seldom correspond with collocations in the external world. They cause us to view the universe in the mirror of our moods, as now bright, now dim, according to the state of the mirror. With the sole exception of curiosity, the emotions are on the whole a hindrance to the intellectual life, though the degree of vigour required for successful thinking is likely to be correlated with a considerable susceptibility to emotion. If I say little about the emotions in this book, it is not from under-estimating their human importance, but solely because the task upon which we are engaged is theoretical rather than practical: to understand the world, not to change it. And if emotion determines the ends we shall pursue, knowledge is what gives us the power to realise them. Even from the practical point of view, the advancement of knowledge is more useful than anything else that lies within human power.

I come now to the subject of desire, which we considered from a behaviourist standpoint in Chapter III. I want now to ask whether there is anything to be added from an introspective point of view.

Let us again remind ourselves that there is an element of artificiality in isolating elements within the one process leading from stimulus to reaction. Whenever a stimulus produces a reaction, we may consider the reaction as the effect of the stimulus, or as the cause of further effects. The former is the natural way of viewing the reaction when we are concerned with knowledge; the latter is the natural way when we are concerned with desire and will. In desire, we wish to change something in ourselves or in our environment or both. The question is: What can we discover introspectively about desire?

I think that here, as in the case of knowledge, the purely behaviouristic account is more important causally than the introspective account, and applies over a much wider range. Desire as a characteristic of behaviour, as considered in Chapter III, begins very low in the scale of evolution, and remains, even in human beings, the whole of what can be discovered in a large number of instances. The Freudian “unconscious” desires give a formula which is useful as explaining causally a number of acts, but these desires do not exist as anything except ways of behaving. Some desires, on the other hand, are conscious and explicit. What, exactly, is added in these last that is not present in the others?

Let us take some stock instance, say, Demosthenes desiring to become a great orator. This was a desire of which he was conscious, and in accordance with which he deliberately moulded his actions. One may suppose, to begin with, a merely behaviouristic tendency to do such things as seemed likely to impress his companions. This is a practically universal characteristic of human nature, which is displayed naively by children. Then come attempts, just like those of rats in mazes, to reach the goal; wrong turnings, leading to derision; right turnings, leading to a brief nibble at the cheese of admiration. Self-observation, still of a behaviourist kind, may lead to the formula: I want to be admired. At this point the desire has become “conscious”. When this point has been reached, knowledge can be brought to bear on the problem of achieving the desired end. By association, the means come to be desired also. And so Demosthenes arrives at the decision to subject himself to a difficult training as an orator, since this seems the best way of achieving his end. The whole development is closely analogous to that of explicit knowledge out of mere sensitivity; it is, indeed, part of the very same evolution. We cannot, in our integral reaction to a situation, separate out one event as knowledge and another as desire; both knowledge and desire are features which characterise the reaction, but do not exist in isolation.

In explicit conscious desire there is always an object, just as there is in explicit conscious perception; we desire some event or some state of affairs. But in the primitive condition out of which explicit desire is evolved, this is not the case. We have a state of affairs which may be said to involve discomfort, and activities of various sorts until a certain different state of affairs is achieved, or fatigue supervenes, or some other interest causes a distraction. These activities will be such as to achieve the new state of affairs quickly if there has been previous experience of a relevant kind. When we reach the level of explicit conscious desire, it seems as if we were being attracted to a goal, but we are really still pushed from behind. The attraction to the goal is a shorthand way of describing the effects of learning together with the fact that our efforts will continue till the goal is achieved, provided the time required is not too long. There are feelings of various kinds connected with desire, and in the case of familiar desires, such as hunger, these feelings become associated with what we know will cause the desire to cease. But I see no more reason in the case of desire than in the case of knowledge to admit an essentially relational occurrence such as many suppose desire to be. Only experience, memory and association—so I should say—confer objects upon desire, which are initially blind tendencies to certain kinds of activity.

It remains to say a few words about “will”. There is a sense in which will is an observable phenomena, and another in which it is a metaphysical superstition. It is obvious that I can say, “I will hold my breath for thirty seconds”, and proceed to do so; that I can say, “I will go to America”, and proceed to do so; and so on. In this sense, will is an observable phenomenon. But as a faculty, as a separable occurrence, it is, I think, a delusion. To make this clear, it will be necessary to examine the observable phenomenon.

Very young infants do not appear to have anything that could be called “will”. Their movements, at first, are reflexes, and are explicable, where they first cease to be reflexes, by the law of conditioned reflexes. One observes, however, something that looks very like will when the child learns control over fingers and toes. It seems clear, in watching this process, that, after some experience of involuntary movements, the child discovers how to think of a movement first and then make the movement, and that this discovery is exceedingly pleasurable. We know that, in adult life, a deliberate movement is one which we think of before we make it. Obviously we cannot think of a movement unless we have previously made it; it follows that no movement can be voluntary unless it has previously been involuntary. I think that, as William James suggested, a voluntary movement is merely one which is preceded by the thought of it, and has the thought of it as an essential part of its cause.

When I say this, I do not mean to take any particular view as to what constitutes “thinking”. It may consist almost entirely of talking, as Dr. Watson holds; or it may be something more. That is not the point at present. The point is that, whatever philosophy one may adopt, there certainly is an occurrence which is described by ordinary people as “thinking of getting up in the morning”, or “thinking of” any other bodily movement. Whatever the analysis of this occurrence may be, it is an essential part of the cause of any movement which can be attributed to the “will”.

It is true, of course, that we may think of a movement without performing it. This is analogous to imagining a state of affairs without believing in it; each is a rather sophisticated and late development. Each will only happen when we think of several things at once, and one of them interferes with another. It may, I think, be assumed that, whenever we think of a possible movement, we have a tendency to perform it, and are only restrained, if at all, by some thought, or other circumstance, having a contrary tendency.

If this is the case, there is nothing at all mysterious about the will. Whatever may constitute “thinking of” a movement, it is certainly something associated with the movement itself; therefore, by the usual law of learned reactions we should expect that thinking of a movement would tend to cause it to occur. This, I should say, is the essence of will.

Emphatic cases of volition, where we decide after a period of deliberation, are merely examples of conflicting forces. You may have both pleasant and unpleasant associations with some place that you are thinking of going to; this may cause you to hesitate, until one or other association proves the stronger. There may be more than this in volition, but I cannot see any good ground for believing that there is.