The Psychology of the Emotions

Their discrepancies—Reduced to three types: (1) Classification of pleasures and pains—(2) Classification of emotions: two forms, empiric and analytico-comparative—(3) Classification of representations, intellectualist form—Critical remarks—Impossibility of any classification.

The confusion of that department of psychology which deals with the feelings and the vagueness of its terminology appear in all their fulness with the problem of classification. Although, for reasons which will be given at the end of the chapter, a complete and satisfactory classification seems to me impossible, there has been no lack of attempts, and it must be admitted that they are not illegitimate, at any rate as approximative efforts towards a provisional order.

Within the last fifty years, in spite of the very moderate amount of zeal with which psychologists have studied the feelings, we find about twenty treatises signed by well-known names, not to mention minor variants.^[90] They are far from being in agreement, except on some few points, and when they are compared, in order, if possible, to reconcile them, the first impression is one of inextricable confusion and hopeless divergence. If we examine them a little more carefully, we begin to see light. We see that the differences are only in the objects classed and the methods followed; in one word, it is possible to attempt a classification of these classifications; and when this is done, we find, if I am not mistaken, that they can all be reduced to three types. (1) Some writers, virtually, classify only pleasures and pains, tracing back the whole of affective life to their modalities. (2) Others classify the emotions properly so called; and here we must distinguish two groups, according as the method employed is purely empiric, and founded on current observation, or has recourse to analysis and genetic research, after the manner of the so-called natural classifications. (3) Lastly, others classify intellectual states pure and simple, and, conversely, the affective states which accompany them: this is the intellectualist method.

In order to justify our distinction, we shall successively examine these three types. This excursion on an ungrateful soil will not be altogether without, at least, a negative utility.

I.

As many writers show a common tendency to reduce the whole of the affective life to pleasures and pains, considered as essential and fundamental phenomena, it is natural that one category of classifications should have been based upon these.

“In the science of pleasure and pain,” says Léon Dumont, “we no longer find ourselves, as in other sciences, in presence of separate organs and functions; for pleasure, like pain, belongs to all organs and all functions. Thus, we think that to recapitulate in this science the classification of the perceptive and intelligent faculties, and of the will, is to give way to a psychological tautology, which, though it causes no serious inconvenience, in any case throws little light on the analysis” (op. cit., Pt. II., p. 1). No more could be said than this. Yet, to classify, we require a directing principle, and where shall we find it? “This basis is supplied to us by our own definition of pleasure and pain: pleasure being the augmentation of force in the whole of the conscious individuality, pain its diminution.” Thence, Dumont deduces the divisions found in many authors: pain is positive when it results from an increased expenditure, negative when it depends on absence of excitement; pleasure is positive when there is increased excitement, negative when the expenditure is diminished. In other terms, if we compare the total “force” to a continually renewed capital, we have, in the one case, either more expenditure or less receipts, in the other either more receipts or less expenditure.

But Dumont does not stop there; he passes on to details; he insists on classifying the species under those four generic headings, and thus we have—Positive pains: effort, fatigue, the ugly, the hideous, the immoral, the false. Negative pains: weakness, exhaustion, inanition, physical pain properly so called, ennui, perplexity, doubt, impatience, expectation, sorrow, fear, sadness, pity. Negative pleasures: rest, cheerfulness. Positive pleasures: those of the senses, those of activity, such as games, dreaming, amusements, æsthetic and intellectual pleasures, sublimity, admiration, beauty, and their varieties.

I have transcribed this classification as Dumont gives it. I shall raise no objection, either to a division so arbitrary as to include physical pains among the negative pains, or to the abuse of a vague word, “force,” which he shows a marked inclination to take in a transcendental sense. I will only consider one point, the transition which is surreptitiously made from a classification of pleasures and pains to a classification of the emotions or something analogous. The writer does not keep his promise of not classing “the perceptive and intelligent faculties, and the will;” and it is not in his power to keep it. In fact, what he has followed is the old classic division (pleasures and pains of the senses, the heart, the mind), which may possibly serve for a didactic exposition, but for no other purpose.

Beaunis has proposed a classification of pleasures and pains which also has as its basis a single principle: the various modes of motion. He discriminates three classes of pains: the nervous centres may be inactive through insufficiency of motion; their activity may be in excess through exaggerated motion; or their activity may be suddenly checked by arrest of motion. The same classification is adopted for pleasures: inaction, activity, arrest. I am inclined to think this division preferable to the other. He has also attempted a detailed classification of physical (p. 176) and moral (p. 235) pains; but he gives none for pleasures.^[91]

For my part, I am inclined to believe that a classification (in the exact sense of the word) of pleasures and pains is an impossible task. As these characters are very general, one can only establish exceedingly general divisions. As soon as we go beyond this, we are, in reality, classing internal or external sensations, percepts, images, concepts, modes of action, accompanied by a pleasurable or painful state, positive or negative, due to activity, overactivity, or arrest; but the modalities of the pleasurable and painful, which, besides, are infinite, are not classed in and for themselves. The varieties of physical pain, the simplest, commonest, and best studied kind, the easiest to isolate, and the most free from concomitant representation, have never yet been subject to a fixed classification, from Hahnemann, who reckoned them as 73 in number, to Beaunis, who enumerates 83.

In short, the “science of pleasure and pain,” as L. Dumont somewhat emphatically calls it, belongs to the category of sciences which do not proceed by way of classification, since they do not as yet possess the material. We can only lay down extremely general divisions, and then proceed by incomplete enumeration.

II.

The emotions, at least the simplest and best defined, present themselves as psychic states having their own specific characteristics. They differ among themselves, not as one mode of pleasure or pain differs from another mode, but as one thing differs from another thing; in this way, they appear as objects susceptible to classification. We have already said that two methods have been adopted.

(1) The first strongly resembles the so-called artificial classifications, which might also be called concrete or synthetic. It takes the emotions as realities and places itself before them as the zoologist and the botanist place themselves before the varieties of animals and plants. It is empirical—i.e., it has no guiding principle; it classifies according to observation only, following external resemblances and differences.

Bain may be cited as one of the principal representatives of this method. I will not insist on a piece of work unworthy of such a psychologist; yet he has done it twice over, without arriving at an agreement with himself.

His earlier classification gives as fundamental the emotion of relativity (surprise, astonishment), terror, tenderness, self-esteem, anger, the sense of power, of activity, of mental exercise, æsthetic emotion, moral emotion.

The later includes eleven groups: love, anger, fear, the sentiment of property, the pleasure of power and its correlative pain of subjection, pride, vanity, activity (“plot-interest”), knowledge (the intellectual feeling), æsthetic emotion (beauty), moral sentiment. Three of these are “simple”—anger, love, and fear; but we find, a little later on, that love and anger are called “the giants of the group, the commanding and indispensable members of the emotional scheme;” so that fear would seem to be eliminated.

The incoherence and inconsistency of this attempt are sufficiently obvious, and I need not insist on them. (It should be noted that, in both cases, the religious sentiment is omitted.) I can find only one valuable remark—viz., that “pleasures and pains are contained in every one of the classes to be described, just as the natural orders of plants may each contain food and poison, sweet aromas and nauseating stinks.”^[92] I have only referred to this classification in order to show how, by its very nature, it is condemned to failure. Floating at haphazard, without fixed principle, when not contradictory, it can only be arbitrary.

Herbert Spencer has criticised it in a well-known passage, which I will briefly recapitulate, since it serves as a transition to the second form of classification, and throws some light on the latter.^[93] Bain has overlooked the fact that in confining his attention to the most obvious characteristics of the emotions, he is following the method of the ancient naturalists, who classed the cetacea among fishes. Every classification should be preceded by a rigorous analysis. For this purpose it would be necessary, as a preliminary, to study the ascending evolution of the emotions through the animal kingdom, to find out which of them are the first to appear, coexisting with the lowest forms of organisation and intelligence, and to note the existing differences, as regards emotion, between the higher and lower human races. Those common to all may be considered as simple, and those peculiar to the civilised races as ulterior and derivative.

2. Inspired by the above observations, Dr. Mercier has worked out a classification which I shall give as an example of the analytic and comparative method. It is in any case the most recent and the most detailed.^[94] Proceeding after the manner of zoologists and botanists, he divides into classes, sub-classes, genera, and species, forming seventeen tables. We gather from these that there are 6 classes and 23 genera, under which may be ranged (after deducting all repetitions and duplicate entries) 128 manifestations of feeling, such as are to be found in common experience and rendered in current language. It is not possible, nor would it serve any useful purpose, to present this classification here in detail; I shall only indicate the 6 great classes with some sub-divisions, which will enable us to understand their nature.

The first class includes the feelings primarily affecting the conservation of the physical or mental organism. It comprises 2 sub-classes (according as the primary excitation is initiated by the environment, or within the organism itself), 2 orders, and 9 genera.

The second is that of the feelings primarily affecting the perpetuation of the race, considered as simple wants. Two sub-classes: primary (sexual emotion and its varieties) and secondary (paternal, maternal, filial, etc., feelings).

With the third class we leave behind the region of the primitive and fundamental feelings. It includes those which relate to the common welfare (community, family, etc.). It comprises 2 orders, each of which is further divided into several genera—viz., the patriotic and the ethical emotions.

The fourth class (only vaguely differentiated from the preceding) is that of the feelings relating to the welfare of others: sympathy, benevolence, pity, and their opposites.

The fifth class comprises the feelings which are neither conservative nor destructive, so that here we pass beyond the region of pure utility, whether individual or social. It is divided into 2 orders and 5 genera—viz., admiration, surprise, the æsthetic feeling, the religious feeling, and the “feeling of recreation.”

The sixth and last class is that of the feelings which correspond to abstract relations (in ordinary nomenclature designated as intellectual feelings)—conviction, belief, doubt, perplexity, scepticism. It has no sub-divisions.

Even when all details are omitted, the general drift of this work must be sufficiently apparent to the reader. Although conducted according to a fixed method, it does not escape the difficulties inherent in every classification of the emotions. In the first place, the order of filiation is not always very well marked. The author himself recognises that an arrangement in series is not possible, but this difficulty has also presented itself in zoology and botany. We meet with repetitions, i.e., forms of sentiment figuring several times over in different categories. This, too, is inevitable. The complex emotions (or some of them, at least) are formed by anastomoses: they are rivers formed by converging streams coming from various sources lying in different directions. One may legitimately refer them to one or other of these origins; but the attribution will be partial and arbitrary. The religious sentiment, for instance, is included in the class of intellectual emotions. But its social character is undeniable (a point we shall return to in the proper place); let us recall, in passing, the worship of ancestors and deified heroes, and the strictly national religions of antiquity, the communities, orders, confraternities, corporations, the missionary work carried on in modern times, and, above all, the contagious character of religious emotion in general. It is false, moreover, to say that this emotion “tends neither to the preservation nor the destruction of the individual.” It might therefore be just as well—or just as ill—placed in the third class. As soon as we pass from simple to complex emotions, it is of more importance to determine their composition than their filiation. Now, this procedure belongs rather to chemical than to zoological classification.

III.

A third type of classification, peculiar to the intellectualists, consists in classing according to the intellectual states, in so far as these are accompanied by affective elements. This system sprang from the psychology of Herbart, is based on it, and is met with in the works of the principal representatives of his school, Waitz, Drobisch, and especially Nahlowsky in Das Gefühlsleben (pp. 44 et seq.). This method is peculiar to Germany, and its influence is still perceptible even in Wundt, and more recently in Lehmann’s book (op. cit., pp. 338 et seq.). In England, Shadworth Hodgson approaches this type.

Apart from the procedure common to all, these classifications agree still less in detail than those of the first two types. Taken broadly, they have an academic aspect; they are frittered away in divisions, sub-divisions, distinctions, whence there arises more darkness than light. There is, however, a dichotomy peculiar to them corresponding to a reality which is not met with in the two previously-mentioned types, and, on this account, deserves notice.

This kind of classification, in the first place, establishes two great categories of emotions—those depending on the contents of the representations, and those depending on the course of the representations. Let us compare the flux of the states of consciousness to that of a river, which, according to the nature of the soil and the state of the sky, runs, sometimes clear, sometimes muddy, sometimes blue or green, sometimes greyish. Besides these various aspects, there is yet another kind, depending on the movement of the water, sometimes slow, sometimes rapid, here stagnant, there broken by the abrupt windings of the banks. One of these corresponds to the course, the other to the contents of the representations on which the affective states are based.

The first class (the contents) comprises the qualitative emotions, which are generally divided into inferior or sensory, and superior, which are intellectual, æsthetic, moral, or religious, according as the ideas exciting their feelings are those of the true, the beautiful, the good, or the absolute.

The second class (the course of the representations) comprises the formal emotions—i.e., those depending on the different forms of the course of ideas, on the relations existing between them. Nahlowsky distinguishes four species—(1) the feeling of expectation and impatience; (2) that of hope, anxiety, surprise, doubt; (3) of ennui; (4) of refreshment and work.

The only merit of this classification is its showing that there are affective manifestations depending only on relations—transitions from one intellectual state to another. This merit, however, depends on the essential defect of the system, which consists in dealing with perceptions, representations, and ideas only—not with affective states taken in themselves, and directly. As this method of procedure is, definitively, an intellectual classification, it ought not to omit any form of knowledge, not even those blurred and evanescent states—the relations—which unite, disjoin, exclude, draw together, eliminate, subordinate, in short, indicate the movements of thought, and which students have often made the mistake of forgetting. It remains to be known whether many relations are not states of an affective rather than an intellectual nature; this is a point which I shall examine later on.

We may console ourselves for this multiplicity and divergence of classifications by saying that the naturalists have not been more successful. It will be granted without difficulty that it is easier to classify animals than affective states; yet, to take our own century only, how many systems!—from Lamarck, Cuvier, Oken, to Blanville, Geoffroy St. Hilaire, Siebold, Ehrenberg, Richard Owen, Von Baer, Vogt, Agassiz, and finally to Häckel—if we cite only the principal names!

I have indicated in passing why a true classification of the emotions—i.e., a distribution into orders, genera, species, according to the dominant and subordinate characters—is impossible. Every classification, if not purely empirical, expresses a general theory of affective life, a “system,” and, consequently, a hypothesis. More than this, it can never congratulate itself on having exhausted its matter, for every emotion, simple or compound, admits of innumerable varieties determined by the individual, the race, the epoch, and the course of civilisation; some are extinct, others, again, of recent origin. Lastly, the existence of mixed emotions—which are numerous—is a fatal objection to every attempt at distribution into a linear series. The only track to follow is that of genetic filiation—viz., to state first the simple, primary emotions, then to find out by what mental processes, conscious or unconscious, the composite and derived emotions have arisen from them. We shall attempt to define these in a future chapter.^[95] But this work is no longer a classification.

Can emotional images be revived, spontaneously or voluntarily?—Summary of scattered facts relating to this subject—Inquiry into this question, and method followed—Emotional and gustative images—Internal sensations (hunger, thirst, fatigue, disgust, etc.)—Pleasures and pains; observations—Emotions: three distinct forms of revivability according to observations—Reduction of the images to three groups: revivability direct and easy, indirect and comparatively easy, difficult and sometimes direct, sometimes indirect.—The revivability of a representation is in proportion to its complexity and the motor elements included in it.—Reservations to be made on this last point—Is there such a thing as a real emotional memory?—Two cases: false or abstract, and true or concrete memory—Peculiar characters and differences of each case—Change of the emotional into an intellectual recollection—Emotional amnesia: its practical consequences—There exists a general emotional type and partial emotional types—Confirmatory observations—Comparative revivability of agreeable and disagreeable states—To feel acutely and to recall an acute impression of the feeling are two different operations.

I.

After the numerous researches made, during the last twenty years, into the nature and the revivability of visual, auditory, tactile-motor, and verbal images, it seems paradoxical to maintain that there is still an unexplored region in the domain of memory. As a matter of fact, however, we find at most a few scattered remarks on the images derived from smell, taste, internal sensations, pleasure, pain, and emotion in general. The question of the emotional memory remains nearly, if not quite, untouched.^[96] The object of this chapter is to begin its study.

The impressions of smell and taste, our visceral sensations, our pleasant or painful states, our emotions and passions, like the perceptions of sight and hearing, can leave memories behind them. This is a matter of common experience on which it is needless to insist. These residua, fixed in an organisation, may return into the consciousness; and it is known that images may be revived in two ways—by provocation, or spontaneously.

Revivability on provocation is the simplest of all. It consists in an actual occurrence awakening the images of similar occurrences at some former time, and takes place, beyond possibility of doubt, in the class of images which occupies us just now. The actual sensation of fatigue, of the smell of a lily, of the taste of pepper, of pain in a certain tooth, appear to me as the repetition of sensations formerly experienced, similar to the present one, or at least apparently identical, so that, consequently, it revives them.

But can the images of olfactory and gustatory sensations, of internal sensations, of past pains and pleasures, of emotions formerly experienced, be revived in the consciousness spontaneously, or at will, independently of any actual occurrence which might provoke them? We know that, in some painters, the inner vision is so clear that they can draw a portrait from memory; that, in some musicians, the inner hearing is so perfect that they can, like Habeneck, ideally hear a symphony just played, recalling all the details of the execution, and the slightest variations in the time. Are there in the order of emotional representations any cases analogous to these? Such is, in its precise form, the question which we shall examine in detail. We shall subsequently see that it has a practical bearing, and is not a mere psychological curiosity.

Before entering on the subject, I will summarise the principal facts relating to this question to be found scattered through the works of various authors. I divide them into four groups:—

1. We may take taste and smell together. This last sense is much more extensive, much richer and more varied than the other; common speech often confounds them, enriching taste at the expense of smell. Although unscientific, this confusion does not greatly concern us.

Every one knows that professional tasters, cooks, certain chemists and perfumers, can distinguish the most delicate gradations and correctly identify them with previous sensations; but this is a provoked recollection. Does a spontaneous or voluntary relation exist between these two groups of images? Examining the fullest monographs drawn up by physiologists^[97] we find scarcely any information on this point. Cloquet, Müller, Valentin have reported cases of subjective sensations attributed by them to internal causes; but other physiologists, such as Ludwig, without denying these, are of opinion that sapid particles in the mouth, and odoriferous molecules on the mucous membrane of the nose, may act in a similar manner; so that the alleged images would, in fact, be sensations.

Dreams may afford us a better starting-point. Among the numerous writers who have treated of this subject, some resolutely deny the existence of representations of taste and smell. It is impossible to accept this opinion. Though they are comparatively rare, examples may be found which are proof against all criticism. A person who, for hygienic reasons, has abstained from wine for several years, assures us that he has had a very clear impression of its taste in the course of a dream. We may recall the hypnagogic hallucinations so well described by A. Maury, who was subject to them; he mentions the taste of rancid oil, and the smell of burning as occurring apart from any objective cause.

Among hallucinations properly so called, it is known that those of smell are of very frequent occurrence. Many authorities hesitate to admit those of taste, which they reduce to the status of mere illusions; but we know that the distinction formerly maintained between these two pathological manifestations has been, in our day, much disputed.

2. Internal sensations play a prominent part in the emotional life. Are these susceptible, in the normal condition, of spontaneous or voluntary revival? I have not been able to find any precise information on this point. In the pathological condition we can find numerous examples in hypochondriacs, hysterics, and neuropaths, in insane patients who complain of the suppression of some of their organs, of inversion of the stomach. In any case it would be necessary to determine the part played by the organ itself, and its actual state in the majority of these cases of revival, which is extremely difficult.

3. As for pleasures and pains, under their double (physical and mental) form, there is no doubt. The recollection of a blinding light, of a discord or a strident sound, of the extraction of a tooth, or some more serious operation; the prospect of a good dinner to an epicure, of the approaching holidays to a schoolboy—all the states of psychic life generally included under the designation of imaginary pleasures and pains, show how frequent is the revival of impressions on the feelings. And, in fact, the difficulty is not to establish their existence, but to determine their nature.

We may also recall the facility with which, in hypnotised subjects, pleasant or painful conditions of all sorts may be induced by suggestion.

Finally, in certain cases, the impression may even become completely hallucinatory—i.e., equal in intensity to the reality itself. “A student,” says Gratiolet, “playfully struck his companion’s out-stretched finger with the handle of a scalpel. The latter felt a pain so acute that he thought the instrument had pierced his finger to the bone.” During a popular tumult in the reign of Louis-Philippe, a combatant received a slight contusion from a spent bullet on his shoulder. The skin was not even scratched, but “he felt a torrent of blood flowing from the wound over his breast.” Bennett relates that a butcher remained hanging by one arm from a hook. He was taken down by the terrified bystanders, uttered frightful cries, and complained that he was suffering cruelly, while all the time the hook had only penetrated his clothes, and the arm was uninjured.^[98] This condition might be termed a hallucination of the feelings.

4. The supply of observations and documents relating to the revivability of the emotions and passions is a very scanty one. In fact, we may admit that what has already been said as to pleasures and pains is also applicable to this last group. But it is not on the question of fact that the attention of psychologists has been concentrated. They are occupied entirely with theory, and in determining the nature of emotional memory. The majority consider the recollection to be merely that of the accompanying circumstances of emotion. Others hold it to be a recollection of the emotion itself, as such. As this is the principal point of my subject, and will have subsequently to be discussed in detail, I must limit myself, for the moment, to the mere indication of the two opinions.

In short,—confining ourselves to the normal, and setting aside the pathological states,—the facts collected seem to me utterly inadequate for answering the question stated above.

II.

It was for this reason that I proposed to myself the task of collecting fresh documents, and of inquiring whether there are not great differences between one individual and another as regards the memory of impressions. This would explain the want of harmony among authorities on this point.

Having eliminated all vague and doubtful answers, and those which are not to the point, I have collected about sixty dossiers. Each person (all being adults, of both sexes, and various stages of culture) was directly questioned by myself, and the answers immediately noted. Besides these, I have received several long written communications, which I reckon among my best material. The nature of the questions asked will be sufficiently evident from the following summary, which contains the principal results of my inquiry. I shall confine myself to a bare statement of the facts; the interpretation will come later.

1. Images of taste and smell.—I was disposed to admit that they are not subject to any spontaneous revivability, and still less to a voluntary one, being, for my own part, quite incapable of recalling a single one, even in the faintest degree. The answers have put me completely in the wrong—the negatives being 40 per cent., the positives 60 per cent. More accurately, 40 per cent. persons revive no image, 48 per cent. revive some, 12 per cent. declare themselves capable of reviving all, or nearly all, at pleasure.

The majority of cases, therefore, allows of the spontaneous revival of some odours only. Those most frequently mentioned are pinks, musk, violets, heliotrope, carbolic acid, the smell of the country, of grass, etc. The conditions under which the image appears are various. For some persons this is unaccompanied by any visual, tactile, or other representation. With the majority, the imaginary odour ultimately excites the corresponding visual image (that of a flower, a bottle of scent, etc.). Many have first to evoke the visual image, and, in time, succeed in exciting the olfactory one. Two individuals affirm that, on reading the description of a landscape, they immediately perceive the characteristic odours. Here the sign is sufficient. One of them, a novelist, is sometimes conscious of thirst under the same conditions.

In the two following cases the “olfactory image” only exists in a single instance, and appears to be produced by the combined operation of concomitant circumstances.

I should hesitate to admit the spontaneous or voluntary revival of almost all odours, if this fact had not been affirmed to me, in perfect good faith, by educated and competent witnesses. I give some extracts from these declarations: “I can perceive nearly all characteristic odours, and can call them up at will; at this moment I am thinking of the country of the Rhine, and am fully conscious of its odour.” “I can recall the greater number of odours (but not all) either spontaneously or voluntarily. (In the latter case time is required.)—Can you perceive, here and now, the scent of roses, and, if so, of what kind?—I perceive it in genere; but, on further persevering, I find it to be the scent of withered roses. The visual representation occurs afterwards.” The only person who has told me that he finds all odours perceptible at will always finds a preliminary visual representation necessary.^[99]

As to the recollections of tastes, by themselves, the answers are very vague. One remembers “easily, and at will, the taste of salt, with a very clear visual impression,” but less easily the other three fundamental tastes. Another, who uses for his throat three different kinds of lozenges, “feels the taste of them beforehand, as soon as he needs them, on either seeing or touching them.” In general, the revivability of tastes appears to me especially connected with that of ordinary food, and with the state of the alimentary canal (hunger).

2. Internal sensations.—My inquiry does not include the whole of these, but only the commonest and most easily observed.^[100]

As regards hunger, I have received 51 definite answers, 24 persons saying they can distinctly recall it, 27 that they cannot. (The question has always been put at an hour when the real sensation did not exist, and some have told me that in their normal condition they never feel either hunger or thirst.) It is usually described as a tactile sensation in the œsophagus, or a twitching pain in the stomach, etc. One person only affirms that he can, “at will, feel hunger and thirst, even after having eaten and drunk.”

Thirst is imagined much more frequently than hunger, and, as it seems, more clearly (36 affirmative to 15 negative answers). It is described as dryness in the throat, heat, etc.

As regards the representation of fatigue, the answers have without exception been affirmative. The modes of representation are various. Some feel it (ideally) in the muscles; others under a cerebral form. Here are some examples: “muscular twitchings in the calves of the legs, the back, and the shoulders; the eyes feeling swollen, but no heaviness in the head;” “a feeling of relaxation, of a weight, localised in the shoulders, because, in a normal state, I find stooping very difficult;” “slowness of movement, with a feeling of weight in the head;” “general“general lassitude, of a diffused kind, especially a feeling of weight in the head, and mental weariness;” “pains in the joints, and a heavy feeling in the brain.” Although all my correspondents can revive the feeling of fatigue, three or four can only succeed in doing so “with difficulty and to a slight extent.”

We find the same results with regard to the representation of disgust. I find only three negative answers, all accompanied by the remark, “I have a good digestion.” One of these cases is the more singular because the subject has suffered from sea-sickness. In its acute form the representation is described as “like the beginning of nausea.” For others, it is “a pain in the stomach, with a retractile movement, connected with the idea of cod-liver oil, or of tainted meat.” Among those who have experienced the sensation of sea-sickness, I have not met with one who cannot easily revive it (giddiness, feelings of a rocking motion, which disinclines them to persist in reviving the impression). M. X—— (a very competent observer in psychological questions) says: “I have a pretty good visual memory, but no auditive, either musical or linguistic; I cannot spell a foreign language. Except for muscular memory, which in me is nil (so that I have never succeeded in acquiring any physical exercise, or playing on any instrument), I can revive all internal sensations: hunger, thirst, disgust, fatigue, giddiness, difficulty in breathing; I prefer not to insist upon this last state, as were I to think of it any longer I should actually bring it on.”^[101]

3. Pains and Pleasures.—To the question, “Can you revive in yourself the memory of a given physical pain, a sorrow, a pleasure, or a pity?” the answer is nearly always in the affirmative. But, put in this bald way, it teaches us nothing. We require more detailed information. We here return to the main point of our subject, and I am obliged slightly to anticipate my conclusions. The observations, carefully taken, show that there are two distinct forms of emotional memory, one abstract, the other concrete. Later on, I shall insist on their differences; for the moment, I shall confine myself to the enumeration of facts.

Painful States.—Toothache, being very common, has supplied me with many answers. I note in nearly all of these the predominance of the motor elements: shooting and throbbing pains, contortions of the jaw, etc. When the extraction of a tooth is recalled there is a jarring of the whole head, a feeling of twisting, snapping, noises, etc. In many cases the painful element seems to be scarcely revived, or not at all; in many others it reappears with the utmost clearness.

Cuts, burns, etc., are remembered tolerably well. “In my youth I was wounded by a pistol-shot; I have a perfect recollection of the shock, which first produced a tactile sensation radiating from a centre, and afterwards pain, but I have a difficulty in recalling the painful element in the sensation.” Another can well remember the vesical contractions of a cystitis; but not without the help of the motor elements, as in the case of toothache. M. B——, who appears to belong to the affective type (I shall explain later on what I mean by this), feels the beginnings of a lancinating neuralgia in the eye, a cramp in the stomach, a smarting of the anus, a bite on the tongue. Another (same type) says, “If I were to try, I could recall the feeling of neuralgia, but I cannot represent to myself the pain of a boil.” Another: “There are some pains which I can feel at will; I either feel nothing at all, or the representation is so vivid that it almost amounts to actual pain. This is true especially of cardiac pains.”

It was my intention to question those who had undergone important operations; but, from the very general use of anæsthetics, there was little to be hoped for from such an experiment. There remains a case of frequent occurrence—the pains of childbirth. The answers are contradictory. One woman, who has had five confinements, declares that “as soon as it is over, there is nothing more.” This is a woman of vigorous health and unshaken optimism. Another says, “As soon as the pain is over, I can forget it at once.” The physician of a lying-in hospital told me that “nearly all, during their confinement, say that nothing would induce them to undergo such suffering again; yet nearly all return to the hospital.” Others say that they have, afterwards, a very clear and precise recollection of the labour-pains. Though these answers are so contradictory, we shall see, further on, how they are to be reconciled with one another.

Case 4. No revivability of the impression of labour-pains. Nervous subject. Good visual memory; no auditive memory; cannot recall either a taste or a smell; has made observations on herself in view of the subject in hand, and has sent me the following notes:—

In conclusion, I will quote from Fouillée, in connection with physical pain, an interesting observation made on himself:—