Law of Decay: its formula, and its general application in psychology—Difficulties where the affective life is concerned—Successive disappearance of the disinterested emotions (the æsthetic and intellectual), of the altruistic (moral and social), the ego-altruistic (religious feeling, ambition, etc.), and lastly, the egoistic—Converse proof: cases of arrested development—Theory of degeneration—Its relation to decay.

At the opening of this work I gave a general survey of the evolution of the affective life; at its close we have to undertake a task of an opposite nature: the survey of its decay. Does this take place at haphazard, varying from one man to another? or does it follow a regular and ascertainable course? Is it reducible to any formula which can be referred to a law?

The law of decay, in psychology, consists in a continuous retrogression, descending from the higher to the lower, from the complex to the simple, from the unstable to the stable, from the most to the least organised; in other words, those manifestations which are the latest in date of evolution are the first to disappear; while those which were the first to appear are the last to vanish. Evolution and decay follow opposite courses.

I have already shown that the slow and continuous disappearance of memory verifies this formula, and, as a converse proof, that, in the rare cases where this faculty is recovered, the restoration proceeds, step by step, in the opposite direction, up the path previously descended. The methodical process of decay is still better seen in motor psychology. I may perhaps be permitted, by way of elucidation and preparation, to recapitulate briefly what I have detailed at greater length elsewhere: motor retrogression in the well-known case of drunkenness. There is, first, a period of excitement, even of exuberant spirits, which is the very antithesis of reflection; that is to say that attention under its highest form, as the result of a motor convergence, can no longer exist. Next, a man can no longer control his tongue, he tells all his secrets; the will, under its higher, inhibitory form, has disappeared. After this, he becomes incapable of any continuous plan or action: the will, even under its lower or impulsive form, remains powerless. Then the most delicate voluntary movements, those of speech and of the hands, cease to be coordinated. One degree lower, he loses the semi-automatic movements, those of walking: he staggers and loses his balance. Still lower, the muscular tonicity is weakened, he falls from his seat under the table; then the reflex movements are abolished; and finally, if the condition is continued long enough, there is cessation of the automatic movements—those of respiration and of the heart. Here is a well-marked, easily determinable retrograde process, the psychological function of the movements being comparatively simple.

The object of this chapter is to prove that the disappearance of feelings, when it takes place gradually and continuously, in consequence of age or of some slowly evolved malady (general paralysis, senile dementia, etc.), conforms to the same law. But, by reason of the complexity of the affective life, the question presents some difficulties which we must first of all point out.

The first is this: May not affective retrogression be simply the consequence of an intellectual retrogression? or must we take it as primary, independent, and self-determined, not secondary and consequent upon the decay of intellect? Or else—and this view appears to me the most probable—do both cases occur? It is impossible to give a categorical answer; the two elements, the intellectual and the affective, being closely associated. Yet, as retrogression is irremediable and results from organic decay or waste, the presumption is rather in favour of a gradual extinction of the tendencies.

The second difficulty is at least equally important. We have admitted that in every normal person all the primary tendencies exist; but their coexistence does not imply their equality. Experience proves this. The individual character results from the preponderance of one or more tendencies: the æsthetic or the sexual, the moral or the religious; one man is constitutionally timid, and another choleric. It follows from this that all cases of retrogression are not strictly comparable with one another; for it is evident that the dominant tendency is better able than the rest to withstand shocks and assaults, and to resist destructive action. This, in my opinion, explains how it is that—as in a case mentioned below—the æsthetic sentiment, one of the most delicate and latest in formation, is of very late extinction in an artist. This apparent exception is, in fact, a confirmation of the law.

The ideal case for illustrating our subject would be this: An average man, all of whose tendencies are nearly equipollent, is struck down by a disease involving slow retrogression, so that the order in which the feelings are weakened and extinguished can be noted; then the decadence stops short, and is followed by a restoration of the affective life, which can be followed, step by step, in its gradual ascent, so as to ascertain whether it is or is not the repetition, in reversed order, of the period of dissolution. The search for such a case, however, would be no less than the pursuit of a chimera. The only practical method would be to collect a great number of observations on different patients, and thus draw up a schematic table of decay, analogous to Galton’s composite photographs—formed by the accumulation of resemblances and the elimination of individual differences. This is what I shall try to do, as far as the extreme scarcity of material and the difficulties of an unexplored subject will permit. I shall first examine dissolution properly so called; then, by way of converse proof, the arrest of development.

I.

As the decay of the feelings progresses from the higher to the lower, from complex adaptation to simple adaptation, gradually narrowing the area of the affective life, we may, in this decadence, distinguish four phases, marked by the successive disappearance of (1) the disinterested emotions, (2) the altruistic emotions, (3) the ego-altruistic emotions, and (4) the purely egoistic emotions.

(1.) I class under the first head the æsthetic emotions and the higher forms of intellectual emotions, which aim at no practical or utilitarian end, but are luxuries, not necessaries of life. Æsthetic and scientific cravings are so slightly marked, and so far from imperative in the majority of men, that it is impossible to demonstrate with certainty that they are the first to disappear; but it may be indirectly inferred.

It cannot be denied that those who have a passion for art or science, and for whom these are necessary conditions of life, are extremely rare compared with those who are moved or possessed by love, the desire for riches, or ambition. In the mass of men the æsthetic and intellectual feelings remain in a rudimentary condition, or attain only a slight, at most a medium development, and it cannot be said with certainty when they become extinct, seeing they have never really existed. Compared with the higher forms, they resemble a case of arrested development, i.e., of retrogression; and this arrest of development is the rule, as it must be for all tendencies beyond the bounds of the mere necessities of life.

To this negative proof I may add other positive proofs.

Age and diseases whose effect is retrogressive diminish, if they do not annihilate, zeal, enthusiasm, the impulse towards creation, discovery, or the simple enjoyment of art, and the curiosity which is always on the alert. I omit some very rare exceptions, each of which would require individual examination. In the majority of men weakened vitality at once destroys all taste for the superfluous.

We must also note the decided hostility to all innovations—new forms of art, new discoveries, new ways of stating or treating scientific questions—which comes on with old age. The fact is so well known as to make proof unnecessary. As a general thing, in art especially, every generation rejects that which follows it. The usual explanation of this “misoneism” is that there is a fixed cerebral constitution, organised intellectual habits. Yes—but if the proposed new scientific or artistic ideal caused a true, deep, intense emotion, it would break down and sweep away the barriers of habit. There would be a shock, a turning upside down, a conversion. Cases of a rupture with the artistic or scientific past sometimes occur, but rarely, as they presuppose the possibility of a violent shock and the revival of an imperious passion, but turned in another direction. This repulsion for novelty is rather of emotional than of intellectual origin; it is a sign of the weakening of the affective life, and of a tendency towards diminished effort, repose, inertia.

(2.) The altruistic feelings (social and moral emotions) having a practical value, and being reckoned among the conditions of human existence, it is much easier to fix the moment of their partial or total decay. Now, the preceding groups apart, they are the first to disappear. They may have been altered or extinct for a long period, while the ego-altruistic, and still more the egoistic tendencies, are still intact. We have seen, again and again, how quickly persons become unsociable and ungovernable through dementia, general paralysis, melancholia, epilepsy, hysteria, shock, and injuries to the head.

But their retrogression takes place by gradations to be determined by observation alone.^[254]

In the following cases intellectual retrogression seems to precede and determine the affective evolution:—

Case 3. "D——, a general paralytic, on his admission into the asylum, is fond of talking of the 3000 francs he has invested; he is much occupied with the dividends and coupons now due which he ought to have received. On inquiries being made all this was found to be accurate. He had, therefore, a tolerably clear idea of property, since this idea was suggested by the image of certain papers representing the values involved. At a later period, when spoken to about his 3000 francs, he had forgotten everything and did not understand. When reminded of what he had himself said, and that he possessed the values guaranteed by the receipts, he understood no more than before. But D—— carries money about with him, and knows very well how much he has at the time. ‘For ten centimes,’ he says, ‘I can have a cup of coffee every day, and I have three francs.’ The sight of a white, shining metal is sufficient to awaken in him the idea of possession represented by the pleasure to be bought with it." Three months later he no longer understands even this third degree of possession: possession with him means having something to eat; the piece of bread which he is holding in his hand and greedily devouring is the only thing he cannot be induced to give up.

Case 4. "M——, formerly employed in the octroi; paralytic dementia. During the first few days after his admission he gave himself up to political divagations, spoke much of universal suffrage, and especially of liberty. When asked for a definition of this word he gave the following explanation: ‘Liberty is the right to do what one wishes.’ A short time after this he ceased to make speeches and seemed to collapse. He was no longer capable of giving his definition, or of understanding it; when pressed with questions he said at last, ‘Liberty is being able to walk about in the yard.’ The abstract idea is replaced by a concrete idea indicating an assemblage of movements. Later still, a few days before his death, he answered the same question with, ‘Being free is when any one is in bed; I shall be free when I am in bed.’ The idea of liberty, therefore, was at last confused in his mind with that of a vague state of comfort."

These observations show how the group of altruistic sentiments dissolves piecemeal, and the affective sphere narrows itself more and more. The first to disappear are the vaguest and weakest of all the forms of benevolence—those embracing the whole human race; then the family emotions, which are more stable, more restricted, more frequently repeated; finally, there is absolute indifference to every one.^[255]

(3.) The ego-altruistic emotions (to employ H. Spencer’s terminology) form a group whose limits are vague, floating, and indecisive. It is even uncertain whether it exists as a distinct group or simply corresponds to a particular “moment” in the evolution of complex emotions. Without arguing this point, or attaching any importance to it, I employ this formula, because it is a convenient one in following step by step the retrogression from pure altruism to pure egoism.

Sexual love is a fairly good representative of the group. Need we say that, appearing later than the other instincts, it disappears before them, thus being in strict conformity with the law of retrogression. It does not belong to childhood, but neither does it to old age. We must eliminate the survivals and simulacra, which are only a factitious product of imagination; we are dealing with the tendency under its normal and complete form, with all its physiological and psychological conditions.

The religious sentiment in its medium forms, neither too coarse nor too subtle, belongs also to this category, plunging its roots deeply into the individual, but in order to rise beyond him. Of its two constituent elements, love tends towards the dispossession of the individual; the other, fear, towards strict egoism; with retrogression, the latter becomes exclusive. The believer, especially in the melancholic state, at first complains of being wanting in pity, fervour, love of God; he no longer finds consolation in prayer. Thus, as decadence increases, or simply in consequence of age and the approach of death, the egoistic anxiety about personal salvation becomes imperious. This was the time of life when the kings, princes, and lords of the Middle Ages multiplied pious foundations—monasteries, churches, and hospitals; and the same thing still takes place, in our own day, in religions which admit of the efficacy of works in purchasing salvation, and of prayers for the dead. The religious feeling thus comes back to fear, its primary form in evolution. We might also note the frequent survival of observances and rites when the true feeling has disappeared, i.e., the solidity of the organic and automatic element. In a retrograding religion, dogma dissolves before outward acts of worship, which, as we have seen, is the inversion of the evolutionary process.

Ambition is the type of the higher form of egoism; but as it must take into account the nature of other men and employ them in carrying out its designs, it is a modified form of egoism. We know how tenacious and durable is this passion in its numerous forms—the pursuit of power, honour, renown, riches; in it we have a foretaste of the stability of egoism after the ruin of all other tendencies. It disappears when the stage is reached when man sincerely declares himself disgusted with everything, and speaks like the author of Ecclesiastes. The greatest of the Cordovan Caliphs, Abderrhaman III., who noted down the principal events of this life, wrote: “I have reigned fifty years in peace and in war, loved by my people, feared by my enemies, respected by my allies, seeing my friendship sought for by the greatest kings on earth. Nothing have I lacked that the heart of man could desire—neither glory, nor power, nor pleasures. Yet, having counted the days in this long life in which I enjoyed unalloyed happiness, I found that there were fourteen.” But this contempt for human interests comes late, and springs rather from weakness than from wisdom. Men renounce the world, not so much because they have weighed it and estimated it at its true value, as because they no longer have the courage to conquer or keep it. Except in the case of philosophers, the disappearance of all ambition is the first symptom of the decadence of the egoistic tendencies: it indicates weariness, exhaustion, and a want of faith in one’s self.

(4.) The last group, that of the strictly egoistic feelings, the most general and most firmly organised of all, is the last to disappear. The threefold group formed by the offensive instinct (anger), the defensive instincts (fear), and the nutritive cravings, persists in men and animals up to the farthest limit of consciousness. We know that anger makes its appearance later than fear; does it vanish earlier? I have no data to enable me to reply to this question. What is certain is that the affective states associated with nutrition last to the end, and that all remaining activity is concentrated in them, as shown by the cases above quoted. The fact, moreover, is so well known that there is no need to dwell on it.

II.

We have just seen how the process of decay, beginning at the top of the building, gradually destroys all its storeys, one after another, as it descends to the foundations. It would be interesting to ascertain whether the work of restoration would follow, as it ought, the inverse order; but, when decay has fully accomplished its task, all is over, without hope of recovery. We only meet with partial and fragmentary cases of restoration. In the absence of this converse proof we may proceed from below upwards, not to retrace the normal evolution of the affective life, which has already been done, but to consider the cases in which this evolution remains in a rudimentary state, or becomes abortive at various stages of its ascending progress, i.e., in idiots, imbeciles, feeble-minded persons, human beings of incomplete development.

In the lowest stage, that of the complete idiot, all instincts are wanting, even that of nutrition. In infancy idiots only learn to take the breast with difficulty. At a more advanced age, there are some who feel neither hunger nor thirst; the sight of food fails to awaken them from their torpor, and without the help of others they would perish of inanition. Ordinary cases, on a higher level than this, show unbounded voracity. Idiots may be capable of feeling nothing but the nutritive cravings, and giving no signs of pleasure or pain except inarticulate growls, shrill cries, or strident laughter.

The complete idiot shows no sign of fear; he cannot fear, because he feels and comprehends nothing. Those less devoid of sensibility dread punishment, especially blows.

With regard to anger, there are the apathetic and insensible, and, above them, in imbeciles, fits of bestial rage, with convulsions, suffocations, violent impulses, and destructive cravings.

Those who pass the purely egoistic stage and do not remain totally indifferent to those about them, show a vague and transient affection for the person who takes care of them. Others, less destitute, “seem amiable and affectionate, and we may compare these patients to the dog who fawns on those who caress him” (Schüle). The highest step attained by them, and that rarely, is a certain sense of injustice. Itard observed this in his famous “savage of the Aveyron,” whom he had purposely punished without cause.^[256] In short, the social and moral tendencies are rudimentary or non-existent.

With regard to the sex-instinct, it is either entirely absent or there are various perversions and unrestrained erethism.

Lastly, there are some who can rise to a rudimentary manifestation of the superfluous or disinterested feelings. The idiot, as a rule, does not play; he is self-centred, isolated, and has no surplus vitality to expend. That activity which seems to live on itself and costs no effort, but is a source of pleasure without fatigue, is almost, if not quite, unknown to him. Even when invited and induced to play, he does so with little enthusiasm. We find, however, a rudiment of artistic tendency in those who have some taste for drawing or music. We may note, in passing, that the musical faculty being, as we know, one of the first to appear, ought also to be one of the last to disappear.^[257] But all this is very poor and reduces itself to mere imitation, and even this natural and simple tendency is wanting among the lower grades of the feeble-minded.

Such, briefly, is the balance-sheet of the affective life in these disinherited ones. It is generally admitted that, in this abortive development, there are two main periods: the first lasting from birth till about the third or fourth year, when, if arrest of development takes place, the psychic state remains almost nil; the second, from the fourth year onwards, allows of a less scanty, but a discordant and perverted psychology. In both cases, the evolution, however incomplete, reproduces in all its stages the contrary order to that of decay.

It will be necessary, in concluding this study of decay, to say a few words about a doctrine, much used and abused in these days, and often alluded to in the course of this work, which stands in direct relation to the pathology of the feelings, and, in short, permits us to return some sort of answer to the question put at the beginning of this chapter: the Theory of Degeneration.

When we review the abnormal or morbid forms of the affective life: destructive impulses, phobias, incurable melancholy, sexual perversions, failure of the moral sense, insanity of doubt, etc., and seek their causes, we at once find some which are proximate or immediate. Among the most frequent are physical maladies, injuries to the head, sudden shocks, as in railway accidents; sorrow, whatever its origin, whether love, ambition, ruin, separation; intellectual overwork, and excesses of all sorts. A little reflection, however, shows us that the alleged causes are not the whole cause—that, in fact, they are often, rather, accidental and occasional. One man bears courageously or even cheerfully a loss under which his neighbour succumbs. Many are able to give themselves up with impunity to excesses of pleasure or work, physical or mental. Of the passengers in the same train, at the time of an accident, the greater number will suffer nothing worse than fright, while one perhaps may on this account become insane, or permanently subject to phobias. To explain this difference of results under identical conditions, we must seek a supplementary cause in the constitution of the individual himself. When he offers only a slight resistance, and succumbs to the least shock, we say that he is a degenerate.

The conception of degenerescence as a fundamental cause is due, as every one knows, to Morel, and has flourished famously since his day. Unfortunately, it has been called in to account for occurrences so numerous and so dissimilar that, in the end, it has brought down on itself the suspicions of some writers, who have recently stigmatised it as a “metaphysical,” i.e., vague and transcendental explanation. In fact, different writers seem to understand by this word totally different things. The original propounder of the doctrine had a clear if not a correct notion of degenerescence. “The clearest idea,” says Morel, “which we can form of human degenerescence is by representing it to ourselves as a morbid deviation from a primitive type. This deviation, however simple we may suppose it at its origin, nevertheless contains such elements of transmissibility that he who carries its germ in himself becomes more and more incapable of performing his functions as a member of the human race, and progress, already impaired in his person, is threatened in those of his descendants.... Degenerescence and morbid deviation from the normal type of humanity are therefore, in my idea, one and the same thing.” This is quite clear. Morel, as a Christian, believed in a typical man, perfect as he came from the hands of the Creator: such a belief simplifies many things. This position has been given up. At present, we understand by degenerescence, a morbid predisposition, having its peculiar signs, its physical and psychical “stigmata.”

The physical stigmata, which have been enumerated at great length by specialist writers, consist in anomalies of the skeleton, the muscular and the digestive system, of the respiratory, circulatory, and genito-urinary apparatus, of the skin, the special sense-organs, of speech, and especially of the central and peripheral nervous system. The detailed lists contain about sixty items.

The psychic stigmata are more vaguely defined. The principal are: irritability, showing itself in a marked disproportion between action and reaction; instability of character, absence of unity, of consent, incessant changes, eccentric conduct, painful haunting by fixed ideas, irresistible impulses, or extraordinary apathy.

It has been objected to this doctrine that, of a thousand individuals taken at random, there is perhaps not a single one who does not show one or more of the stigmata, so that the whole human race would be included in the alleged class of degenerates. No stigma, it has been said, is specific by itself; neither is any group of symptoms, at least in a clear and indisputable form; so that one can come to no conclusion from them.

This and other difficulties have supplied matter for many discussions, into which this is not the place to enter. Degenerescence, whatever its value as an explanation, and the abuse to which it has been subjected, is not a mere word; it expresses a reality: it sums up in itself a number of characters. This is sufficient for us, and allows us to eliminate one hypothesis: that the decay of the feelings is necessarily dependent on intellectual decay.

To say truth, the question stated above: Is the retrogression of the feelings a primary, and that of ideas a secondary fact? or the contrary? is, under this form, somewhat factitious. It is only by analytical artifice that we separate thought and feeling, which, by their nature, are closely connected. The law of retrogression is generally valid in biology, and probably also in psychology; it does not act on isolated points, it gradually surrounds and saps the whole building, no matter on what side it begins. It is clear that all weakening of the intellect, such as that produced by old age and disease (difficulty in understanding general ideas, loss of certain groups of recollections, etc.), involves the disappearance of the corresponding affective states: one of the observations already quoted (Case B.) is an instance in point. But we must not thence conclude that the retrogression of the affective life is, by right, always subordinated to that of knowledge. Most cases of degenerescence prove the contrary; it is essentially an organic decadence, a state of physiological poverty, showing itself first of all by alterations in the range of the emotions, tendencies, actions, and movements. The intellect, for its part, is better able to stand the shock, and sometimes remains uninjured. More than this, the adherents of this doctrine have shown that the degenerate are sometimes endowed with brilliant intellectual faculties; while some have even maintained that degenerescence is a necessary condition of high mental originality (“genius a neurosis,” etc).

Apart from all exaggeration, the mass of facts permits us to make the induction that decadence is primarily (not exclusively) that of the affective tendencies and manifestations, since it is on them that degenerescence (taking the word in its least vague sense) first and principally acts.

The place of the feelings in psychic life—They come first—Physiological proofs—Psychological proofs.

Through the multiple aspects of our subject and the diversity of questions we have dealt with, the fundamental idea of this book has been to show that the foundation of the affective life is appetite or its contrary—that is to say, movement or arrest of movement; that at its root it is an impulse, a tendency, an act in the nascent or complete state, independent of intelligence, which has nothing to do with it and may not even be present. It is unnecessary to inflict upon the reader any new variations on a theme so often repeated. I only desire, in conclusion, to add some remarks on the place of the feelings in the total psychic life, and to show that that place is the first.

This statement must be made precise. To compare “sensibility” and “intelligence,” as some authors have done, to see which of these two “faculties” is inferior to the other, is an artificial and unreasonable task, since there is no common measure of the two, and there can be no solution of the question which is not arbitrary. But we may proceed objectively, and ask if the one is not primary and the other secondary, if the one is not grafted on the other, and in that case which is the stock and which the graft. If the feelings appear first it is clear that they cannot be derived, and are not a mode or function of knowledge, since they exist by themselves and are irreducible.

Thus stated the question is simple and the reply evident.

The physiological evidence in favour of the priority of the feelings need only be briefly recalled; it all centres in one point: organic vegetative life always and everywhere appears before animal life; physiologists constantly repeat that the animal is grafted on the vegetable which precedes him. Now organic life is directly expressed by the needs and appetites, which are the stuff of the affective life; animal life by the sensations, the stuff of the intellectual life. The primordial part played by organic sensibility has been shown in the Introduction. We may remember also the myriads of animals which are only bundles of needs, their psychology consisting in the search for food, in defence, and in propagation; their senses (often reduced to touch alone) are only tools, coarse instruments, teleological weapons in the service of their needs; but closed in as they may be from the external world, appetite in them is not less intense. Even in man is not fœtal life, and that of the first months after birth, much the same, almost wholly made up of satisfied or unsatisfied needs, and consequently of pleasures and pains? From the purely physiological point of view, knowledge appears not as a mistress but as a servant.

The psychological evidence is not difficult to supply, and has indeed already been presented by Schopenhauer in so brilliant and complete a manner that it would be a bold task to present it afresh. The chapter entitled “The Primacy of Will in Self-Consciousness”^[258] is a long argument in favour of the priority of impulse over knowledge. We need not be duped by the equivocal use of the word “will,” since for Schopenhauer “to will is to desire, to aspire, to flee, to hope, to fear, to love, to hate; in a word, all that directly constitutes our good and our ill, our pleasure and our pain.” Nor need we occupy ourselves with his metaphysics nor his antiquated physiology, nor his personal hatred of intelligence, which he treats as an enemy and usurper, “because all the philosophers up to to-day have made it the intimate primitive essence of their so-called soul;” and having made these eliminations we may find many of his pages full of penetrating and consummate psychology. I recall his chief arguments.

Will (in the sense above indicated) is universal. The basis of consciousness in every animal is desire. This fundamental fact is translated into the impulse to preserve life and well-being, and to propagate. This foundation is common to the polypus and to man. The differences among animals are due to a difference in knowledge; as we descend in the series intelligence becomes weaker and more imperfect; there is no similar degradation in will (or desire); the smallest insect wills what it wills as fully as man; will is everywhere equal to itself. Relatively to intelligence it is the robust blind man carrying on his shoulders the paralytic who sees clearly.

It is fundamental. The will to live, with the horror of death which results from it, is a fact anterior to all intelligence and independent of it. In it is the basis of identity and of character; “the man is hidden in the heart and not in the head.” It is the source and the bond of all stable associations, religious, political, or professional. It makes the strength of party spirit, of sects, and of factions. Compare the fragility of friendships founded on similarity of intelligence with those that spring from the heart. Thus religions have had every reason to promise eternal recompense to man’s moral qualities, and not to the gifts of the mind.

Its power is sovereign. It is not reason which uses passion, it is passion which uses reason to reach its ends. Under the influence of intense desire, the intellect sometimes rises to a degree of vigour of which none would believe it capable. Desire, love, fear render the most obtuse understanding lucid. And besides, if will and intelligence were identical in nature, their development would proceed side by side, whereas nothing is more frequent than a great intellect united to an inferior character, and “we sometimes find violent desires, impassioned and impetuous impulses, joined to a feeble intellect, that is to say a small brain badly enclosed in a thick skull.”

Memory, which is commonly considered a purely intellectual phenomenon, often depends—as we have seen—on the state of the feelings. This had not escaped Schopenhauer. “Even a weak memory sometimes retains perfectly what concerns the passion dominant at the moment; the lover never forgets a favourable opportunity, the ambitious nothing that serves their projects; the miser never forgets his losses, nor the proud man a wound to his honour; the vain remember every word of praise and every distinction they receive.... That is what might be called the heart’s memory, more intimate than the mind’s.”

How is it that facts of common observation, so clear and so numerous, requiring for their discovery neither experiment nor special research, nor even long reflection, have been so generally misunderstood; and that the contrary opinion has always predominated, reducing the manifestations of feeling to “qualities of sensation,” to “confused intelligence,” and other oft-repeated formulas? The only reason I can find is that during centuries this subject has been treated philosophically, not psychologically, and the method of philosophy is necessarily intellectualist. Only the adult and complex forms of the affective life were considered, without regard to their evolution, which alone brings us to their origin. The parts played by movements as psychological factors, and by unconscious activity, were forgotten or misunderstood. Pleasures and pains in their manifold forms were regarded as the essential phenomena in place of the hidden springs which give rise to them.

To sum up, the psychology of the emotions has its point of departure in those complex feelings which daily life brings beneath our eyes every moment. Their complexity is the work of our intellectual nature, which associates and dissociates, mixing and combining perceptions, images, ideas, each of which, in so far as it relates to the individual or social conditions of existence, to the physiological needs, to the offensive and defensive instinct of conservation, to the social, moral, religious, æsthetic, and scientific tendencies, produces in the organism variable effects which, translated into consciousness, impart an affective tone to intellectual states. Analysis shows that these complex forms are reducible to a few simple emotions. The simple emotion itself is a complexus made up of impulses, that is of motor elements, and agreeable, painful, or mixed states of consciousness; these two factors form a whole apparently indissoluble. Finally, the fundamental motor or dynamic element manifests itself under two forms: conscious impulses or desires, unconscious impulses or appetites; there is identity of nature, the first possessing consciousness in addition. Hence for the desires (the psychological form), thanks to consciousness, there is the possibility of manifold adaptations and indefinite plasticity. Hence for the appetites (the physiological form) there is stability, fixity, automatism, the absence of invention, and of that state of indecision arising simultaneously with consciousness.

If we include all the primitive conscious impulses beneath the name of desire (or its opposite, aversion), we find two apparently contradictory theses concerning its origin. According to one, desire is a primitive phenomenon, anterior on the one hand to all knowledge, and on the other to all experience of pleasure or pain. According to the other, desire is a secondary phenomenon, the anticipation of a known pleasure to seek for, a known pain to avoid; the latter counts most partisans, and is also condensed into well-known axiomatic sayings and formulas: “We cannot desire what we do not know,” “We can only desire what seems to be for our advantage,” “Desire is founded on a proved pleasure.” Both theses are true, each for a separate moment, and the first alone relates to the question of origin.

At the first moment desire is anterior to all experience, to every consideration of pleasure or of pain; it acts as a blind force; it is a vis a tergo, a propulsion only explicable by the physical and mental organism. It must necessarily act at once without knowing whither it goes, else it would act too late or not at all.

At the second moment, it is guided by experience and rests on proved pleasure or pain, seeking one and avoiding the other. It is to this moment that the sayings above quoted apply. That is the final form, and it embraces the immense majority of cases. Even in the adult, however, we have noted examples of vague desire, without object or determined aim.

Blind impulse, when it reaches its end, finds its satisfaction there, and seeks it anew because it is pleasant. But the pleasant and the unpleasant are relative qualities, varying in individuals, and at different moments in the same individual. If the physical and mental organisation changes, the impulses, the position of pleasure and pain change also; pathology furnishes us with unquestionable proof.

Impulse, therefore, is the primordial fact in the life of the feelings, and I cannot better conclude than by borrowing from Spinoza a passage which sums up the whole spirit of this book: “Appetite is the very essence of man, from which necessarily flow all those things which seem to preserve him.... Between appetite and desire there is no difference, save that desire is self-conscious appetite. It follows from all this that we desire and follow after nothing because we deem it to be good, but on the contrary deem that to be good which we desire and follow after.”^[259]