The Psychology of Emotions, by Th. Ribot.

1. It may be doubted whether all the English writers here mentioned can be strictly classed with the physiological school as understood by M. Ribot. With regard to Mr. Spencer, for instance, this is indicated by a brief summary of his own position in a private letter to the Rev. Angus Mackay, who had presented a statement of the “confused intelligence” theory, “which I conceive to be a part of the truth,” wrote Mr. Spencer, adding that “joined with the dimly aroused association of ideas derived from the experiences of the individual, I hold that the body of the emotion consists more largely of the inherited associations of experiences and still more vague states of consciousness which result from excitement of them.” It is clear that the evolutionary view does not necessarily fall wholly into the “physiological” group.—Ed.

2. “La sensibilité dans le règne animal et le règne végétal”, (1876, in Science expérimentale, pp. 218 et seq.).

3. “Ein rein emotionneller Bewusstseinszustand kommt nicht vor; Lust und Unlust sind stets an intellektuelle Zustände geknüpft,” Die Hauptgesetze der menschlichen Gefühlslebens (1892), p. 16.

4. Das Körperliche Gefühl (1887), pp. 80, 81.

5. For observations relative to this point see Revue Philosophique, March 1896.

6. Descartes is a brilliant exception to this method of procedure; later on we shall have to consider his method (Part II., Chapter vii.).

7. Darwin, “Biographical Sketch of an Infant,” Mind, ii. p. 285.

8. It is probable that the dates assigned for the first appearance of emotional manifestations by Darwin, Preyer, Perez, etc., are mostly too late, as they were not the outcome of continuous observation. Mrs. Kathleen Carter Moore, in her recent elaborate monograph dealing with the early mental development of her own baby, whom she regards as an average infant, observed the tear secretion first on the tenth day, though it was not fully established until the sixteenth week; a smile when comfortable was seen on the sixth day; the child smiled several times consecutively at his father on the seventh day with movements of excitement, and by the twentieth day smiling at persons had become more frequent and more intelligent. (See K. C. Moore, “The Mental Development of a Child,” Monograph Supplement to the Psychological Review, 1896).—ED.

9. Höffding, Psychologie, pp. 392-394, second German edition. J. Sully, The Human Mind, vol. ii. p. 56, considers emotion as a genus of which affection and passion are the species: affection is a fixed emotional disposition; passion is the violent form of the emotion. Nothing can be vaguer and more uncertain than the terminology of our subject, and yet, as Wundt says in his Essays, it has made a very appreciable progress when compared to the confusion which existed at the beginning of the century.

10. Letourneau, Physiologie des Passions, liv. i. Chap. I.

11. “Pain is a powerful and prolonged vibration of the conscious nervous centres, resulting from a strong peripheral excitation, and consequently of a sudden change of condition in the nervous centres” (Richet). “It is the most violent stimulation of certain sensorial regions—a stimulation to which contribute the more extended stimulations of other regions” (Wundt).

12. Sensations internes, Chap. xx., may be read for details on this point.

13. Archiv für Anatomie und Physiol., 1885.

14. Goldscheider, Ueber den Schmerz, Berlin, 1894.

15. Lehmann, Die Hauptgesetze des menschlichen Gefühlslebens, pp. 46 et seq.

16. In his preface Sergi briefly indicates the “antecedents of his theory.” He finds it in the English anatomist Todd, in Hack Tuke, Laycock, Herbert Spencer, Brown-Séquard, etc. I may point out that Vulpian, relying on experiments of doubtful interpretation, localised the emotions exclusively in the medulla, Leçons sur l’Anatomie du système nerveux, xxiv.

17. Mantegazza, Fisiologia del Dolore, chap. iii.

18. For historical and other cases, see Hack Tuke, Influence of the Mind upon the Body, chap. iii.

19. For details of the experiments see Hauptgesetze, etc., pp. 77 et seq., with the accompanying graphic traces.

20. Pierre Janet, État Mental des Hystériques.

21. See especially Morel, Traité des Maladies Mentales (pp. 324 et seq.), for a summary of many curious facts.

22. Weir Mitchell (Medical Record, 24th December 1892, quoted by Strong, Psychological Review, 1895, vol. ii. p. 332) reports the following extraordinary case of natural analgesia: Man who died at age of fifty-six, cheerful and corpulent, weighing some 250 pounds; intelligent, and vigorous both in body and mind, with a considerable reputation as a lawyer and politician. Having a finger wounded in a crush during a political campaign, he removed it himself by biting it off and spitting it on to the ground. He had an ulcer on the toe which resisted treatment for three years without ever causing him the slightest pain. He also had an abscess in the hand which spread to the fore-arm and arm, causing enormous swelling and endangering his life; the lancet was used without precaution, and throughout he felt no pain. It was the same with an operation for cataract on both eyes; he remained motionless as a statue. It was only during his last illness that he complained of some pain, but that quickly passed away, and he had returned to his state of natural insensibility before he died.

23. Richet, Recherches expérimentales et cliniques sur la Sensibilité, pp. 258, 259.

24. See on this point Lehmann’s embarrassed explanation, Hauptgesetze, etc., pp. 51 et seq.

25. Richet (op. cit., pp. 289, 290 and 315, 316) gives many illustrations.

26. Pitres, Leçons Cliniques sur l’Hystérie, i. p. 182.

27. The debates on this subject have chiefly been carried on by American psychologists. See Rutgers Marshall, Pain, Pleasure, and Æsthetics (1895); Nichols, “Origin of Pleasure and of Pain” (Philosophical Review, i. pp. 403 and 518); Strong, “Psychology of Pain” (Psychological Review, July 1895, and for criticisms and replies, Sept. and Nov. 1895, Jan. 1896); Luckey, “Some Recent Studies of Pain” (Am. Journal of Psychology, Oct. 1895).

28. Schmerz. und Temperaturempfindung, Berlin, 1893.

29. Hartmann alone, so far as I am aware, has dealt with this point, incidentally but very clearly: “When I have pain in my teeth or my finger or my stomach; when I lose my wife, my friend, or my situation, if in all these cases we distinguish what is pain and pain alone, and not to be confounded with perception, idea, or thought, we shall recognise that this special element is identical in all the cases.”—Philosophie des Unbewussten, vol. i., Part II., chap. iii.

30. Hahnemann distinguished 73 kinds of physical pain, Georget 38, Renaudin 12, etc. I give these numbers as curiosities. More recently Goldscheider (Ueber den Schmerz) establishes three stages in physical pain: (1) true, real (echte) pains; they depend on the nerves of special sensibility, and are caused by mechanical, thermal, or chemical stimulations, by inflammation and poisons; (2) indirect pains, pseudo-pains, which consist especially in a state of discomfort (Schmerzweh); in the case of the head, stomach, etc., they may be as oppressive and cause as much torture as “real” pains; (3) psychic or ideal (ideel) pains, which are a hyperæsthesia of the sensitive activity; they are met with in neuroses (neurasthenia, hysteria, hypochondria), in hallucinations, the hypnotic state, etc. This classification is perhaps acceptable in physiology. For psychology, every pain, in virtue of being a fact of consciousness, is “true” and “real.”

31. Beaunis, Sensations internes, chap. xxiii.

32. Fisiologia del piacere, Part II., chap. ii. He enumerates the following expressions:—Gusto, diletto, compiacenza, soddisfazione, conforto, contentezza, allegria, buon umore, gioia, giubilo, tripudio, delizia, voluttà, felicità, solletico, rapimento, trasporto, ebbrezza, delirio. Perhaps the Italian language is in this point richer than the German.

33. This thesis has been principally maintained in America by H. Nichols (Philosophical Review, July 1892), and in France by Bourdon (Revue Philosophique, September 1893). The former applies it to pleasure and pain, considering them fundamental sensations as distinct from one another as they are from other sensations. This article contains some ingenious considerations on the part played by the association of ideas. Bourdon applies it only to pleasure, and considers pain irreducible. He regards pleasure as a special sensation, not a common one or an attribute of all sensations; it is “of the same nature as the special sensation of tickling.” By adducing the pleasure of tickling (in which he follows Descartes and others), Bourdon partially escapes the criticism already advanced. It must be remarked, however, that tickling is itself a sensation of which the organic conditions are very vaguely determined. Besides the cutaneous impression, there are certainly also diffused reflex actions which connect it quite as much with internal sensibility as with the sense of touch.

34. Dr. G. Dumas has made experiments on the condition of the circulation in states of joy and of sadness. He has attempted an experimental verification of Lange’s theory by showing that a definite condition of the circulation always accompanies various agreeable and painful emotions, and that “joy and sadness may thus be regarded as the mental reverberation of these circulatory conditions and their organic consequences.” See “Recherches expérimentales sur la Joie et la Tristesse,” Revue Philosophique, June-August 1896.—Ed.

35. Richet, Recherches, etc., p. 212.

36. Lewes, Physical Basis of Mind, p. 327.

37. For further details on this point see Chapter VII.

38. Féré, Sensation et Mouvement, pp. 62, 63.

39. This also seems to be the view adopted by Rutgers Marshall (op. cit.). In the first place, he always considers “pleasure-pains” as connected states, pleasure being experienced “whenever the physical activity coincident with the psychic state to which the pleasure is attached involves the use of surplus stored force—the resolution of surplus potential into actual energy; or, in other words, whenever the energy involved in the reaction to a stimulus is greater in amount than the energy which the stimulus habitually calls forth.”—P. 204.

40. Beaunis, Sensations internes, pp. 246, 247.

41. Féré, Pathologie des Émotions, p. 223.

42. Bouillier, Du plaisir et de la douleur, chap. vii.

43. Mantegazza, Fisiologia del piacere, p. 26.

44. A curious study of pathological psychology might be founded on the De Vila Propria of Cardan, who was evidently what would now be called a neuropath and a déséquilibré.

45. Principles of Psychology, ii., § 518.

46. Krafft-Ebing remarks: “An abnormal mode of feeling on the part of melancholic patients is found in the enjoyment of pain (Leidseligkeit). In these individuals, ideas which, in a healthy slate, would be provocative of pain, awaken in the diseased consciousness a faint feeling of satisfaction which represents the corresponding affective tone.”

47. Pp. 170 et seq.

48. For some facts, which may or may not be well authenticated, see Féré, op. cit., p. 234.

49. Féré, Pathologie des Emotions, pp. 293, 294.

50. Schüle, Traité clinique des maladies mentales, Art. “Mélancolie” (French edition), pp. 21, 28.

51. G. Dumas, Les états intellectuels dans la mélancolie, where may be found several detailed observations.

52. Krafft-Ebing, op. cit., vol. ii., sec. 1, chap. i.

53. For a short historical summary of the question up to the middle of the nineteenth century, see Bouillier, Du plaisir et de la douleur, chap. xi.

54. See Mind, Oct. 1887, Jan. and April 1888, Jan. 1889; and J. Sully, The Human Mind, vol. ii. pp. 4, 5.

55. Psychologie physiologique, iv., ch. i., pp. 309 et seq. (French edition.)

56. Wundt, Grundzüge der physiol. Psychologie (4th German ed.), vol. i. pp. 557 et seq.; Lehmann, Hauptgesetze, etc., §§ 236-241. One of Wundt’s most distinguished pupils, Külpe, in his Umriss der Psychologie (1895), considers the existence of a state of indifference “can hardly be doubted in the face of a long series of observations which support it.” (English edition, p. 242.)

57. Fouillée, Psychologie des idées-forces, i. 68.

58. I give an instance of a similar character, narrated by a historian, from Arabic sources. "The Emir Mohammed (at Granada, in 1408), finding himself dying, and anxious to secure the throne to his son, sent orders for his brother Yussuf, whom he was keeping in captivity at Salobreña, to be put to death. The alcalde, when he received this order, was playing at chess with his prisoner, whose gentleness had gained the heart of his gaolers. On reading the fatal despatch he was troubled, and did not dare to communicate its contents to the prince. But Yussuf guessed from his confusion what was the matter, and said to the alcalde, ‘Is it my head that is asked of thee?’ The latter, for all answer, handed to him his brother’s letter. Yussuf asked only for a few hours’ delay, in order to take leave of his wife; but the messenger of death declared that the execution must take place at once, the hour of his return being fixed beforehand. ‘Well,’ replied Yussuf, ‘let us at least finish the game.’ But the alcalde was so distressed that he advanced his pawns at random, and Yussuf was obliged to inform him of his mistakes. However, the game was never finished. Some knights, riding from Granada at full gallop, saluted Yussuf as Emir, and announced to him the death of his brother. When thus passing from the scaffold to the throne the Mussulman prince remained master of himself, as he had been in the face of death. Still doubting his good fortune, he set out for Granada, where he was received by the people with cries of joy." (Rosseuw St.-Hilaire, Histoire d’Espagne, vol. v., p. 227.) Analogous traits are recorded of various historic personages.

59. For the historical summary, see Bouillier, op. cit., chap. xii.

60. "The first cry of the new-born infant was formerly considered anything rather than a reflex action. It is, however, very probable that this first vocal manifestation, accompanying an expiration, is a reflex pure and simple. Kant wrote (without, indeed, having himself observed new-born children or animals): ‘The cry uttered by the child just after birth has not the intonation of fear, but that of irritation or anger. It is not because it is suffering, but because something displeases it. No doubt it would like to move and feels its impotence, as it might feel a chain restricting its liberty. What could have been the object of Nature in making the infant born into the world utter cries which are in the highest degree dangerous? Yet no animal save man announces its existence, at the time of birth, by similar cries.’

"This remarkable conception has been much commented on, and widely adopted. At the present time many people still think that the crying of new-born infants has considerable psychic significance. But all comments of this kind are met by the objection that a totally anencephalous infant cries at birth, and that many healthy infants do not cry, but sneeze, on their entry into the world, as noted by Darwin....

"The reflexes of pains which, in later life, show themselves in the acutest manner, are those best developed in early life. Gunzmer’s observations on about sixty infants showed him that, during the first few days, they are almost insensible, and during the first week, very slightly sensitive, to the pricking of a needle.

“New-born infants have been, in the course of their first day, pricked with fine needles, on the nose, the upper lip, and the hand, deeply enough to draw a drop of blood; yet the child manifested no symptom of consciousness, and did not start once.”—Preyer, Seele des Kindes, pp. 177, 193.

61. Féré, Sensation et Mouvement, p. 64. This work is to be consulted for the details of the experiments about to be summarised.

62. Physiological Æsthetics, p. 21. This point has been well discussed by Lehmann (op. cit., pp. 205-208).

63. Pathologie des émotions, p. 226.

64. British Medical Journal, August 14, 1886, pp. 319 et seq. We shall see, later on, that the mechanism of anger is not so simple as Clouston seems to admit.

65. Principles of Psychology, vol. i., §§ 125, 126.

66. See Lehmann, op. cit., § 201; Höffding, Psychologie in Umrissen (2nd ed.), p. 380.

67. Freud und Leid des Menschengeschlechts (1883), pp. 35 et seq.

68. Lange’s book On the Emotions first appeared in Danish, and has been translated into German (1887) by Dr. Kurella, and into French (1895) by Dr. G. Dumas. W. James first explained his theory in an article in Mind (1884), and subsequently in his Principles of Psychology (1890), vol. ii. chap. xxv.

69. Since the publication of James’s book, Dr. Berkeley has reported, in Brain (iv. 1892), two cases of general anæsthesia, cutaneous and sensory: the subjects are apathetic, but the presence of shame, sorrow, surprise, fear, and repulsion (the last-named as a substitute for anger) has been observed. Dr. Sollier, in an article in the Revue Philosophique (March, 1894), has reported some experiments made on subjects in a profoundly hypnotic state, in whom the peripheral and visceral sensibility had been abolished by suggestion. He comes to the same conclusions as James and Lange.

70. Vide infra, part ii. chap. vii.

71. G. Le Bon, Psychologie des foules, pp. 46 et seq.

72. Wundt, Physiologische Psychologie, 4th (German) ed., chap. xx.; Külpe, Grundriss der Psychologie, p. 250 (English edition), § 38; Sully, Sensation and Intuition, Part II.; Grant Allen, Mind, July 1879 (“The Origin of the Sense of Symmetry”).

73. They will be found in Beauquier, Philosophie de la musique, p. 65.

74. For details on this point, Wallaschek’s interesting work on Primitive Music should be consulted.

75. Beauquier, op. cit., p. 56.

76. Gurney, in a criticism of James’s hypothesis (Mind, ix. 425), says: “There is plenty of music from which I have received as much emotion in silent representation” [i.e., by purely internal audition, or merely reading the notes] “as when presented by the finest orchestra; but it is with the latter condition that I almost exclusively associate the cutaneous tingling and hair-stirring.” Professor James has, in my opinion, answered this objection (Psychology, ii. pp. 469, 470), which I should be inclined to refer to the problem of the “revivability of impressions,” to be examined later on.

77. I may indicate, somewhat at random, the principal documents for this controversy: Wundt, Philosophische Studien, vi. 3, p. 349 (he criticises Lange only); Gurney, Mind, July 1884; Marshall, ib., October 1884; Stanley, ib., January 1886; Worcester, Monist, January 1893; Psychological Review, September and November 1894, January 1895, etc.

78. “Though written in the earliest days of modern science, this work will bear comparison with anything that has been produced in recent years. It will be difficult, indeed, to find any treatment of the emotions much superior to it in originality, thoroughness, and suggestiveness. The position maintained is similar to that now held by Professor James, but Descartes does not content himself with defending in a general way the assertion that emotion is caused by physical change. After coming to the conclusion that there are six passions from which all the others are derived, he attempts to show that a special set of organic effects is concerned in the production of each of these primary states.”—D. Irons in Philosophical Review, May 1895, p. 291.

79. “When any great passion causes all the physical and moral troubles which it will cause, what I conceive to happen is that a physical impression made on the sense of sight or of hearing is propagated along a physical path to the brain, and arouses a physical commotion in its molecules; that from this centre of commotion the liberated energy is propagated by physical paths to other parts of the brain; and that it is finally discharged outwardly through proper physical paths, either in movements or in modifications of secretion and nutrition. The passion that is felt is the subjective side of the cerebral commotion—its motion out from the physical basis, as it were (e-motion), into consciousness.”—Pathology of Mind, 1879, p. 222.

80. In his lectures on Hysteria (Vol. i., Lecture 21), Pitres incidentally inquires into the existence of encephalic centres of the affective states, and concludes that “the molecular changes corresponding to the activity of the cellular elements shaken by the passions, radiate in every direction, stimulate or depress the excitability of adjacent elements, rebound on the motor and sensitive centres, and on the originatory nuclei of the visceral nerves, and finally determine the state of emotion, i.e., the psycho-physiological state which is the special expression of the reaction of the nervous centres to psychic excitations.”

81. Op. cit., pp. 490, 491.

82. For further details see Claude Bernard, La science expérimentale, Étude sur la physiologie du cœur, 1865, and Cyon’s Address to the Academy of St. Petersburg, “The Heart and the Brain,” translated in the Revue Scientifique, November 22nd, 1873. Also, Mosso, Sulla circolazione del sangue nel cervello (1880), and La Paura (Fear, English translation, 1896).

83. Kröner, Das körperliche Gefühl (Breslau, 1887), pp. 102-112.

84. Bouchard, Leçons sur les auto-intoxications; Leçons sur les maladies par ralentissement de nutrition. Régis, Traité des maladies mentales, pp. 112, 415, 423, etc. Féré, Pathologie des émotions, pp. 264, 495 et seq.

85. Lavater (1741-1801), Essai sur la physionomie destiné à faire connaître l’homme et à le faire aimer; Charles Bell (1806), Anatomy and Philosophy of Expression; Duchenne (1862), Mécanisme de la physionomie humaine, ou analyse électro-physiologique de l’expression des passions. For ancient works on physiognomy, consult Mantegazza’s book on Physiognomy and Expression (Contemporary Science Series).

86. Duchenne has the following curious passage:—"The Creator, not being obliged to study mechanical requirements, was able, according to His wisdom or (if I may be pardoned for using this form of expression) by a Divine fantasy, to put in action this or that muscle—a single one, or several at once, when it was His will that the signs of the passions, even the most evanescent, should be temporarily inscribed on the human countenance. This physiognomic language once created, it was sufficient, in order to render it universal and immutable, to give to every human being the instinctive faculty of always expressing his feelings by the contraction of the same muscles." Thus, for this writer, the question remains within the region of first causes. He has ascertained a relation of coexistence between a determinate emotion and certain movements of the muscles, but without seeking the reason and the natural explanation of this nexus. We know that certain philosophers hold the theory of the Divine institution of language; this is its equivalent, being a theory of a divinely instituted gesture-language.

87. L. Dumont, Théorie scientifique de la sensibilité, chap. vi. p. 236. Fouillée, Psychologie des idées-forces, i. 467, admits Darwin’s principle, but interprets it in another way.

88. Principles of Psychology, vol. ii. p. 545.

89. Physiologische Psychologie, vol. ii. chap. xxii. He has also treated the question in a special collection of articles entitled Essays.

90. For a historical summary of these classifications, consult especially Sully, The Human Mind, vol. ii., Appendix F, p. 357, and Bain, Emotions, Appendix B.

91. Beaunis, Sensations internes, chap. xxi.

92. Bain, The Emotions and the Will, p. 76.

93. H. Spencer, Essays, vol. i. (Library Ed., 1891), pp. 241-264.

94. The Nervous System and the Mind (1888), pp. 279-364.

95. See Part II., chap. vii.

96. I see no reason for mentioning any authorities except H. Spencer, Principles of Psychology, i., §§ 69 and 96; Bain, Emotions, ch. v.; W. James, Psychology, ii. pp. 474, 475; Fouillée, Psychologie des Idées-forces; Höffding, Psychologie (3rd German edition), vi., B. 3; Lehmann, Hauptgesetze, pp. 261-263.

97. See Von Vintschgau, art. “Geruch” and “Geschmack” in Hermann’s Handbuch der Physiologie, vol. iii.; Gley, art. “Gustation”; François-Franck, art. “Olfaction” in the Dictionnaire encyclopédique des sciences médicales.

98. Hack Tuke, Influence of Mind upon the Body, p. 181, where other facts of the same kind may be found.

99. Galton, in a note entitled “Arithmetic by Smell,” has described an arrangement by means of which he convinced himself that some arithmetical operations can be carried out by the help of olfactory images, as is done by means of visual and auditory representations. He trains himself to regard two whiffs of peppermint as equivalent to one of camphor, and three of peppermint with one of carbolic acid; he performs small additions, and, later on, operates with images only (visual and auditory representations being excluded). For details, see Psychological Review, January 1894.