The Psychology of Emotions, by Th. Ribot.

104. A characteristic peculiar to emotional affective revivability is the slowness with which it develops and the time required. While the visual or auditory image may be called up instantaneously and at command, the emotional representation arises slowly. This is because it passes through two stages. The first (intellectual) consists in the evocation of conditions and circumstances—a toothache, a burn, a passion. Many do not get beyond this stage, and the concomitant emotional tone, accordingly, is faint, or even nil. The second or emotional stage adds to this the rise of states of excitement and exultation, or of dejection and lowered vitality. The latter requires organic conditions, a difference in the organism, an excitement of the motor, vascular, respiratory, secretory, and other centres.

105. This opinion will be discussed later on.

106. Psychology, ii. 474.

107. Mémoires, vol. i. p. 77. The italics are not in the original.

108. This has recently been experimentally demonstrated; the observations made by Dr. Toulouse (with the assistance of specialists) on M. Zola may be specially mentioned. In this case the coincidence of a somewhat low degree of sensory acuteness with a very high degree of delicacy and precision in revived sensory impression was found not only in the case of vision, but especially in that of smell. (Toulouse, Emile Zola: Enquête Médico Médico-psychologique, 1896, pp. 164, 173, 179, 206.)—Ed.

109. This chapter was first published in the Revue Philosophique for October 1894. It called forth some new communications, two only of which have been added to the original text. The affirmation of a type of affective memory has, as I expected, provoked both criticism and denial. My principal opponent, Prof. Titchener, has published on this subject a somewhat extensive article in the Philosophical Review (November 1895), in which he reproaches me with not having cited a single case of pure emotional memory—i.e., memory from which all sensory and ideational elements are absent, and where there is a revival of feeling as such. An example of this kind, which should be quite conclusive, seems to me almost impossible to produce. A pleasure, a pain, an emotion, are always associated with a sensation, a representation, or an act; revival necessarily bringing back the intellectual state which forms part of the complexus and supports it. But the real question is elsewhere: Is revival, in certain persons at least, a dry record, or a felt state? In this last case—and it does occur—there is the recollection of the emotional state as such.

There is another objection: Can it be said that an emotion is the reproduction of an antecedent emotion, and not a new emotion? The reproduction of an emotion can itself be nothing other than an emotion, but it bears the marks of repetition. Without returning to what has been said above, I remark that those contemporary psychologists, who study with admirable patience the mechanism of memory, neglect that of its most general conditions. Now the chief of these is that every recollection must be a reversion, by virtue of which, the past once more becoming a present, we live at present in the past. The recollection of an emotion as such does not escape the action of this law; it must become actual once more—must be a real emotion, whether acute or obtuse.

Taking account of the criticisms, and of the new material supplied to me, I may once again sum up my inquiry thus—

1. The emotional memory is nil in the majority of people.

2. In others there is a half intellectual, half emotional memory, i.e., the emotional elements are only revived partially and with difficulty, by the help of the intellectual states associated with them.

3. Others, and these the least numerous, have a true—i.e., complete—emotional memory; the intellectual element being only a means of revival which is rapidly effaced.

110. I may specially mention Horwicz, Psychologische Analysen, vol. i. pp. 160 et seq., 265-331, 369 et seq.; Fouillée, Psychologie des idées-forces, vol. i. pp. 221 et seq.; J. Sully, The Human Mind, vol. ii. pp. 76-80; Shadworth Hodgson, Time and Space, p. 266; W. James, Psychology, i. 571; Höffding, Psychologie (2nd ed.), p. 331.

111. Shadworth Hodgson, Time and Space, p. 266; quoted by W. James, i. 572.

112. Biographia Litteraria, chap. vii. p. 61 (Bohn’s ed.); quoted by James, i. 572.

113. A Chapter on some Organic Laws of Personal and Ancestral Memory, 1875.

114. Principles of Psychology, i., § 214.

115. Hauptgesetze, etc., pp. 268, 250-357; Sully, The Human Mind, ii. 78; cf. Outlines of Psychology, p. 349.

116. The Human Mind, ii. 79.

117. This point has been well treated by Lehmann, op. cit., p. 244.

118. The mechanism of the suppression of the presentative intermediary between the initial state A and the distant states O, II, I, etc., has been studied by J. Sully (ii. 79). I do not insist on this point, which belongs rather to the psychology of association than to that of the emotions.

119. Th. Flournoy, Des phénomènes de Synopsie (1893), p. 20.

120. Suarez de Mendoza, L’audition colorée (1890), pp. 58, 59.

121. Leçons cliniques sur l’hystérie et l’hypnotisme, vol. ii., lecture 39. Here will be found the historical part of the subject (Braid, Chambard, Féré) and the personal observations of the author.

122. Sommer (Zeitschrift für Psychologie, vol. ii.) reports an observation on an aphasic patient, which admits of an analogous interpretation.

123. Among the causes which have given some impulse to the psychology of the feelings during the last half of this century, Ladd (Psychology, Descriptive and Explanatory, pp. 163, 164) mentions: (1) the theory of evolution, because the affective phenomena are fundamental and permanent, and men differ from one another far less in their appetites, emotions, and passions than in their ideas and thoughts; and because this doctrine affirms that, underlying the highest forms of feeling, there is always some instinctive tendency; and (2) the literary and artistic movement which began with J. J. Rousseau, and asserts itself more and more in the Wagnerian music and the modern novel, and which should invite psychologists to attempt its analysis. It would be well to add the contemporary sociological studies which have shown the important part played by emotional elements, simple or complex, deliberately eliminated by the economists from their theories of social organisation.

124. For further details, see my Hérédité psychologique, Bk. I. chap. v. and Bk. III. chap. iii. Bain has discussed the question at great length from the strictly psychological point of view (The Emotions, chap. ii.). He inclines to a “probability” of transmission in certain cases.

125. The discussion is to be found in his Civilisation in England (vol. i., chap. iv.). It may be summed up in the very questionable sentence quoted by him from Cuvier, “Le bien qu’on fait aux hommes, quelque grand qu’il soit, est toujours passager; les vérités qu’on leur laisse sont éternelles.” He thus counts for nothing the institutions which have arisen from an original effort, a new growth of moral sentiment. The saying is a purely academic aphorism.

126. Höffding, Psychologie (4th edit., German translation, 1893), pp. 411-412, where this point is briefly but ably treated.

127. James, Psychology, ii. pp. 403-440.

128. Brugia, Patologia della cenestesia (1893).

129. I must here repeat Briquet’s remark on this point: “However strange these appetites may appear, their origin can frequently be discovered. Thus a young woman, who would greedily devour the embers of her foot-warmer, told me that she had, from the beginning, been fond of the crust of bread; from this she came to like the crust of toasted bread, then charred bread, and so gradually acquired the taste for small pieces of charcoal. I am inclined to think that, were we to inquire into the origin of many of these strange tastes, we should find it as simple as the above.” Pierre Janet (État mental des hystériques, ii. p. 71) transcribes this passage, and adds, “I have often followed this advice and been in a position to appreciate its value.” This psychological inquiry is very ingenious, but only removes the difficulty a stage further back. It shows us through what series of associations the final result is attained; but association alone is not sufficient to arrive at this result, still less to render it permanent. It is only the external mechanism which explains, at the utmost, why the deviation should have taken this particular direction. Many persons are fond of crust, even of burnt crust, who will never come to have the slightest appetite for charcoal. Many have eaten charcoal out of curiosity, or by accident, but without acquiring a taste for it. It is some deeper and more powerful cause than association which lies at the root of these feelings and renders them active.

130. For details, see Campbell “On the Appetite in Insanity,” in the Journal of Mental Science, July 1886, pp. 193 et seq., and Belmondo, “Pervertimenti dell’istinto di nutrizione,” in Tamburini’s Rivista, 1888, pp. 1 et seq., where is cited the case of an insane patient in whose stomach were found 1841 objects, such as nails, bits of lead, and the like, weighing in all eleven (English) pounds, ten ounces.

131. “On the Causes of Disgust,” in L’Homme et l’Intelligence, pp. 41-84.

132. J. Sully, The Human Mind, vol. ii. p. 91. The reader should also consult Mosso’s well-known monograph on Fear (English tr.), and Bain, The Emotions, ch. viii. Fear has been tolerably well studied. The absence of monographs concerned with the other emotions is another proof that emotional psychology is yet in its infancy, whereas for the memory, perceptions, images, etc., we find, on the contrary, a large number of special studies on special points.

133. Die Seele des Kindes, chap. vii.

134. Since the above was written the same conclusion has been reached by Professor Stanley Hall in a report founded on a statistical inquiry into the fears (some 6500 in number) of 1700 children and young persons. He concludes that “we must assume the capacity to fear or to anticipate pain, and to associate it with certain objects and experiences, as an inherited Anlage, often of a far higher antiquity than we are wont to appeal to in psychology.” He considers that such fears are analogous to rudimentary physical organs, though they still retain a certain use. (“A Study of Fears,” American Journal of Psychology, vol. viii., No. 2, 1897.)—Ed.

135. J. Sully, op. cit., ii. 91.

136. Dégénérescence et Criminalité, pp. 28 sqq., with the illustrative figures.

137. Gélineau, Des peurs maladives, p. 34; see also pp. 18, 109, 126, 169, etc.

138. Many “phobias” seem to me fresh proofs in favour of the existence of a true emotional memory.

139. Fear, chap. xi.

140. See a curious case in Gélineau, op. cit., p. 99.

141. For detailed descriptions see Darwin, chap. x.; Lange, op. cit.; Mantegazza, op. cit., chap. xiii. The latter transcribes the picture drawn by Seneca in his De Ira, and is of opinion—in which I agree with him—that it is traced by a master hand.

142. Tamburini distinguishes three kinds of fixed ideas: simple, emotive, and impulsive, according as the obsession determines forced attention, a state of anguish, or an action.

143. Morel, Maladies mentales, pp. 420 et seq.

144. The psychology of imitation does not form part of our subject. Baldwin has made an excellent study of it (Mental Development in the Child and Race, pp. 263-366). He defines it as "a sensori-motor reaction, which finds its differentia in the single fact that it imitates; that is, its peculiarity is found in the locus of its muscular discharge. It is what I have called a ‘circular activity’ on the bodily side,—brain-state due to stimulating conditions, muscular reaction which reproduces or retains the stimulating conditions,—same brain-state again, due to same stimulating conditions, and so on." Imitation appears early in the child, at fifteen weeks (Preyer) or four months (Darwin). Are we to consider it as an instinct? Popular opinion is inclined to do so, as are also several psychologists—Stricker, James, and others. The contrary is maintained by Preyer, Bain, Sully, and Baldwin—a view I am myself inclined to take. Imitation does not present the true characteristics of an instinct; it is not adapted at the first attempt; it gropes its way, it is tentative, it fails again after success, it retrogrades, or progresses but slowly. It is an ideo-motor reflex; it takes its place above instinct (a blind and innate tendency inferior to the voluntary activity for which it prepares the way), because it is the first attempt at convergence towards an end.

145. Principles of Psychology, vol. iv. p. 565.

146. The point has been very well treated by this author (The Emotions, chap. vii. p. 127). See also Mantegazza, chap. xi. Lange does not mention it.

147. Sully, The Human Mind, ii. pp. 104, 105.

148. For these facts see Romanes, Mental Evolution, chap, xx., and Lloyd Morgan, Animal Life, pp. 397, 398.

149. Bain, Emotions, chap. vi. p. 111.

150. The pathology of tender emotion does not offer sufficient interest to detain us. The altruistic tendency may be totally wanting in certain hypochondriac and demented patients, who, entrenched in an impenetrable egoism, have undergone a real “moral ossification.” Tenderness may become sentimentality towards persons, animals (zoophily), and things (nostalgia), etc. Morel (Études cliniques, vol. ii. sec. 4) quotes the case of a man of high intellectual capacity, in whom the most futile and ridiculous causes excited absurd accès de sensibilité. “The loss of domestic animals which he had reared threw him into a state of bewilderment and convulsions of tears, as if it had been the death of his best friends. I saw him one day almost delirious with grief at the death of one of the numerous frogs which he kept in his garden.” This morbid emotivity, coinciding with congenital or acquired weakness, and with convalescence or other adynamic states, throws into relief, by its exaggerated character, that state of relaxation which is, as we have seen, one of the principal marks of the tender emotion.

151. See Darwin (chap. xi.) and Mantegazza (chap. xiv.).

152. Consult James, Psychology, ii. 305, 329; Bain, Emotions, chap. x., xi.; J. Sully, Psychology, ii. 97 et seq.

153. For details on this point the reader should consult Ireland, The Blot on the Brain, p. 88 (where he will find a study of the Cæsars, the Hindoo Sultans, Ivan the Terrible, etc.), and Jacoby, Études sur la sélection et l’hérédité.

154. Dagonet, Traité des maladies mentales, pp. 360 et seq.

155. Among the very copious existing literature on suicide I must mention Morselli’s monograph, Il Suicidio, in which the various causes—cosmic, ethnic, social, biological, and psychological—are studied in great detail. His principal theoretical conclusions are—(1) Among all civilised nations suicide increases more rapidly than the geometrical ratio of the population and the general mortality; (2) suicides are in inverse proportion to homicides at any given time or in any given country. This last “law” has been strongly contested by Tarde and others.

156. For further details see my Hérédité psychologique, Part I., chap. viii.

157. M. Pierre Janet mentions the case of a woman in whom “the family feelings, the affective emotions, modesty, and the sensitiveness of the genital organs appeared and disappeared simultaneously.” He adds: “Which of these phenomena brings the others in its train? Is genital sensibility a centre round which other psychological syntheses are constructed? I draw no conclusion.”—État mental des Hystériques, i. pp. 217, 218.

158. This psychological thesis has been maintained, in all its rigour, by Delbœuf: “That girl and that young man, in being attracted to one another, obey the will, unknown to both, of a spermatozoid, an ovule. But it may be taken as certain that this will is not unknown either to the spermatozoid or the ovule; both know what they want, and seek it. To this end they give their orders to their respective brains through the medium of the heart, and the brain obeys without knowing why. Sometimes it imagines that it has been convinced by reason and explains its own choice to itself. At bottom it has been but an unconscious instrument in the hand of an imperceptible workman who knew both what he wanted and what he was doing.” (Revue philosophique, March 1891, p. 257.)

159. Principles of Psychology, vol. i., § 215.

160. For some curious observations on this point see especially Moreau (of Tours), Psychologie morbide, pp. 264-278.

161. See Danville, Psychologie de l’amour, ch. vi., for a detailed discussion of this question, which the author also answers in the negative.

162. Dallemagne, Dégénérés et Déséquilibrés, p. 327.

163. Traité des Passions, sec. 69.

164. As all the emotions to be enumerated in this chapter have been already—or are about to be—studied separately, they will only be mentioned briefly, by way of example, and in order to illustrate the work of the mind in the creation of composite forms.

165. Sibbern’s Psychologie (1856), having been published in Danish, is only known to me through extracts quoted by his compatriots, Höffding (Psychologie, 2nd German ed., pp. 330, 331) and Lehmann (Hauptgesetze, pp. 247 et seq.). These two authors may also be consulted with advantage on this question.

166. Sergi, Piacere e Dolore, pp. 210 et seq.

167. W. James, Psychology, ii. pp. 435-437.

168. For the general study of this question see Espinas, Les Sociétés Animales, 2nd ed. (1878), and Ed. Perrier, Les Colonies Animales.

169. For a detailed study of this question see Espinas, Les Sociétés Animales (2nd ed.), pp. 334 et seq., 411 et seq., 444 et seq.

170. Bain, The Emotions, p. 140.

171. Espinas, Les Sociétés Animales, pp. 444 et seq.

172. For the theories on this matter see Espinas, pp. 401 et seq.

173. Descent of Man, chap. iii. See also Espinas, op. cit., sec. iv.

174. Herbert Spencer, Psychology, ii. § 503 et seq.

175. Houssay, Revue philosophique, May 1893, p. 487.

176. Mutterrecht, pp. 17-19. See also his interpretation of the myths of Orestes and Bellerophon as expressing the triumph of the patriarchate, p. 85.

177. Starcke, La famille primitive, p. 116.

178. “The Australians attribute the death of their friends to spells cast by some neighbouring tribe; for this reason they consider it a sacred obligation to avenge the death of a relative by killing a member of the tribe in question. A native having lost one of his wives, announced his intention of going to kill a woman belonging to a distant tribe. The magistrate told him that if he committed this act, he would be confined in prison for the rest of his life. He therefore did not start on his journey; but, month by month, he wasted away: remorse preyed on his mind, he could neither sleep nor eat; the ghost of his wife haunted him, reproaching him with his negligence. One day he disappeared; a year later he came back, having accomplished his duty” (Guyau, Esquisse d’une Morale, etc., p. 109). Here we have an example of instinctive morality and rational immorality. It should be noted that in this work Guyau has returned to the view of the moral instinct, adopted by him, after having previously criticised it, in his Morale Anglaise (III. chap. iv.).

179. Friedmann, “Genesis of Disinterested Benevolence,” Mind, vol. i. (1878), p. 404.

180. About 1820, during the time of scarcity consequent on Tshaka’s wars, certain of the Natal tribes (the natives say, at the suggestion of a chief named Umdava) adopted the practice of cannibalism. It was abandoned when food again became plentiful, and has always been regarded with great horror; those individuals who had acquired such a taste for human flesh as to prefer it to other food, fled into the recesses of the Drakensberg and Maluti mountains. Moshesh, the great Basuto chief, directed his efforts for years to the extirpation of the practice, though unwilling to do so, as his advisers desired, by means of a summary massacre of the offenders. The Amazimu (Modimo) are now a myth to both Zulus and Basutos; indeed the word, as now used, is frequently synonymous with “ogre.” It is to be noted that Moshesh was not in any way acting under European influence, in fact the last of the cannibals had disappeared long before the country came under British rule, and though the memory of their atrocities was still fresh when the French missionaries arrived in 1833, the chief had already been proceeding against them for some time. See Casalis, Les Bassoutos.

181. Staniland Wake, Evolution of Morality, vol. i. pp. 427 et seq. To be consulted for facts of this kind.

182. Letourneau, L’évolution juridique chez les différents peuples.

183. “Latrocinia nullam habent infamiam quæ extra fines cujusque civitatis fiunt.”—De Bell. Gall., vi. 21.

184. It should perhaps be added that the more scientific writers on criminal anthropology do not regard the chief causes suggested above as rival theories, but rather as factors which may co-operate to produce criminality, the biological factor (heredity, arrest of development, infantilism, etc.) acting as predisposing cause, the sociological factor as exciting cause.—Ed.

185. According to Krafft-Ebing, Lehrbuch (vol. i., sec. 2, chap, iii.), Regiomontanus already maintained, in 1513, that depravity is quite independent of the accurate knowledge of good and evil; he attributed this anomaly to the influence of the planet Venus.

186. Especially Despine, Psychologie naturelle (ii. pp. 169 et seq.), and Maudsley, Pathology of Mind.

187. Dictionary of Psychological Medicine, art. “Criminal Anthropology.” Here it is stated that, at Elmira, 34 per cent. criminals on admission exhibit entire absence of moral susceptibility; while (according to Dr. Salsotto, at Turin) in 130 women guilty of murder, or complicity in murder, genuine remorse was only observed in 6.

188. Since the above was written two lengthy and valuable studies of the psychology of religion, and more especially of the phenomena of “conversion,” have been published by Leuba and Starbuck, largely inspired by Prof. Stanley Hall (Am. Jour. Psych., 1896-97). Both these studies are founded on original data, in part obtained by a questionnaire.—Ed.

189. Max Müller, Origin and Development of Religion (Hibbert Lectures), p. 227.

190. For a discussion of this point see Goblet d’Alviella, L’idée de Dieu, pp. 60 et seq.

191. Goblet d’Alviella, op. cit., p. 50.

192. Principles of Sociology, vol. i. pp. 130-142.

193. For the facts see Goblet d’Alviella, op. cit., p. 178.

194. Goblet d’Alviella, ib., pp. 176-198.

195. For details, consult Tiele, Manuel de l’histoire des Religions, Goblet d’Alviella, pp. 153-163. “The divine feudality is the primordial fact in Egyptian religion, as political feudality is the primordial fact of Egyptian history” (Maspero, Histoire Ancienne).

196. The theory of do ut des is expressed with naïve completeness in a Brahmanic hymn. “Well filled, O spoon [of the sacrifice], fly down; well filled, return. As having agreed on a price, let us make exchanges of strength and vigour. Give me, I give to thee; bring to me, I bring to thee.” Better still: "If thou wilt injure any one, say to Surya: ‘Strike such an one, and I will make thee an offering,’ and Surya, to obtain the offering, will strike him." (Barth, Les Religions de l’Inde, pp. 25, 26.)

197. This prayer will be found in full in Maspero, op. cit. (4th ed.), p. 38.

198. For many original and quoted observations showing the close connection between the sexual and religious emotions, see the recent series of valuable papers by Vallon and Marie, “Des Psychoses Religieuses,” Archives de Neurologie, 1897.—Ed.

199. For this discussion, Tylor, Primitive Culture, I. xi., and Réville, Religions des Peuples non Civilisés, i., pp. 10 et seq., may be consulted.

200. Hack Tuke says he has met with only a single case among Catholics. (Dict. of Psychol. Medicine, Art. “Religious Insanity.”)

201. For some recent observations see Krafft-Ebing, op. cit., vol. ii. § 1; Dagonet, Maladies mentales, pp. 321 et seq.

202. For further details respecting ecstasy I refer the reader to my Maladies de la volonté, ch. v., and to Godfernaux, Le Sentiment et la Pensée, p. 49. Purely medical works contain little that is instructive with regard to the psychology of this state; the works of the mystics themselves may be studied with far more profit.

203. This theory of play, however, appears, from recent researches, to be of English origin, and due to Home (1696-1782), so that, when taken up again by Herbert Spencer (Principles of Psychology, vol. ii., last chapter), it would seem only to have returned to its original home.

204. In a recent book, very rich in observations on the play of animals (Die Spiele der Thiere, 1896, the only existing monograph on the subject), Groos substitutes for the thesis of a superabundance of energy that of a primary instinct, of which play, in all its forms, is the expression. I cannot see that the two theses exclude one another. Some base their argument on external manifestations. Groos connects them with an instinct—i.e., a motor disposition sui generis. I am inclined to take Groos’s view, the more so as the fundamental idea of the present work is that of finally reducing the affective life to the sum of a set of tendencies fixed in the organisation.

For the rest, the psychology of play is still awaiting treatment in its totality. The word, in fact, denotes several entirely different psychical manifestations. In its first stage, it is unconscious in its origin, spontaneous, an expenditure for the mere pleasure of spending; but, however disinterested in its source and its aim, it is useful; in children, play is often a form of imitation, often a form of experimentation, an attempt at easy and unconstrained exploration of beings and things. In the second stage, it has become reflective; pleasure is sought for its own sake, and with full consciousness of the reason; it is a complex state formed by the fusion of variable elements. In a special study, which, however, is merely tentative (Die Reize des Spieles, 1883), Lazarus adopts the following classification: (a) games connected with physical activity, (b) the attraction of all kinds of spectacles, (c) intellectual games, (d) games of chance. This last item alone might well prove a tempting one to a psychologist. It has a quasi-passive, somewhat blunted form, being what Pascal called a diversion (that which turns aside, distracts), a way of pretending to work, or filling up the blanks of existence, of “killing time.” It has an active form, the gambling passion, whose tragedy is as old as humanity, and which is made up of attraction towards the unknown and the hazardous, of daring, of emulation, of the desire of victory, the love of gain, and the fascination of acquiring wealth wholesale, instantaneously, without effort. These and other elements show that, in play as in love, it is complexity which produces intensity. The absence of any complete first-hand studies on this subject shows once more the scarcity of monographs relating to the psychology of the feelings.