205. For a detailed criticism of this view, see Guyau’s Problèmes de l’esthétique contemporaine, p. 12. This writer, afraid of dilettantism, substituted for the theory of play that of life, as a source of art. I do not see what is to be gained by substituting a vague formula for a definite one. Moreover, are not all emotions connected with life?

206. We must except Sergi, from whom I have borrowed the above definition. In his Psychologie Physiologique, Bk. IV., chap. vi., sec. 374, he gives some interesting historical details.

207. Weismann, Essais sur l’hérédité (French ed., p. 475); Wallace, Darwinism, chap. xv. Before these, Schneider (Freud und Leid, pp. 28, 29), an adherent of the English theory of the inherent uselessness of the æsthetic activity, has tried to connect it with the conservation of the individual and the species by an extremely bold and problematical hypothesis resting on heredity. If we experience different feelings before a stormy sea, or a calm, blue lake, covered with boats, or a vast plain, or snow-covered mountains, “it is because our feelings are those of primitive man, when he lived really in the midst of nature and had to wrest his daily bread from it. Through countless generations our ancestors, on finishing their daily task, in the evening have thought with satisfaction of the work accomplished; it was in this frame of mind that they looked on the approach of evening and the sunset. Why does a landscape representing it produce on us an impression of repose and peace? We have no other answer than this: for countless generations past the evening sky has been associated with the consciousness of work finished and a feeling of rest and satisfaction.” Apart from its extreme flimsiness, this hypothesis would not be applicable to all the arts.

208. Wallaschek, Primitive Music, chap. x., which may be consulted for details.

209. Die Anfänge der Kunst (1894). This book, extremely lucid and interesting, full of ethnographic documents and general considerations, may be consulted with great advantage on the question of the beginnings of art. On the special point which occupies us, see pp. 191 et seq.

210. For a historical survey of the question see Grosse, Anfänge der Kunst, pp. 12 et seq.

211. Letourneau, L’évolution littéraire chez les différents peuples, p. 66, a work which may be consulted for documentary evidence.

212. Quoted by Grosse (p. 48), who gives an acute criticism of this view, rightly pointing out that a strictly individualistic art is “neither thinkable nor discoverable.”

213. Grant Allen (Mind, xx., Oct. 1880) points out that Homer describes beautiful districts as “fertile,” “rich in wheat,” “horse-feeding,” etc. He heard a peasant in the neighbourhood of Hyères praising the magnificence of a cultivated plain covered with vegetables, while showing the greatest contempt for a picturesque bit of woodland. An American visiting England said, “Your country, sir, is very beautiful. In many parts you may go for miles together and never see a tree except in a hedge.” Any one who has had much to do with the peasantry could quote hundreds of remarks similar to the above.

214. See Spencer, Essays, i. 434, 435.

215. Mind, 1880, p. 445.

216. I shall be pardoned for introducing the following passage from Théophile Gautier; it is, under its humorous form, so just from a psychological point of view: “Ideals torment even the coarsest natures. The savage, when he tattooes himself, or smears his body with red and blue, or sticks a fish-bone through his nose, is only obeying a confused sense of the beautiful. He is seeking for something beyond what exists; he is trying to perfect his type, guided by a dim notion of art. The taste for ornament distinguishes man from brute more clearly than any other peculiarity. No dog ever thought of putting rings into his ears; and the stupid Papuans, who eat clay and earthworms, make themselves earrings of shells and coloured berries.”

217. Sully, The Human Mind, vol. ii. p. 144.

218. Sully, The Human Mind, vol. ii. p. 146.

219. Mind, October 1878.

220. The Human Mind, ii. p. 148.

221. Æsthetic activity is that form of play which uses images as its creative materials. It is generally admitted that visual and auditory perceptions or representations are the only ones which provoke æsthetic emotion; yet Guyau (followed perhaps by others) has maintained that we must attribute this power to all external sensations, without exception (Problèmes de l’esthétique contemporaine, chap. vi.), heat, cold, contacts, tastes, and odours; but the facts he enumerates are in most cases referable to association, especially where odours are concerned. The so-called lower sensations do not act directly, they only revive the representations of sight and hearing. A delicious coolness, a soft contact, an intoxicating odour produce an agreeable state—i.e., a physical pleasure, and nothing more, if there is no association. Besides, without entering into an idle and hair-splitting discussion, it is sufficient to observe that, as a matter of fact, there exists no art, in the æsthetic sense, based on any other sensations than those of sight and hearing, unless we are to look on perfumery and cookery as such.

Why is this privilege exclusively confined to two species of sensations? Various reasons have been given: because they are more remote from the life-serving functions with which the sensations of touch, taste, and smell are closely connected (II. Spencer); or because their pleasures and pains have, in general, a moderate character, and their special nerves are rarely subjected to a violent shock (Gurney); or, according to Grant Allen, because the nerves of the lower senses are excited in mass, and those of the higher by isolated fibres (? ?). It appears to me that one of the principal reasons has been forgotten. If we refer back to the inquiries detailed in Chap. IX. (Part I.) as to the olfactory and gustatory images, we shall see that they have their own peculiar characters. For visual and auditory images, revival and association are easy, whether simultaneously, in groups, or successively, in series. For images of smell and taste, it is quite the contrary; their revivability is feeble or nil, their power of association with each other nil. (The tactile-motor images form an intermediate group, but nearer to the lower senses.) These psychological conditions render them quite unsuitable for a place in a constructive scheme. Called up with great difficulty by the memory, incapable of being grouped, either in simultaneities or in series, they can supply neither an art in rest nor an art in movement.

222. Hobbes, Human Nature (2nd ed.), 1650.

223. Bain, The Emotions, p. 257.

224. Sully, Sensation and Intuition, p. 262; The Human Mind, i. p. 148.

225. “Physiology of Laughter,” Essays, vol. i. (1883) pp. 194 et seq.

226. Physiologie und Psychologie des Lachens und des Komischen (1873). For criticisms, see Léon Dumont, Theorie scientifique de la sensibilité, p. 211; Piderit, Mimik, pp. 138 et seq.

227. The only attempt in this direction I am acquainted with is Nordau’s book, Degeneration (Entartung), which is limited to the present day, and, moreover, treats of other questions as well.

228. There is, with regard to this point, a very complete observation of Grant Allen’s (“Note Deafness,” in Mind, iii. 1878). The subject, a young man of great intellectual cultivation, had studied music during his childhood without result. It was discovered, later on, that he was incapable of distinguishing one note from another, except at intervals which were sometimes as much as an octave, or even more. He was quite unconscious of harmonies and discords, or the timbre of instruments. The distinctive features of the latter were, for him, only clearly perceived noises of different kinds—a sound of wire-work for the piano, a scraping for the violin, a puff of air for the organ. He was very sensitive to the rhythm of poetry. It is not known whether anomalies of this kind originate in Corti’s organs or in the cerebral centres.

229. Bain, The Emotions, ch. iv. pp. 85, 86; Sully, Psychology, vol. ii. p. 126.

230. Descartes, Traité des Passions, Part ii., § 70.

231. I have given further details on this point in my Psychologie de l’attention.

232. See for facts as to the curiosity of animals, Romanes, Mental Evolution, pp. 283-351.

233. Principles of Sociology, i. pp. 98, 99.

234. Psychology, vol. ii. p. 131.

235. In the following, reported by a traveller, we have an instance of this spontaneous transition to disinterested curiosity, in the case of an intelligent Basuto. “Twelve years ago” [the man himself is speaking] “I went to feed my flocks. The weather was hazy. I sat down upon a rock and asked myself sorrowful questions; yes, sorrowful, because I was unable to answer them. Who has touched the stars with his hands? On what pillars do they rest? I asked myself. The waters are never weary; they know no other law than to flow without ceasing,—from morning till night, and from night till morning; but where do they stop? and who makes them flow thus? The clouds also come and go, and burst in water over the earth. Whence come they? Who sends them? The diviners certainly do not give us rain; for how could they do it? and why do I not see them with my own eyes, when they go up to heaven to fetch it? ... I cannot see the wind; but what is it? Who brings it, makes it blow? ... Then I buried my face in both my hands.”—Quoted by Vignoli, Mito e Scienza, p. 63. This passage is from The Basutos, by the French missionary Casalis (p. 239).

236. I give a specimen, choosing a classification which is neither one of the longest nor one of the shortest: (1) Emotions arising from logical relations (reasonable, unreasonable, contradictory, logical satisfaction, ignorance, the unknown, the hypothetical; possibility or impossibility of coming to a conclusion). (2) Emotions arising from relations of time (present, past, future, anticipation, hope, presentiment; feeling of the irremediable, of opportunity, of routine, etc.). (3) Emotions arising from relations of space (size, nearness, distance, etc.). (4) Emotions arising from relations of coexistence and non-existence, quantity, identity, etc. This is a much abridged catalogue; there are thirty-two subdivisions in all.

237. Quoted by Letourneau, Physiologie des Passions, p. 23.

238. See Hack Tuke’s Dictionary of Psych. Medicine, article, “Insanity of Doubt.” Analogous cases have been reported by various authors, Griesinger, Clouston, etc.

239. Two American psychologists, without mentioning the principal forms we have just studied, reckon among contemporary aberrations of the intellectual feeling some tendencies which appear to me to be very slight infirmities by comparison: (1) “A more subtle form is that distinctively nineteenth-century disease, the love of culture, as such. When the feeling is directed, not towards objects, but towards the state of mind induced by the knowledge of the objects, there originates a love of knowing for the sake of the development of the mind itself. The knowledge is acquired because it widens and expands self. Culture of our mental powers is made an end in itself, and knowledge of the universe of objects is subordinated to this. The intellectual feelings are separated from their proper place as functions of the integral life, and are given an independent place in consciousness. Here, as in all such cases, the attempt defeats itself. The only way to develop self is to make it become objective; the only way to accomplish this is to surrender the interests of the personal self. Self-culture reverses the process and attempts to employ self-objectification or knowledge as a mere means to the satisfaction of these personal interests. The result is that the individual never truly gets outside of himself” (Dewey, Psychology, pp. 305, 306). This criticism is just. We might say, more simply, that the pursuit of intellectual emotion for its own sake borders on scientific dilettantism—i.e., a superficial disposition and a tendency of the mind to run in every direction without going very deeply into anything. But we cannot reckon as morbid the love of abstract and purely speculative research; for in this the intellectual feeling remains faithful to its nature, i.e. curiosity, and its mission, i.e. the pursuit of truth. Besides, the speculations which in appearance are the most useless and merely theoretical, may some day show themselves in results susceptible of practical application. (2) Ladd, Psychology Descriptive and Explanatory, pp. 566 et seq., considers as a morbid form of the intellectual sentiment the personification of Science, which is so popular at the present day (in my opinion, it is rather a disease of thought, an instance of the incurable tendency of the human mind to realise abstractions and bow the knee before idols of its own fabrication), and also criticises the growing love of minutiæ and the obstinate pursuit of small facts. It must be acknowledged that this tendency sometimes becomes a nuisance in sciences founded on observation, experiment, or documents, and that those whose attention has been confined to this kind of work have a natural disposition to exaggerate its importance; but it is nevertheless necessary, and is the price paid for all progress in science. Each individual contributes in his degree and according to his strength; there is no architecture without labourers.

240. This chapter was published as an article in October 1893; it has been left unchanged as far as the main argument is concerned.

241. B. Perez, Le caractère de l’enfant à l’homme, chap. i. With this objective classification may be compared the work of graphologists and of those who have devoted themselves to the expression of the emotions.

242. Paulhan, Les caractères (1894); FouilléeFouillée, Tempérament et caractère selon les individus, les sexes, et les races (1895). These two works have appeared since the first publication of the present chapter.

243. Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie, vol. iii.

244. I refer the reader to the brilliant chapter of Schopenhauer entitled “On the Primacy of Will,” while reminding him that, with this writer, “will” signifies tendency or feeling. (Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, supplement to Book II., chap. xix.) I shall return to this subject in the Conclusion of this work.

245. Op. cit., supplement to Book III., chap. xxxi.

246. Need we recall the often-quoted cases of Francis Bacon, D’Alembert, etc.? On this point see Dr. Le Bon’s article in the Revue philosophique, vol. iv. p. 496.

247. Bain, Study of Character, p. 214.

248. Reproduced in extenso in Bain, The Will, p. 413 (chap. vii.).

249. “It has been asserted that every temperament is equal to every other, and that all are equally necessary to the progress of humanity: I do not believe this.”

250. “Le tempérament au point de vue psychologique et anthropologique,” a paper published (in French) in the Bulletins du Congrès International d’Anthropologie, iv. St. Petersburg, 1892, pp. 91-154.

251. Le Caractère dans les Maladies, p. 188 et seq.

252. Régis, Maladies mentales, p. 200.

253. Brain, No. 32, p. 570, and Brain Surgery (1863), chap. i.

254. I owe these observations to the kindness of Dr. Dumas, who collected them with a view to a special study of the decay of feeling.

255. “When the mind undergoes degeneration, the moral feeling is the first to show it, as it is the last to be restored when the disorder passes away; the latest and highest gain of mental evolution, it is the first to witness by its impairment to mental dissolution.... In undoing a mental organisation, nature begins by unravelling the finest, most delicate, most intricately woven, and last completed threads of her marvellously complex network. Were the moral sense as old and firmly fixed an instinct as the instinct to walk upright, or the more deeply planted instinct of propagation,—as many people in the presumed interests of morality have tried to persuade themselves and others that it is,—it would not be the first to suffer in this way when mental degeneration begins; its categorical imperative would not take instant flight at the first assault, but would assert its authority at a later period of the decline; but, being the last acquired and the least fixed, it is most likely to vary, not only ... in the pathological way of degeneracy, but also ... in physiological ways, according to the diversities of conditions in which it is placed.” (Maudsley, Body and Will, p. 266.)

256. Itard, Mémoire sur le sauvage de l’Aveyron, éd. Bourneville, pp. xlviii. sqq.

257. Ireland (Journal of Mental Science, July 1894) has published some observations which tend to favour the idea of this slow retrogression in dementia. He gives the case of a patient, sinking into dementia, who not only retained her musical ability, but could even pick up new tunes; and mentions cases where the patient, seated before a piano, could play old melodies though incapable of anything else. A girl, aged fourteen, became demented through brain fever and had ceased to speak, save a few words, but was still fond of music and would play fragments of tunes.tunes. Two lady patients, though incoherent in speech, played with great accuracy on the piano—one by ear only, the other from musical notes, although she was quite unable to read a book, etc. (Perhaps in this last case there was “word-blindness” applying to words only.)

258. Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, Part III., chap. xix.

259. Ethica, iii. prop. 9, schol.