It is clear, nevertheless, that on the James-Lange theory of emotion, according to which the organic sensations are blended into a feeling of rank excitement, the phrase ' emotive memory' may be technically correct. In the author's belief, pleasantness and un- pleasantness are distinct from sensation; and, as they have not risen to the levelof sensory clearness (pp. 260 f.), so they are not paralleled by any purely central process of the imaginal kind. Affection, as the technical term goes, is always ' actual '; it appears always in the same form; it has no substitute or surrogate, as sensation has in the image. If, however, the organic stirs are themselves affective, then — in so far as we admit, from our own point of view, the possibility of an organic image — affective memory is psychologi- cally possible; consciousness would consist of organic images and the recognitive mood. But we have seen (p. 200) that organic images are rare; l so that, at least in the great majority of cases, the organic stirs will also be actual; the idea of the flogging will call up, not images of the fluttering and choking, but fluttering and choking sensations; weaker, no doubt, than the originals, but of the same actual sort. Such a reexperience or reinstatement of 1 An exception should, perhaps, be made for kinaesthesis; most observers report the frequent occurrence of kinaesthetic images. At the same time, these images, too, are commonly blended with weak kinaesthetic sensations.
organic sensation, in sensory and not in imaginal terms, is assumed in the account just given. Only, then, if the James-Lange theory is accepted, and only if the observer is endowed above his fellows with what we should call organic images, only under these circum- stances can it be correct to speak of an emotive memory. And since the presence or absence of organic commotion is characteris- tic, not merely of the memory consciousness, but of all the other intellectual processes as well, it is better to generalise the difference, and to speak of cold and warm temperament, or of emotional and unemotional mental constitution.
Affective Expansion and Affective Transfer. — The organic re- action seems, further, to supply an explanation of two phenomena which have been much discussed, but of which we have no thorough- going analysis: the phenomena of affective expansion and affective transfer. The former appears when the pleasantness or unpleasant- ness of some isolated perception or some single event spreads over the entire situation in which the perception is given, or extends to the subsequent consciousnesses; the latter appears when, e.g., the pleasure that at first attached to something considered as a means becomes transferred to the same thing considered as an end. A casual remark overheard may spoil a whole day's enjoyment; the miser begins to amass his money in order that he may have it to spend, and continues to amass it that he may have it to keep.
What happens, in the first case, is that the remark sets up a complex of unpleasantly toned organic sensations, and that this organic feeling — reinforced by associations, sustained by affective predisposition — persists and recurs until some stronger complex of associative and determining tendencies throws the organism into a new attitude. What happens in the second case is that the pleasurable organic feeling, which at the beginning accompanied the idea of money to spend, is later attached to the idea of money to keep; the organic reaction persists, although the situation is only in part the same. These statements give, of course, only a rough indication of the actual course of consciousness. They show, however, — and this is the important point, — that there is 496 Emotion no affective expansion or affective transfer, in any literal sense; the mechanism of both phenomena is sensory (cf. p. 378).
Affective Illusions. — We may speak of an affective illusion in two senses: first, when we are mistaken as to the source of a feel- ing, and, secondly, when we are mistaken as to the intensity or quality of feeling itself. Illusions of the former kind are liable to occur whenever affective expansion or affective transfer occurs; we may magnify some trifling annoyance into the occasion of our ill- temper, when in reality the ill-temper was there beforehand (ex- pansion); and we may regard the present situation as the origina- tor of a feeling which, in reality, has been carried over from a widely different situation (transfer). These illusions may, as a rule, be easily corrected by retrospection.
Illusions of the second kind are more interesting, and more dif- ficult to explain. You think that you are deeply attached to a friend; he goes to another part of the world, and you find that his absence is a matter of entire indifference. You think that you have no particular liking for so-and-so; he goes away, and you miss him dreadfully. You are looking forward eagerly to a certain event; circumstances prevent your taking part in it, and you are surprised to discover that you are relieved. You are oppressed and gloomy in the anticipation of another event; circumstances hold you off from that, and you are surprised at your disappoint- ment. How are these things to be accounted for? We can only guess. For one thing, we must suppose that the situation as im- agined rarely tallies exactly with the situation as presented; and we must remember that there is no possibility of their direct com- parison; we have to wait the event. For another thing, we all have a tendency to overestimate the stability of our affective life. This tendency may very possibly be instinctive; though the uni- versal actuality of affection (p. 494) may also contribute to a lack of perspective in matters of feeling. At all events, we overlook the fact of affective adaptation (p. 229). Yet, again, we must bear in mind that we are suggestible: heterosuggestion and autosuggestion alike, playing upon some temporary attitude, may arouse a feeling that is foreign to our more customary, more permanent disposition.
§ 135- Mood, Passion and Temperament 497 But, when all is said, we have to confess that the affective illusions point to unsuspected depths and shallownesses of impression, and to unsuspected powers of the unconscious tendencies.
§ 135. Mood, Passion and Temperament. — The weaker emotive consciousnesses, which persist for some time to- gether, are termed moods; the stronger, which exhaust the organism in a comparatively short time, are called pas- sions. Thus, the mood of cheerfulness represents the emotion of joy; the mood of depression, that of sorrow. On the other hand, rage or fury is a passion, anger an emotion; and we speak of a passionate grief, a passionate love, a passion of terror, when we wish to indicate a high degree of emotive intensity. However, no sharp line of distinction, either intensive or temporal, can be drawn be- tween these various processes.
The name of passion is also given to any abiding inter- est, to any mode of strong emotive response that is specific and lasting. We say that a man has a passion for success, for science, for gambling; and we mean that a situation which shows any sort of reference to these things will ap- peal to him, dominatingly and one-sidedly, through that reference.
In its ordinary course, the mood rises slowly to a maximum and then slowly dies down. Something upsets you, makes you irri- table; you proceed to take everything irritably, and so become more irritable still; after a while, the incidents that prompt to irri- tation seems to grow rarer, and the irritability gradually disappears. There are times, however, when some intercurrent event brings about a quick and total change of mood. And there are times when the mood passes abruptly, without assignable reason; you are surprised to find yourself suddenly cheerful. All this points definitely to the importance of organic excitation, and in so far bears out the hypothesis of § 74.
49^ Emotion Popular psychology classifies mental phenomena under the headings of intellect, feeling and will (§127), and indi- vidual endowment under the corresponding headings of talent or ability, temperament and character. Tempera- ment, so far as it can be employed in a strictly psychologi- cal sense, is thus a very general term for affective constitu- tion, for the congenital susceptibility of the individual to emotive stimuli and for the typical character of his emotive response. Talent, in the same way, denotes intellectual constitution, and character active constitution.
The doctrine of temperaments was first systematised by the Greek physician Galen, though the germs of the popular fourfold classification go back much farther in the history of thought.1 This classification takes account of two moments: the strength and the duration of emotive response. We thus get the following table: Strong Weak Quick Choleric Sanguine Slow Melancholic Phlegmatic The choleric temperament is impulsive, easily roused to strong emotion, but as easily diverted from the emotive situation; and so on. Literature furnishes us with typical instances. Thus, Hamlet and Laertes are respectively melancholic and choleric; Falstaff and the younger Percy, in the first part of King Henry IV., are respectively sanguine and choleric; while the scenes between Touchstone and Audrey in As You Like It bring the sanguine and phlegmatic temperaments into sharp contrast.
Several more elaborate classifications of temperament have been published in recent years. They are, however, of interest rather for an applied than for a general psychology.
§ 136. The Nature of Sentiment. —We have distinguished remembrance from recollection, reproductive from con- 1 Claudius Galenus, a.d. 131 to 210. See H. Siebeck, Gcschichte der Psychologic, I., ii., 1884, 278 ff.
§ 136. The Nature of Sentiment 499 structive imagination, according as the memory and imagi- native consciousnesses show the pattern of primary or of secondary attention (pp. 275 f.). We may now draw a like distinction between emotion and sentiment. In emo- tion, the organism faces a situation in the attitude of primary attention; the situation overwhelms it, takes un- disputed possession of consciousness. In sentiment, the situation to be faced is more complex; its appeal to atten- tion is both multiple and conflicting; it suggests hesitation and deliberation, and evokes the critical attitude. The sentiment, as thus defined, represents the last stage of mental development on the affective side, as thought rep- resents the highest level of development on the side of sensation and image.
Secondary attention lapses, as we saw, into derived primary at- tention. Hence it is natural that the sentiment, which is developed out of emotion, and is characteristic of a higher stage of mental differentiation, should readily slip back into emotion. Suppose, e.g., that I sit down to read a story. At first, I have various aes- thetic sentiments; I linger over the beauty of the style, or the harmony of the incidents. I have, too, various intellectual senti- ments; I feel that the tale is true to life, that its scenes are self- consistent. But, as I read, I grow absorbed; I cease to be critical, to be secondarily attentive; the story takes possession of me, and the writer moves me as he will. Sentiment has now been replaced by its simpler counterpart, emotion.
Not only, however, is it true that sentiment tends to lapse into emotion; many of us never experience sentiments at all. My 'sentiment' of honour, eg., may never have cost me a moment's effort of attention. A definition of honourable conduct has come down to me, by tradition, and is exemplified by the behaviour of those about me, and I accept it without thought. All through my life, if this is the case, conduct-situations will take possession of me; I shall face them simply by an emotion.
500 Emotion 500 Emotion The Definition of Sentiment. — The author must confess that the meaning here given to the term 'sentiment' is largely arbitrary. But, to quote another psychologist, "this word is very loosely used in ordinary language, and psychologists in general have failed to give it a meaning much more precise. There can therefore be no harm in applying it as we propose." Other current usage indentifies sentiment with what we have called passion (in the second sense), i.e., with such things as love of power, of fame, of economy, of cleanliness; hatred of injustice, of oppression, of af- fectation; devotion to science, or art, or religion. It seems, how- ever, more natural to speak of a passion for cleanliness, a passion for order, a passion for justice, a passion for old furniture, than to name these affective dispositions 'sentiments.'
§ 137. The Forms of Sentiment. — There are four great classes of sentiments: the intellectual or logical, the ethical or social, the aesthetic and the religious. Modern psychology has devoted more attention to the aesthetic sentiments than to the other three groups, — partly, no doubt, because they can be examined under experimental conditions and with comparatively simple materials.
Experimental Aesthetics. — The history of experimental aesthet- ics, which begins with G. T. Fechner in the year 1871, repeats in little the history of experimental psychology. Investigators were at first concerned to discover the nature of the beautiful object, and to express this nature in quantitative terms (cf. p. 430). It was found, e.g., that simple visual figures are most pleasing either when they are divided symmetrically, in the proportion 1:1, or when they are divided at a point so chosen that the dimensions of the whole are to those of the larger part as the dimensions of the larger part are to those of the smaller (the golden section; approxi- mately 3: 5). It was found that curved lines are, on the whole, more pleasing than straight lines, and that the meeting of two straight lines in a right angle is particularly displeasing. It was found, again, that binary colour combinations are most pleasing when the colours chosen are either neighbouring or approximately § 137- The Forms of Sentiment 501 complementary, and so on. And attempts were made to explain these results in detail. Thus, the human figure is symmetrically built: hand repeats hand, and foot foot. Moreover, waist repeats neck, abdomen repeats chest, legs repeat arms. The propor- tions of the body, measured from the navel as centre, are approxi- mately those of the golden section. Moreover, the upper part is divided at the neck, and the lower at the knees, roughly in the same ratio, 3:5. Ease of eye-movement was held responsible for the pleasingness of curved lines; the eyes feel the jerk in- volved in any abrupt change of linear direction. The appreciation of colour schemes was referred to contrast, or to ease of transi- tion, or even to the existence of characteristic colour patterns in animals lower in the scale of organic development. The pleasures of rhythm and of tonal consonance were standardised and explained in a similar way.
In all this work, there is but scanty appeal to introspection. Choices are made, preferences indicated, and the statistical results are then reduced to averages, which take rank as scientific con- stants. Gradually, however, the belief grew that an introspective description of the aesthetic consciousness is the sine qua non of a psychological aesthetics. And attention is now directed to an analysis of the aesthetic attitude and its motives, to the laws of at- tentive apprehension and of empathy, to the successive stages of aesthetic reaction, to individual differences of aesthetic appreciation. Experiments have been made upon colours, singly and in combi- nation; upon spatial forms and arrangements; upon rhythms; upon musical cadences and the principal modes of musical com- position; upon reproductions of well-known paintings and of the chief architectural types; upon the ' funny pictures' of the maga- zines. It is too early to generalise; indeed, experimental aes- thetics has by no means received the general recognition accorded to-day to experimental psychology; there are many students of aes- thetics who will have none of it. We may say, however, that the doctrine of empathy, the doctrine that all aesthetic effect depends upon the reading of our own activities into the world about us (p. 417), is as characteristic of the present as the doctrine of the golden section was of the earlier period of the science.
502 Emotion Stimuli that arouse the sentiments of beauty, of ugliness, and of comedy may be brought into the laboratory; hardly stimuli that call out the sentiments of sublimity and tragedy. Here is one grave difficulty in the path of an experimental aesthetics. Another, and perhaps a still more serious difficulty, lies in the fact that the aesthetic tends to lapse into the merely emotive attitude, and this again to pass by affective adaptation into indifference. How shall we be sure that the observer, in an aesthetic experiment, gives a truly aesthetic reaction? The only course is to accumulate a very large number of observations, and to let the aesthetic differentia emerge of itself (pp. 32 f.). In the meantime, to accept any of the historical theories of aesthetic sentiment — as that whenever we enjoy the ludicrous we are consciously realising our own su- periority (the theory of degradation); or that the feeling of the ludicrous arises from the nullification of a process of ex- pectation (the theory of incongruity) — would be entirely pre- mature.
Intellectual Sentiments. — The nature of these sentiments is a matter of inference rather than of observation. We should prob- ably all grant, from casual observation, that there are true senti- ments of agreement and contradiction, of ease and difficulty, of truth and falsehood, of belief and disbelief. When, however, the attempt is made to bring them into the laboratory, by the method to be described in § 139, we find mainly degenerate forms, like the secondary feelings of recognition and imagination; we get affective attitudes rather than sentiments. Our observers have the work of secondary attention behind them, and it is not easy to place them in a situation in which an intellectual sentiment is aroused. On the other hand, the method employed is extremely recent, and was primarily devised for the study of thought itself. Hence it is possible that a modified method, employed with the direct inten- tion of evoking sentiments, might be more successful.
The Social or Ethical- and the Religious Sentiments. — Among the social sentiments we may place such experiences as shame and pride, humiliation and vanity, guilt and innocence, freedom and restraint, trust and distrust, gratitude and ingratitude, envy and compassion, jealousy and magnanimity, emulation and self-efface- References for Further Reading 5°3 merit, indebtedness and patronage, forgiveness and revenge; among the religious, such experiences as awe, reverence, humility, un- worthiness, faith, resignation, exaltation, remorse. Very few of these sentiments, however, are realised; most of them appear, at the best, as emotions, and ordinarily as secondary feelings or affective attitudes. No experimental study has been made of them.
The Expression of Sentiment. — So far as our data go, the or- ganic reaction in sentiment is of the same kind, but of less intensity, than it is in emotion. The reason is that the primary feeling, the affectively toned situation, has in most cases come to mean or stand for the total experience (p. 483). Casual observation would seem to show that in the complete realisation of a sentiment • — when, e.g., one feels for the first time that one has a critical judgment in some department of intellectual work; when, after the laborious study of art-canons and the repeated dissection of art-forms, one feels oneself in some measure adequate to the masterpiece under contemplation — observation seems to show that, in such cases, the organic reaction is fully as widespread and as intensive as it is in the case of joy or anger. The witness of language is here of small value, since the name of any sentiment may also designate an emotion.
References for Further Reading §§128-137. W. Wundt, Physiol. Psychologies iii., 1903, 209 ff.; Outlines of Psychol, tr. 1907, 188 ff.; T. Ribot, The Psychology of the Emotions, tr. 1897; A. Lehmann, Die Hauptgesetze des menschlichen Gefuhlslebens, 1892; A. Bain, The Emotions and the Will, [1859] § 128. W. Wundt, Znr Lehre von den Gemtlthsbewegungen, in Philosophische Studien, vi., 1891, 335 ff.; C. Stumpf, Ueber den Begriff der Gemuthsbewcgung, in Zeits.f. Psychol, u. Physiol, d. Sinnesorgane, §129. C. Lange, Ueber Gemiithsbewegungen, 1887; W. James, Princ. of Psychol., ii., 1890, 442 ff.
§§ 130, 131. W. James, The Physical Basis of Emotion, in Psychol. Review, i., 1894, 516 ff.; H. N. Gardiner, Recent Discussion of Emotion, 504 Emotion in Philos. Review, v., 1896, 102 ff.; Stumpf, op. cit.; J. Ward, art. Psychology, in Encyc. Brit., xxxii. (viii. of 10th ed.), 1902, 65.
§ 132. On the laws of emotive expression, C. Darwin, The Ex- pression of Emotion in Man and Animals, [1872] 1890, 28 ff.; Wundt, Physiol. Psychol., iii., 1903, 284 ff.; James, Princ. of Psych., ii., 1890, 477 ff.; B. Bourdon, L1 expression des emotions et des tendances dans le langage, 1892, 19 ff.; J. M. Baldwin, Mental Development in the Child and the Race: Methods and Processes, 1906, 211 ff.; E. Cuyer, La mimique, 1902. Further references on dynamogenesis in the author's Experimental Psychology, II., ii., 1905. 364 ff.
§ 133. Wundt, op. cit., 225; James, op. cit., 485; U. Irons, The Primary Emotions, in Philos. Review, vi. 1897. 626 ff.; W. McDougall, An Introduction to Social Psychology, 1908, 45 ff.
§ 134. T. Ribot, op. cit., 140 ff. On expansion and transfer, A. Lehmann, op. cit., 266 ff.; E. Freiherr von Gebsattel, Bemerkungen zur Psychologie der Gefiihlsirradiation, in Arch.fd.ges. Psychol., x., 1907, 134 ff. On illusion, T. Ribot, Proolemes de psychologic affective, § 135. Stumpf, op. cit.; T. Ribot, Qiiest-ce qiiune passion? in Revue philos., lxi., 1906, 472 ff.; Comment les passions fnissent, ibid., 619 ff. On temperament, Ribot, Psychology of Emotions, 380 ff.; F. Paulhan, Les caractlres, 1894; A. Fouillee, Temperament et caractere f- selon les individus, les sexes, et les races, 1895.
§§ l3^ '37- Wundt, op. cit., 123 ff., 624 ff.; Ribot, op. cit., 260 ff. On experimental aesthetics, G. T. Fechner, Zur experimentalen Aes- thetik, 1 87 1; Vorschide der Aesthetik, 1876; J. L. des Bancels, Les methodes de I'esthetique experimentale; formes et couleurs, in Annie psychologique, vi., 1900, 144 ff.; O. Kiilpe, Gegenwdrtiger Stand der experimentellen Aesthetik, in Bericht iiber den IL. Kongress f exper.
THOUGHT THOUGHT § 138. The Nature of Conscious Attitude. — Experimental psychology, all through its history, has drawn great profit from incidental results. At a time when critics were de- claring that the experimental method could never take us beyond the senses and the measurement of durations, at this very time the work done in sensation and reaction was throwing new light upon attention and recognition, comparison and discrimination. Every study that was undertaken, however narrowly conceived, bristled with suggestions for further study; and the reader of to-day wonders alike at critic and at investigator, — at the critic for his blindness, at the investigator for the tenacity with which he held, among a hundred distracting discoveries, to the single purpose of his investigation.
Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the centre of interest for experimental psychology has lain in the field of thought. And an incidental result of the attempt to analyse the processes of thought was the discovery of the conscious attitudes. What precisely these attitudes are, in their psychological status, is still a matter of dispute. They are reported as vague and elusive processes, which carry as if in a nutshell the entire meaning of a situation. They have now a predominantly emotive and now a pre- dominantly intellectual character. They are indicated, designated, either by a single word, such as ' hesitation," vac- illation,' 'incapacity,' or by a phrase, such as 'a realisation 506 Thought that the division can be carried out without a remainder,' ' a remembrance that we talked it all over before and couldn't reach any conclusion.' If the reader will now try to induce one of these consciousnesses in himself, — ■ the consciousness of general helplessness in trying to understand a complicated argument, or the consciousness that 27 will go evenly into 243, — he will realise the nature of the conscious attitude, the disproportion of logical meaning to psychological content, and the consequent diffi- culty of analysis.
It is impossible to give a list of the conscious attitudes; first, because the meaning of terms is not fixed, — words like doubt, hesitation, uncertainty, are often used interchangeably; but sec- ondly, and more importantly, because there seems to be no com- plex mental experience that may not appear in attitudinal form. We may have, under the guise of attitude, the consciousness that something is real, that it is lasting a long time, that it is over more quickly than we had expected, that it is the same as what came before, that it is incompatible with some other thing, that it makes sense, that it is novel, that it is on the tip of the tongue, that it will be difficult, that we need not do it, that we are not ready for it, that we can do it if we try, that we have made a mess of it, and so on. Or, on the emotive side, we may feel that we approve, that we dissent, that we are saved, that we have been tricked, that the whole thing is trivial, that at all events we have done our share, that we should like to swear, that it is rather interesting after all, that no one has the right to treat us like this, that we may as well go through with it, and so on again. There seems literally to be no end, till we have exhausted the resources of the language, to the catalogue of possible attitudes.
When the conscious attitudes first appeared, in the in- trospective reports of laboratory observers, they were set down as unanalysed; and the implication was that, while under the circumstances they resisted analysis, and must § 138. The Nature of Conscious Attitude 507 just be named and dismissed, they might, under more favourable conditions, be resolved into the familiar elemen- tary processes, — into sensation, image and affection. But the main interest of later investigations has been the mech- anism of thought, of judgment and reasoning; the attitudes have not been studied for their own sakes; and so, in de- fault of special analysis and in view of the ever lengthen- ing list of discriminable consciousnesses, the impression has grown up that they are unanalysable. Some psycholo- gists maintain, definitely, that there are awarenesses of meaning, and awarenesses of relation, which cannot be re- duced to simpler terms, but must be accepted as non- sensory and imageless components of the higher mental processes. The author believes, on the contrary, that the attitudes, so far as they are conscious at all, are always analysable.
The reader should clearly grasp the experimental situation. In the case of emotion, we have practically no introspective data; aside from a few observations taken in the course of work by the method of expression (p. 243), there is nothing but physiology and the schematic psychology of the text-books. In the case of the attitudes, we have a great bulk of recorded introspections; but the main emphasis has been placed, almost without exception, upon something else than attitude. The observers, being honest and competent, have noted the attitudes as they passed, — and that is all. Very little attempt has been made to bring an attitude to the conscious focus, or to trace its genesis and decay. It is an advantage, truly, that consciousnesses like doubt, hesitation, trying to remember, feeling sure, have been recognised for the puzzling things they are, set forth as problems for analytical treatment: only, a very serious and detailed effort at analysis must be made, before they can be classed as elemental and unanalysable.
The psychological situation with regard to attitude is, in fact, very much the same as it is with regard to affection (pp. 256 f.).
5o8 Thought The doctrine that our affective life shows degrees of pleasantness- unpleasantness, and nothing more, seems a little derogatory, as well as unjust to the complexity of human experience; and so there is a general readiness to accept any suggestion of other affective di- mensions that squares with everyday observation. In the same way, the doctrine that our intellectual life is, in the last resort, a matter of sensations and images, — this too seems derogatory and unjust, and any evidence that tells against it is welcomed. The author has no wish to insinuate that either of these issues is closed j so long as psychologists of standing disagree, so long are the issues very positively open. He does desire to warn the reader against a natural bias, that may lead to a prejudging of the questions be- fore they have been settled by experiment.