ment just begun to appear as if they were fixed for ever, absorbing our thought and our will in their own eternity. We find in architecture, in the very midst of this startling immobility, certain effects analogous to those of rhythm. The sym metry of form, the indefinite repetition of the same 10 TIME AND FREE WILL CHAP, i architectural motive, causes our faculty of percep tion to oscillate between the same and the same again, and gets rid of those customary incessant changes which in ordinary life bring us back with out ceasing to the consciousness of our personality: even the faint suggestion of an idea will then be ' enough to make the idea fill the whole of our mind. Thus art aims at impressing feelings on us rather than expressing them; it suggests them to us, and willingly dispenses with the imitation of nature when it finds some more efficacious means. Nature, like art, proceeds by suggestion, but does not com mand the resources of rhythm. It supplies the deficiency by the long comradeship, based on influences received in common by nature and by ourselves, of which the effect is that the slightest indication by nature of a feeling arouses sympathy in our minds, just as a mere gesture on the part of the hypnotist is enough to force the intended suggestion upon a subject accus tomed to his control. And this sympathy is shown in particular when nature displays to us beings of normal proportions, so that our atten tion is distributed equally over all the parts of the figure without being fixed on any one of them: our perceptive faculty then finds itself lulled and soothed by this harmony, and nothing hinders any longer the free play of sympathy, which is ever ready to come forward as soon as the obstacle in its path is removed.
It follows from this analysis that the feeling of CHAM THE AESTHETIC FEELINGS 17 the beautiful is no specific feeling, but that every feeling experienced by us will assume Stages in the > f.,.,,,, aesthetic emo- an aesthetic character, provided that it has been suggested, and not caused. It will now be understood why the aesthetic emotion seems to us to admit of degrees of intensity, and also of degrees of elevation. Sometimes the feel ing which is suggested scarcely makes a break in the compact texture of psychic phenomena of which our history consists; sometimes it draws our attention from them, but not so that they become lost to sight; sometimes, finally, it puts itself in their place, engrosses us and completely monopolizes our soul. There are thus distinct phases in the progress of an aesthetic feeling, as in the state of hypnosis; and these phases correspond less to variations of degree than to differences of state or of nature. But the merit of a work of art is not measured so much by the power with which the suggested feeling takes hold of us as by the richness of this feeling itself: in other words, besides degrees of intensity we instinctively distinguish degrees of depth or eleva tion. If this last concept be analysed, it will be seen that the feelings and thoughts which the artist suggests to us express and sum up a more or less considerable part of his history. If the art which gives only sensations is an inferior art, the reason is that analysis often fails to discover in a sensa tion anything beyond the sensation itself. But the greater number of emotions are instinct with a xg TIME AND FREE WILL thousand sensations, feelings or ideas which pervade them: each one is then a state unique of its kind and indefinable, and it seems that we should have to re-live the life of the subject who experiences it if we wished to grasp it in its original complexity. Yet the artist aims at giving us a share in this emotion, so rich, so personal, so novel, and at enabling us to experience what he cannot make us understand. This he will bring about by choos ing, among the outward signs of his emotions, those which our body is likely to imitate mechani cally, though slightly, as soon as it perceives them, so as to transport us all at once into the indefin able psychological state which called them forth. Thus will be broken down the barrier interposed by time and space between his consciousness and ours: and the richer in ideas and the more preg nant with sensations and emotions is the feeling within whose limits the artist has brought us, the deeper and the higher shall we find the beauty thus expressed. The successive intensities of the aes thetic feeling thus correspond to changes of state occurring in us, and the degrees of depth to the larger or smaller number of elementary psychic phenomena which we dimly discern in the funda mental emotion.
The moral feelings might be studied in the same The moral W^' ^6^ US ^^ P^V aS an example' feelings. Pity. It consists in the first place in putting Iti increasing " * Onese^ mentally in the place of others, in suffering their pain. But if it were CHAP, i THE MORAL FEELINGS 1 9 nothing more, as some have maintained, it would inspire us with the idea of avoiding the wretched rather than helping them, for pain is naturally abhorrent to us. This feeling of horror may indeed be at the root of pity; but a new element soon comes in, the need of helping our fellow-men and of alleviating their suffering. Shall we say with La Rochefoucauld that this so-called sympathy is a calculation, " a shrewd insurance against evils to come "? Perhaps a dread of some future evil to ourselves does hold a place in our compassion for other people's evil. These however are but lower forms of pity. True pity consists not so much in fearing suffering as in desiring it. The desire is a faint one and we should hardly wish to see it realized; yet we form it in spite of ourselves, as if Nature were committing some great injustice and it were necessary to get rid of all suspicion of complicity with her. The essence of pity is thus a need for self-abasement, an aspiration down wards. This painful aspiration nevertheless has a charm about it, because it raises us in our own estimation and makes us feel superior to those sensuous goods from which our thought is tem porarily detached. The increasing intensity of pity thus consists in a qualitative progress, in a transition from repugnance to fear, from fear to sympathy, and from sympathy itself to hu mility.
We do not propose to carry this analysis any fur- 20 TIME AND FREE WILL CHAM ther. The psychic states whose intensity we have just defined are deep-seated states which conscious JQ not seem to have any close relation to states oonnec- ** J p te< ^'- tneir external cause or to involve the per- s~ ception of muscular contraction. But such states are rare. There is hardly any pas sion or desire, any joy or sorrow, which is not accom panied by physical symptoms; and, where these symptoms occur, they probably count for some thing in the estimate of intensities. As for the sensations properly so called, they are manifestly connected with their external cause, and though the intensity of the sensation cannot be defined by the magnitude of its cause, there undoubtedly exists some relation between these two terms. In some of its manifestations consciousness even appears to spread outwards, as if intensity were being developed into extensity, e.g. in the case of muscular effort. Let us face this last phenomenon at once: we shall thus be transported at a bound to the opposite extremity of the series of psychic phenomena.
If there is a phenomenon which seems to be presented immediately to consciousness under the Muscoiar ei- f°rm °* quantity or at least of magni- flXXt?oStude, it is undoubtedly muscular effort. We picture to our minds a psychic force imprisoned in the soul like the winds in the cave of Aeolus, and only waiting for an opportunity to burst forth: our will is supposed to watch over CHA».I MUSCULAR EFFORT 21 this force and from time to time to open a passage for it, regulating the outflow by the effect which it is desired to produce. If we consider the matter carefully, we shall see that this somewhat crude conception of effort plays a large part in our belief in intensive magnitudes. Muscular force, whose sphere of action is space and which manifests itself in phenomena admitting of measure, seems to us to have existed previous to its manifestations, but in smaller volume, and, so to speak, in a compressed state: hence we do not hesitate to reduce this volume more and more, and finally we believe that we can understand how a purely psychic state, which does not occupy space, can nevertheless possess magnitude. Science, too, tends to strength en the illusion of common sense with regard to this point. Bain, for example, declares that " the sensibility accompanying muscular movement coincides with the outgoing stream of nervous energy: " x it is thus just the emission of nerv ous force which consciousness perceives. Wundt also speaks of a sensation, central in its origin, accompanying the voluntary innervation of the muscles, and quotes the example of the paralytic " who has a very distinct sensation of the force which he employs in the effort to raise his leg, although it remains motionless." a Most of the 1 The Senses and iht Intellect, 4th ed., (1894), p. 79. * Grundzuge der Physiologischen Psychologic, 2nd ed. (1880), Vol. i, p. 375.
22 TIME AND FREE WILL CHAP, i authorities adhere to this opinion, which would be the unanimous view of positive science were it not that several years ago Professor William James drew the attention of physiologists to certain phenomena which had been but little remarked, although they were very remarkable.
When a paralytic strives to raise his useless limb, he certainly does not execute this move ment, but, with or without his will, The feeling of,10 effort, we he executes another, borne movement are conscious. t.1 • not of an «- is carried out somewhere: otherwise penditure of...„,T..
force but of there is no sensation of effort.1 Vulpian muscular had already called attention to the fact that if a man affected with hemi- plegia is told to clench his paralysed fist, he unconsciously carries out this action with the fist which is not affected. Ferrier described a still more curious phenomenon.2 Stretch out your arm while slightly bending your forefinger, as if you were going to press the trigger of a pistol; without moving the finger, without contracting any muscle of the hand, without producing any apparent movement, you will yet be able to feel that you are expending energy. On a closer examination, however, you will perceive that this sensation of effort coincides 1 W. James, Le sentiment de I' 'effort (Critique philosoph-ique, 1880, Vol. ii,) [cf. Principles of Psychology, (1891), Vol. ii, chap, xxvi.]
2 Functions of the Brain, 2nd ed. (1886), p. 386.
CHAP, i MUSCULAR EFFORT 23 with the fixation of the muscles of your chest, that you keep your glottis closed and actively contract your respiratory muscles. As soon as respiration resumes its normal course the con sciousness of effort vanishes, unless you really move your finger. These facts already seemed to show that we are conscious, not of an expendi ture of force, but of the movement of the muscles which results from it. The new feature in Pro fessor James's investigation is that he has verified the hypothesis in the case of examples which seemed to contradict it absolutely. Thus when the external rectus muscle of the right eye is paralysed, the patient tries in vain to turn his eye towards the right; yet objects seem to him to recede towards the right, and since the act of volition has produced no effect, it follows, said Helmholtz,1 that he is conscious of the effort of volition. But, replies Professor James, no account has been taken of what goes on in the other eye. This remains covered during the experiments; nevertheless it moves and there is not much trouble in proving that it does. It is the movement of the left eye, perceived by consciousness, which produces the sensation of effort together with the impression that the objects perceived by the right eye are moving. These and similar observations lead Professor James to assert that the feeling 1 Handbuch der Physiologischen Opiik, ist ed. (1867), pp. 600-601.
24 TIME AND FREE WILL CHAP, i of effort is centripetal and not centrifugal. We are not conscious of a force which we are supposed to launch upon our organism: our feeling of muscular energy at work " is a complex afferent sensation, which comes from contracted muscles, stretched ligaments, compressed joints, an immo bilized chest, a closed glottis, a knit brow, clenched jaws," in a word, from all the points of the periphery where the effort causes an alteration.
It is not for us to take a side in the dispute. After all, the question with which we have to intensity of deal *s not whether the feeling of effort fort^ropJr-6*" comes from the centre or the periphery, teT1 of° oxur but m wnat does our perception of its body affected, intensity exactly consist? Now, it is sufficient to observe oneself attentively to reach a conclusion on this point which Professor James has not formulated, but which seems to us quite in accord with the spirit of his teaching. We maintain that the more a given effort seems to us to increase, the greater is the number of muscles which contract in sympathy with it, and that the apparent consciousness of a greater intensity of effort at a given point of the organism is reducible, in reality, to the perception of a larger surface of the body being affected.
Try, for example, to clench the fist with increas ing force. You will have the impression of a sensation of effort entirely localized in your hand and running up a scale of magnitudes. In reality, what you experience in your hand CHAT, i MUSCULAR EFFORT 25 remains the same, but the sensation which was at first localized there has affected scionsness of your arm and ascended to the shoulder; an increase of...,,, muscular et- finally, the other arm stiffens, both legs fort consists in,,..,,, the perception do the same, the respiration is checked; er number of it is the whole body which is at work, sensations (2) But you fail to notice distinctly all these a qualitative.., a qualitative.., change in concomitant movements unless you are warned of them: till then you thought you were dealing with a single state of consciousness which changed in magnitude. When you press your lips more and more tightly against one another, you believe that you are experiencing in your lips one and the same sensation which is continually increasing in strength: here again further reflec tion will show you that this sensation remains identical, but that certain muscles of the face and the head and then of all the rest of the body have taken part in the operation. You felt this gradual encroachment, this increase of the surface affected, which is in truth a change of quantity; but, as your attention was concentrated on your closed lips, you localized the increase there and you made the psychic force there expended into a magnitude, although it possessed no extensity. Examine carefully somebody who is lifting heavier and heavier weights: the muscular contraction gradually spreads over his whole body. As for the special sensation which he experiences in the arm which is at work, it remains constant for a very long time and hardly changes except in 2(T) TIME AND FREE WILL CHAP. I quality, the weight becoming at a certain moment fatigue, and the fatigue pain. Yet the sub ject will imagine that he is conscious of a con tinual increase in the psychic force flowing into his arm. He will not recognize his mistake unless he is warned of it, so inclined is he to measure a given psychic state by the conscious movements which accompany it! From these facts and from many others of the same kind we believe we can deduce the following conclusion: our conscious ness of an increase of muscular effort is reducible to the twofold perception of a greater number of peripheral sensations, and of a qualitative change occurring in some of them.
We are thus led to define the intensity of a superficial effort in the same way as that of a deep-seated psychic feeling. In both The same de-.,...j finition of m- cases there is a qualitative progress and to superficial an increasing complexity, indistinctly seated feelings perceived. But COnSClOUSnCSS, aCCUSujriJcUate be- tomed to think in terms of space and to translate its thoughts into words, will denote the feeling by a single word and will localize the effort at the exact point where it yields a useful result: it will then become aware of an effort which is always of the same nature and increases at the spot assigned to it, and a feeling which, retaining the same name, grows without changing its nature. Now, the same illusion of consciousness is likely to be met with again in the case of the states which are inter- CHAP, i ATTENTION AND TENSION 27 mediate between superficial efforts and deep- seated feelings. A large number of psychic states are accompanied, in fact, by muscular contractions and peripheral sensations. Sometimes these super ficial elements are co-ordinated by a purely specu lative idea, sometimes by an idea of a practical order. In the first case there is intellectual effort or attention; in the second we have the emotions which may be called violent or acute: anger, terror, and certain varieties of joy, sorrow, passion and desire. Let us show briefly that the same de finition of intensity applies to these intermediate states.
Attention is not a purely physiological pheno menon, but we cannot deny that it is accompanied The interme- ^Y movements. These movements are neither the cause nor the result of the i- phenomenon; they are part of it, they traction. express it in terms of space, as Ribot has so remarkably proved. l Fechner had already reduced the effort of attention in a sense-organ to the muscular feeling *' produced by putting in motion, by a sort of reflex action, the muscles which are correlated with the different sense organs." He had noticed the very distinct sen sation of tension and contraction of the scalp, the pressure from without inwards over the whole skull, which we experience when we make a great effort to recall something. Ribot has studied 1 Le mecanisme de V attention. Alcan, 1888.
(28! TIME AND FREE WILL CHAP. I more closely the movements which are character istic of voluntary attention. " Attention con tracts the frontal muscle: this muscle...draws the eyebrow towards itself, raises it and causes transverse wrinkles on the forehead...In extreme cases the mouth is opened wide. With children and with many adults eager attention gives rise to a protrusion of the lips, a kind of pout." Certainly, a purely psychic factor will always enter into voluntary attention, even if it be nothing more than the exclusion by the will of all ideas foreign to the one with which the subject wishes to occupy himself. But, once this exclusion is made, we believe that we are still conscious of a growing tension of soul, of an immaterial effort which increases. Analyse this impression and you will find nothing but the feeling of a muscular -Contraction which spreads over a wider surface or changes its nature, so that the tension becomes pressure, fatigue and pain.
Now, we do not see any essential difference between the effort of attention and what may be intensity called the effort of psychic tension: acute desire, uncontrolled anger, passion- ion- ate love, violent hatred. Each of these states may be reduced, we believe, to a system of muscular contractions co-ordinated by an idea; but in the case of attention, it is the more or less reflec tive idea of knowing; in the case of emotion, the unrefiective idea of acting. The intensity of these violent emotions is thus likely to be nothing but CHAP, i VIOLENT EMOTIONS 2Q