There are a great many such instances in the series of emotional attitudes in animals and man. But we have only to state the principle of antithesis clearly, to see that it is no principle at all, unless we hold that the emotion causes the expression. And even then, we are no better off, I think. For we still have to ask why the emotions themselves are different. This, we have seen, we can only answer by saying that they are different because the movements have been different by which the organism got itself adjusted to the particular objects, etc., giv- ing these several emotions. We come, that is, back to movements again, and have to explain why, in these cases, the movements are antithetical.
Darwin himself is as modest here as elsewhere, and only says that it is natural that opposite mental states should be associated with opposite physical states. But there is no reason, so far, that they should in fact. Darwin here makes, quite unconsciously, an incursion into the field of popular fallacy and of Hegelian logic. It is a perfect nightmare, — which should be left to the Hegelians to revel in, — this reading into nature of opposites to all her facts, simply because the mind's forms of thinking go by contraries. Why, if showing the fangs aids an animal when he fi2;hts, should coverino^ them aid him when he loves } His teeth are involved in one case, but not in the other. If rigid length aids him in standing up against his 244 Motor Attihides and Expressions, enemy in a fight, wliy should contortions be indulged in when he sees a friend?
The only general fact which in advance seems to make these antithesis likely, is the arrangement of the muscles, whereby they go in pairs, called 'antagonists.' Each mus- cle of such a pair is held in control by the other; and whichever contracts, the other is involved in some kind of an opposite contraction; so it is easy to say that when consciousness is in a state which represents the stimulation of one muscle, it is only to be expected that the passage of consciousness into an opposite state will not only release the one muscle, but, by a kind of organic rebound, stimu- late the antagonist. This is physiological and true; but it still in no way explains the origin of different contrary at- titudes; for it is a main task of our theory of development to explain just this arrangement of the muscles. How does it come that there are antagonistic muscles.'' What uses called them into being } For the muscular system has developed by use and fitness. Once answer this by show- ing the practical use of both muscles of each pair of antagonists, and we can then explain both the fact that attitudes are antithetic, and the further fact that opposite emotions are there with them. For we have seen that it is the muscular and organic attitudes and associations which give quality to the emotions.
It becomes necessary, therefore, to completely reverse the popular conception of antithetical expression and Darwin's conception also, as far as he leaves the facts which he so adequately describes, and shares in the theory that an emotion causes its so-called expression. We must find in our theory of development by means of detailed motor adaptations, ground for the origin of a muscular Habitual Motor Attitudes. 245 system which works by antithesis of push and pull, for- ward and backward, contraction and relaxation, antagon- ism, in short; and with it the detailed differences among these attitudes themselves, which correspond to differences in emotions, as we actually find them in our experience.
The latter task is largely a matter of detailed examina- tion and classification of the various muscular groups found in the different emotions. This has been done with some success for many emotions. I shall not attempt to take that further here. The genetic problem, however, the rise of antagonism, is a further question to set before us.
It has doubtless occurred to readers of the two pre- ceding chapters, what account is possible of the rise of muscular and emotional antagonism. The facts of organic gain and loss, contraction and expansion, pleasure and pain, have already cost us so many words that it tends to come to mind at once as an explanation of the fact of an- tithetic expression. What I have said of hedonic expres- sion, recognizing it as the only true expression, leads us to expect a great division among states of consciousness with respect to their hedonic colouring as pleasurable or painful. If organic life has from the start manifested itself in two forms of movement, and if all new adjust- ments have been effected inside of this fundamental bifurcation, then of course the muscular system, in its development, must take on the form of a series of organs fitted to carry this original antithesis into all the details of life. This is exactly the account which must be given of the rise of the muscular system, with its pairs of antag- onists. The muscles represent special habits and combi- nations of movements fitted either to close up upon and 246 Motor Attitudes and Expressions.
hold stimulations, or to draw away from and escape them; and these are antithetic ways of behaviour.
It is evident, however, that this explanation of antithetic functions was not possible on the old theory of the nature of emotion, the theory that the emotions are so many dis- tinct mental acts or functions which * express ' themselves outwards in the muscles. For expressions of such a kind might just as well as not come into opposition with hedonic expression, or they might clash with the reactions most useful for the organism in relation to its environment, or, again, they might, by their cross currents, prevent the development of a muscular system on any consistent plan. The old view gave rise to all kinds of dualism; the dual- ism between pleasure-pain and emotion being most of all invited. 1 It is the force of such a criticism, implicitly felt rather than clearly recognized, that has led so many psycholo- gists to claim that emotion is only a compounded state of pleasures or pains, a position which well deserves the description given it by James: ^ " This is a hackneyed psychological doctrine, but on any theory of the seat of emotion it seems to me one of the most artificial and scholastic of the untruths that disfigure our science. One might as well say that the essence of prismatic colour is pleasure and pain."
This view of antithetical reactions is also impossible on the current biological theories of development; that is, either on the theory that accounts for all development by 1 See my criticism of such a dualism in the work of Marshall {Pleasure, Pain, and y^sthetics), in The Psychological Revieiv, I., November, 1894, p.
Habitual Mo I or Attititdes. 247 compounded repetitions of reactions, alone, or on the more psychological theory going by the names of Spencer and Bain. For my view requires us to recognize an original tendency of organic forms to react in two antithetical ways with reference to stimulations which give the two original vital effects corresponding to pleasure and pain; and that none of the earlier theories do give this recognition, I have shown in an earlier place. Darwin held — as far as he took up the theory of ontogenetic adaptation, as I think he nowhere did explicitly — the ordinary biological doctrine of adaptation by chance repetition and compounding of movements which proved themselves useful; so of course he was unable to see any real reason for the existence of systems of movements to which no special utility in race history could be assigned.^ 1 It may be said, as it has been said to the writer, in conversation, by one who is well informed in biology, that this view of mine requiring the distinct recognition of movements towards advantageous sources of stimulation and away from what is disadvantageous, is made by biologists, and so there is no novelty in the position. With this I do not agree; and it is well to point out the fact that Darwin in this crucial case of antithetical movements did not use any such principle. And yet the need of some such real antithesis so strongly impressed the mind of Darwin, as is seen in his detailed casting about in his Chapter II. for some proof of antithesis, that his attitude seems to me to throw his authority somewhat on my side in opposition to the current theories which consider the organism practically passive in its uniform responses to stimu- lation. Passages, indeed, might be quoted abundantly from Darwin, which show what his doctrine of organic adaptation probably would have been if he had developed it. Of course biologists admit the fact that living creatures of certain kinds behave as if they found some sensations pleasant and others repulsive; it is the facts as reported by biologists that I am resting my case upon. But they have never, I think, made this kind of antithetical reaction fundamental to the life process, nor have they ever utilized it to explain general motor adaptations. It has been treated instead as a sort of outside fact and, as it were, a mystery, a fact which the chemical theorists did not like to recognize at all, and one which the vitalists cited in support of 'vital force,' ' directive tendency,' and that kind of thing. Recently psycholo- 248 Motor Attihides and Expressions, Our conclusion, then, in regard to antithetical attitudes, is that antithesis is a fundamental fact of hedonic ex- pression; and as hedonic expression is the only real ex- pression, the principle of antithesis becomes, everywhere in motor development, the one law of expression. The other principle, already mentioned, of Darwin's, that of * serviceable associated habits,' is, on the other hand, the one principle also in its sphere; but its sphere is not expression, — its sphere is motor adaptation. All adapta- tions whatever — except the first great division of move- ments in accordance with the law of antithesis — are instances of 'serviceable associated habit.'
Consequently we may say that in any organic attitude whatever the case is the same as we found it to be, in the earlier section, in emotional attitudes. There is the real expression factor, the new hedonic element, issuing in new antithetical phases, by the law of dynamogenesis; and there gists have taken it up as lending evidence to certain theories of the ' psychic properties of matter,' etc.
In short, this most remarkable of all adaptations in biology has had just about the same treatment in that science that the fact of conscious imitation has had by psychologists. Conscious imitation has been remarked upon ever since Aristotle, vaguely described, and then dropped, simply because psycho- logical theory gave no opening for such a mysterious thing. I cite below the contradictory utterances of certain psychologists on imitation.
And when we come to compare the two facts, it is sufficiently remarkable that we are able to reconstruct the theory of adaptation in such a way as to show that this kind of organic selection by movement, and this kind of imitative selection by consciousness, are the same thing. * Organic imitation ' and ' con- scious imitation ' — each a circular process tending to maintain certain stimula- tions and to avoid others — here is one thing. Organic and mental adaptation is one process and one only, and it works by this two-fold contrast from the start. If so, then we have reclaimed two great outcast facts, and shown them to be fundamental facts. But this intuition, if it be a true one, and if my thought about it be clear, requires practically a revolution of theory on both sides, the organic and the mental.
Habitual Motor Attitudes, 249 is, besides, the quality as such, the differencing 'feel' of the attitude accomplished, with its habitual pleasure or pain, and all the organic associations, which are in all cases due to the reflex, consolidated, instinctive habits of useful action.
Mr. Darwin also finds it necessary to recognize another class of facts which he is unable to bring under either of the foregoing principles, facts which he puts together under the so-called principle of 'direct nervous discharge.' He finds over and above the movements which show reactions useful to the creature or to his ancestors, and also over and above the movements antithetical to the foregoing, certain movements of the animal which appear as such to follow no law^ This very fact of lawlessness, overflow, accidental issuing of the stimulating process right out into the muscular and organic systems, is expressed by the phrase 'direct nervous discharge'; all it means, therefore, as a principle, is that we are dealing with phenomena of stimulation and reaction. Such cases are one's convulsive movements when in a dentist's chair, the jumping and clapping of hands of a child's glee, the lawless gambolling of playful lambs, and the skittishness of a horse on a cold day, — movements which arc not just alike in any two crea- tures, nor just alike in any two experiences of the same creature, — and with it all, various general effects, such as trembling, shivering, fainting in fright, flushing in joy, blush- ing in shame,glandular secretions, variations in heart action, etc., some of them positively harmful to the organism.
This class of phenomena — facts which Darwin found no use for in the economy of organic development — are, from the point of view of my theory, most instructive and ^ See his detailed instances, loc, cit., pp. 66 ff.
250 Motor Attitudes and Expressio7is.
valuable as evidence. They give, to my mind, very direct proof of my main thesis respecting the method of organic adaptation. This we may see on closer examination, although the points are in the main so evident that the exposition may seem tiresome.
We have found that increased vital energies tend to produce heightened or excessive motor processes, — Spen- cer's 'heightened discharge,' Bain's 'pleasure,' my 'motor excess.' We have found that this and its opposite, lowered vitality, express themselves in antithetical move- ments, expansions and contractions, advancing and retreat- ing, etc. Again, we have found that it is from these antithetical movements that all further adjustments or adaptations are effected by 'organic selection,' those movements of either kind which are useful being retained as permanent utility reactions. And this scheme of course assumes the constant presence, at every stage of animal development, of the excess discharge — the ' hedonic expression ' of my earlier section.
Further, the characteristics of movements which repre- sent unutilized vital and nervous overflow are plain enough. They should be very diffuse, indefinite, purposeless, highly toned by pleasure or pain; diffuse, because they arise from central processes of such intensity as to overflow the ordinary motor channels already fixed by heredity and habit; indefinite, because as soon as they do get for themselves fixed ways of discharge, representing in any sense an accommodation of the organism to the stimulations which call them out, then at once they fall into another category, that of 'serviceable associated habit '; purposeless, because they represent excess energy over and above the regular expenditures called for by Habitttal Motor Attitudes. 251 habitual purposive reactions; and highly toned, because their rise is itself a phenomenon of those vital conditions which lie at the basis of the hedonic consciousness.
Now these are just the characters which Darwin and other writers attach to the movements which illustrate his principle of 'direct nervous discharge.'
It is only, therefore, a step to the conclusion that in these movements we have, running through all life phe- nomena, high and low, the evidence of the excess pro- cesses, and their reverse, required by the theory of development. • These are just the material from which new adjustments are made. Certain of these 'direct dis- charges ' happen to do something for the organism which it never succeeded in doing before, this secures pleasure, and by the law of further increased discharge through the same or associated channels again, these movements pass over to the reign of the law of 'serviceable associated habits '; but with it all, the issue in movement of the increased vital and pleasure processes due to success, has again recruited or depleted the excess discharge. So the ' circular process ' goes on.
We should find, however, that movements of this class are not quite lawless, nor purposeless. If I am right in finding that they are reactions in states of waxing and waning vitality — that they constitute just the hedonic expression, the only expression, properly speaking, which an organism has, — then they should of course express something. They should partake directly in the charac- ters found to mark off all antithetic movements. Move- ments which accompany highly pleasure-toned psychoses should be expansive, forward, outward, exciting; but be- sides, they should carry with them all the characteristic 252 Motor Attitudes and Expressions.
utility reactions which are already associated with pleas- urable experiences. Movements, on the other hand, which accompany highly pain-toned psychoses, should be con- tractile, inward, repressing, and should carry along with them, besides, all the attitudes regularly associated with painful experiences.
Now I submit that the close observation of all these confused — convulsive, if you will — sets of movement, do show this antithesis to a very marked degree. When they accompany pleasures they are found to involve not only those quite purposeless movements which simply mean diffused overflow of energy, but they show, more- over, two very clear kinds of utility reaction also. First, in excessive joy, we find not only the tremblings, weepings, heart-beatings, and muscle-twitchings, but also the usual habitual signs of joy which all pleasurable experiences show — the laugh, the facial expression, the voice tones, the bodily attitudes; and, further, certain tensions and movements of very evident utility, in grasping, retaining, coming-up-to-for-further-possession, etc., found in attitudes of welcome generally. And on the other hand, in connec- tion with the random movements shown in violent pain, the creatures also show two classes of habitual attitudes: first, those of organic and vital depression, felt as faintness, par- alysis, sweating, etc.; and second, attitudes and acts of rebellion, defence, escape-by-removal from stimulation, such as frowning, setting teeth. And the two systems of atti- tude characteristic of pleasure are, in general, antithetic to those characteristic of pain.
In fact, so clear is it that these 'direct ' are movements limiting processes to the ordinary antithetic attitudes, that we are able to look upon them as end-terms each in a Habitual Motor Attitudes. 253 series which recapitulates organic growth in the acquisition of habits. Pleasure begins by bringing out the reactions which are oldest in race utility, then as it is continued or increased, those of newer formation and less univer- sality, then those peculiar to the individual, and finally, at the limit of duration or excess of intensity, the pur- poseless convulsive and random movements of Darwin. And pain proceeds by a similar series of manifestations — tracing reversely the series of adjustments acquired in race and individual history, the whole series being anti- thetic, in its great features, to the corresponding series of pleasure attitudes.
There is also another principle clearly, although inade- quately, recognized by Darwin, which may now be brought out; the principle made more of in James' discussion under the phrase 'principle of analogous feeling stimuli.' Darwin added a clause to his statement of the law of 'serviceable associated habit,' which brings under it a great class of seemingly useless muscular movements. He says: " We have now, I think, sufficiently shown the truth of our first principle, namely, that when any sensa- tion, desire, dislike, etc., has led during a long series of generations to some voluntary movement, then a tendency to the performance of a similar movement will almost cer- tainly be excited, whenever the same or any analogous or associated sensation^ etc., although very weak, is expe- rienced, notwithstanding that the movement in this case may not be of the least use." (Italics mine.) And he continues a little further on: ** When we treat of the special expressions of man, the latter part of our first principle will be seen to hold good, namely, that when movements, associated throuo'h habit with certain states 254 Motor Attitudes and Expressions.
of mind, arc partially repressed by the will, the strictly involuntary muscles, as well as those which are least under separate control of the will, are liable still to act; and their action is often highly expressive. Conversely, when the will is temporarily or permanently weakened, the voluntary muscles fail before the involuntary." ^ The latter quotation may be taken to be the citation from the voluntary life of an instance of the principle that similar or * analogous feeling ' stimuli tend to bring, in whole or part, by complication, semi-inhibition, or lack of inhibition, the reactions in movement which are habitual and useful in connection with the stimuli which they resemble.
This series of facts, which are, in the sequel, of the first importance for mental development, are of especial interest here, as showing the relation of the theory of development now explained to the older purely biologi- cal theory. The latter, it will be remembered, finds the exclusive cause of development in repetitions of reactions, under complicated conditions which force a crossing or compounding of paths, in such a way that each single move- ment, in response to each single stimulus, tends to lose its identity, and to become part of a larger discharge, which issues in a group of movements co-ordinated for a larger use and function. The conception of how this compound- ing takes place in the organism is a purely mechanical con- ception; a process of the draining of energies, first in the channels which are largest, most permeable, and most prac- tised, and then into those less and less so; the whole group being called out on later occasions, as a group, as far as any stimulus which the organism gets, starts the central energies into channels adequate to effect the discharge as a whole.
Habitual Motor Attitudes, Now this conception of growing complexity, or co-ordi- nation in reactions, is quite in order still, on my theory of adaptation, and it is indeed even more reasonable than before. Just in as far as the organism has a means of its own of selecting, duplicating, or maintaining, its stimu- lations, by adapted movements, as the ' circular ' process enables it to do, just in so far is a premium put upon the speedy fixing of great drainage channels representing these particular adapted movements. And, further, just so far is there created the tendency of other, accidental and more trivial, useful or useless, processes, to drain off into these great channels. It is only an instance of this that the child learns with such remarkable speed to make great happy adjustments, each then leading to a number of smaller adjustments. The early start which all organ- isms have in the antithesis between the two classes of movements which express waxing and waning vitality, and hedonic contrasts, all in one — this secures a splendid organic tendency directly in the lines of discharge which smaller special adjustments need to issue in, and which, but for this preparation beforehand, the smaller ones would have to make by actual compoundings among themselves.
In interpreting this process more closely, in the life- history of organisms, two aspects of it rise to claim special remark — aspects which break into psychology as analogies, or explanations, of far-reaching importance, as will appear later on.
In the first place, there is at every stage of development in the animal series, a certain mass of normal process, * set for good,' so to speak, which the creature brings to his ex- periences at birth. It may be thought of, functionally, as a 256 Motor Attitudes and Expressions.
tendency of the organism as a whole, called its 'heredity impulse,' to take a given course of development, which will in a measure recapitulate the course of organic devel- opment antecedent to this particular stage; and also as a tendency of the individual creature to acquire actions of particular kinds with great facility, by reason of these native organic pathways of discharge. The most marked instances of this latter are the instincts; but the tendency is equally present to the performance of functions not so completely handed over to nervous habit, but still requir- ing consciousness and somewhat gradual learning; such as speech, walking, standing, thumb-grasping, etc.
Now with reference to the influence of these innate tendencies, it is easy to see that everything which the organism does zvill tend to conform itself if possible to them. New processes of stimulation will set their dis- charges toward these old channels. Old ways of action will try to serve as adequate responses to new sets of con- ditions. To deny this is to say that the organism can simply create new matter for itself at the call of any stimulus from without. If the organism is one, then any new process must fight for its life, especially for its life of action. For a genetic view requires us to hold that there is no part of an organism, no muscles, no pathways, but those which have arisen for a use; so if a new thing is to be learned, it must resist the old ways of action and super- cede the old ways of use, by overcoming the impulse which already urges the organism on, or it must itself accept and subsidize the old channels and muscles, and conform, as far as may be, to their previous habits of action.
This latter is the dominating result. All new experi- Habitual Motor Attitudes. 257 ences tend to lapse into old ones, to be in their effects on the organism identical with them, to have their differences rubbed off, and so to discharge through the pathways used by the old ones.
This is a necessary result of any adequate view of the rise of neurological habits; and we will see below that psychology directly and imperatively confirms it. The principle of Assimilation, treated in a later connection, ^ is a direct reflection in consciousness of this aspect of the law of habit. And this is only to say, as Darwin said, that we ought to find, in certain states of mind, attitudes struck which have arisen, not for use in this condition of mind, but in conditions of mind which feel like it in any respect. But the two processes do not discharge the same way because they feel alike; on the contrary, their feeling alike is the sense that their discharge is the same way. The attitudes are useful in connection with the earlier stimula- tions, and for their sakes they arose; but they are also used by these other central processes which thus come to be 'analogous feeling stimuli* for consciousness. So a great mass of apparently useless processes fall after all under the law of 'serviceable habits.*