Th. Ribot

“ Is the most emotional art also—as required by our thesis—the most dependent on physiological conditions? Yes, and if we wish to demonstrate this, facts are so numerous that the only difficulty is to choose between them. Let us leave aside every intellectual element, all representations, either vague or distinct, evoked by music; let us, further, avoid all metaphysical dissertations on its nature and its revelation of the Infinite, or its origin in the human species, in order to confine ourselves to its physical and affective aspect, and to grasp the connection. ”

“ The famous theory (Taine’s) of the work of art as the necessary product of race, time, and environment is much contested and very vague. Still more vague is Guyau’s view: “Art is, through the medium of feeling, an extension of society to all natural beings and even to beings conceived as transcending the limits of nature, or, in fact, to fictitious beings, created by human imagination.” It is an abuse to words to apply the name of society in this way: a society implies solidarity; every other use of the word is merely arbitrary. ”

“ This is proved by innumerable facts; at some unforeseen moment the spark flashes out; experience has hardly anything to do with it. It has its necessity and its fatality; the creator has his task to accomplish; he is fitted for one kind of work only; even when he has some adaptability, he is imprisoned within his own manner, and keeps his own individual style; if he leaves it, he fails altogether, or becomes a bad imitator of others. It has its impersonality; creation is not the child of the will, but of that unconscious impulse which we call inspiration ”

“ Feeling, as has been said, is the pioneer of knowledge—i.e., it sometimes involves a confused knowledge; it is the anticipation of an ideal. In this case it is not an idea which excites a feeling, but the development of a feeling which ends by taking concrete form in an idea; its source is in the temperament and the character. The theory of evolution has familiarised us with the notion of spontaneous variations in animals and plants. This phenomenon is also found in psychology—in the intellectual order, in the emotional order, in the order of action. ”

“ When it reaches the consciousness, it merely becomes sensible. Thus what is at first a vague sense of discomfort, asserts itself in the consciousness as hunger, and may lead to theft, murder, and all sorts of excesses. Another state of the organism shows itself in floating, indeterminate desires, then asserts itself as love for some particular being, and may in the end break out like a thunderstorm. It would be superfluous to review in like manner the whole of the passions, making the same comments. Whether simple or complex, their evolution is the same. ”

“ But from a semi-social feeling, the love of ourselves can easily become an anti-social feeling. There is no emotion which passes so simply and definitely from the normal form to passion, and from passion to madness. At the bottom of the tendency of the ego to affirm itself there is a potentiality of limitless expansion and indefinite radiation. A man whose self-feeling is vigorous resembles those species of animals and vegetables which—prolific and of tenacious vitality—would, if left to themselves, cover the whole surface of the globe ”

“ 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. ”

“ For such a doctrine to become a real religion it must be concreted and condensed. That we may not, however, seem to cavil and dispute about words, or come to an arbitrary decision that the one thing is a religion and the other a religious philosophy, we may state the question in an objective form. As soon as religious thought ceases to have a worship or a ritual, and indeed finds itself incompatible with such, it is a philosophical doctrine. Stripped of all external and collective character, of all social form, it ceases to be a religion, and becomes an individual and speculative belief. ”

“ If we admit the existence of the temperate character, it ought to find its place here. Can we admit it, or ought it not rather to be looked on as a purely ideal category? Though we may admit that persons are actually to be found in whom feeling, thought, and action are present in strictly equal proportions, ought we not to consider this as the absolute suppression of character, i.e., of any marks of individuality? ”

“ The formula, “everything is alive,” is, however, too absolute; it only suits those things which were seen to move and change—i.e., the majority, not the totality of things. It seems as if the absence of motion, stability, fixity, the want of reaction, had been a sort of revelation to a simple mind. Perhaps it was through the spectacle of the fixity of things that the notion of order or law made its very humble entry into the world. However that may be, it is certain that the depersonification of nature began early to mark the origin of science. ”

“ But can the images of olfactory and gustatory sensations, of internal sensations, of past pains and pleasures, of emotions formerly experienced, be revived in the consciousness spontaneously, or at will, independently of any actual occurrence which might provoke them? We know that, in some painters, the inner vision is so clear that they can draw a portrait from memory; that, in some musicians, the inner hearing is so perfect that they can, like Habeneck, ideally hear a symphony just played, recalling all the details of the execution, and the slightest variations in the time. ”

“ Irascible subjects, on hearing the name of their enemy, at the mere thought can revive the rising feelings of anger. The timid person shudders and turns pale when recalling the danger once incurred. The lover, thinking of his mistress, completely revives the state of love. If we compare the recollection of an extinct passion with the occurrence to the mind of a passion still existing, we shall clearly perceive the difference between intellectual and affective memory, between the mere recollection of the circumstances and the recollection of the emotion as such. ”

“ It is in the dance accompanied by song and gesture that we must seek for the explanation; it had a social utility, it favoured concerted movements and common action, it gives unity, and the consciousness and visual perception of unity, to an assemblage of men; it is a discipline, a preparation for corporate attack or defence, a school of war. Hence the capital importance of time. The Kaffirs, in immense numbers, sing and dance with such precision as to resemble a huge machine in motion. Among several tribes the rhythm must be perfect, and any one who makes a mistake is punished with death. ”

“ Let us remark that, in its origin, the “knowledge” which we take in its lowest degree has only a practical value; sensation is a monitor, an aid, an instrument, a weapon with only one aim—the preservation of the individual,—and completely subordinated to that end; otherwise, it is nothing but a useless manifestation, a luxury. The nexus between the sensations and the organic and motor reactions is therefore innate—i.e., it results from the very constitution of the animal. If it fails, the conditions of existence are at fault. ”

“ 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 ”

“ To this first group belong all those who have an abundant supply of physical energy and need an outlet for it: sportsmen, those who love an adventurous life without other aim than action, globe-trotters, who hurry about the world as fast as steam will take them, not for the sake of business or of acquiring knowledge, making no attempt to study the countries they pass through, either at the time, or before, or afterwards, hurrying to the end of their journeys in order to begin again. ”

“ The intellect is capable of instantaneously finding out a new truth, or recognising an idea as just and conformable to the nature of things; but all this remains in a theoretic condition—i.e., without emotional colouring or tendency to realise itself. That which is discovered so rapidly by means of logic, takes years, or even centuries, to become a motive for action. “If the Greeks were unable to extend their feelings of humanity so as to include the barbarians, the cause lay, not in intellectual insufficiency, but in the arrestive power of their national feeling. ”

“ If these facts, among so many others, are not sufficient, let us consider what takes place in masses of people under strong excitement, in certain cases of the psychology of crowds. “If into the term morality we import the momentary appearance of certain qualities, such as abnegation, devotion, disinterestedness, self-sacrifice, the sense of justice, we may say that crowds are sometimes accessible to a very lofty morality ... a much loftier one, indeed, than that of which the isolated individual is capable. Only collectively is humanity capable of great acts of disinterestedness and devotion.” ”

“ Sorrow, on the contrary, is accompanied by a lowering of the circulation, and very often, in the early stage, tears are entirely wanting. The shedding of tears produces relief, it is a safety-valve; it would answer to a second stage—that of slackened tension—in which the return of vitality has begun. In other words, the tears of joy and tenderness would correspond to the stage of action, the tears of sadness to the stage of reaction.
The psychology of tender emotion seems to me reducible to a single question—that of its origin. ”

“ The first species cannot be designated by any proper name; it is that of the humble. Excessive sensibility, limited or moderate intelligence, no energy—such are their constituent elements. Every one knows such persons, for they are frequently met with. Their dominant note is timidity, fear, and all paralysing modes of feeling. Like La Fontaine’s hare, they live in perpetual uneasiness. They are afraid for themselves, for their families, for their small position or business, for the present, for the future. They worry themselves about everybody’s opinion, even that of unknown passers-by. ”

“ I think we have thus replied to the question previously put—why certain sensations, images, ideas, have the privilege of producing organic and motor changes which, translated into the language of consciousness, constitute the emotional state—and justified our answer. The sensation, the image, the idea, are only occasional causes, incapable by themselves of producing any emotion: it springs from the inmost personality of the individual—from his organisation—expresses it directly, and participates in its stability and its instability. ”

“ Emerson’s saying, that what Nature at one time provides for use she afterwards turns to ornament, is the formula which sums up this period. The æsthetic feeling has no fixed connection with the conservation of the individual; it is called up by occurrences which give its distant, disinterested echo, serving the purpose of pleasure only. The legends, the genii, fairies, mythological beings who have become mere material for poems, pictures, operas, were once a belief, a reality, a terror, of which we retain only the similitude in the shape of a game. ”

“ It is the synthesis of two antithetic elements: the destructive and contemptuous laugh which makes us feel ourselves superior; and the indulgence, pity, and compassion which place us on a footing of equality with others. This emotional manifestation may be simply a passing whim, or it may be a permanent trait of character, a peculiar manner of understanding nature and human life, striking an average between optimism, which finds everything too bright, and pessimism, which sees the ugly side of everything. ”

“ If there is an incontestable fact—one which, even among the ancients, was familiar to triteness—it is that in every animal the fundamental, ineradicable instinct is that of self-preservation, of existing, and persisting in existence. Now, suicide, whether voluntary or unreflecting, deliberate or impulsive, is the negation of the fundamental tendency, not a theoretic or partial negation, or one in word only, but in deed and absolute. ”

“ The individual who suffers violence, who thinks himself attacked or injured, immediately reacts. This is “the exasperated instinct of conservation,” or, to call it by its true name, revenge. So the savage who, before Darwin’s eyes, broke his son’s head for having dropped a store of shell-fish, the fruit of a laborious day’s fishing. This defensive reflex frequently recurs in the psychology of crowds; it is needless to give instances. It may seem paradoxical to take revenge as a starting-point for the sense of justice ”