joy or enjoyment of play tends essentially to exclude all behaviour that would simultaneously excite, in the playing animal,—and, in social plays, both in the playing animal and in its companion, -anger, fear, or repugnance, and, therefore, restrains the manifestation of certain instincts within the limits required by its end.

As we rise in the scale of intelligence the joy of play acquires a new feature. The delight in certain games for human beings and perhaps for certain animals does not merely consist in the exercise, nor yet in the manifestation of certain instincts and acquired tendencies, but also in the knowledge that the game is an imitation of something that, were it real or 'earnest,' might arouse the serious emotions of fear, anger, and sorrow. At least, so far as we are even faintly aware of this fact, it becomes an additional source of enjoyment. Feeling secure, we can enjoy a certain proximity in our situation to danger. The resemblance and the contrast intensify the enjoyment. St. Augustine was perplexed by the fact that men went to the theatre to witness tragic spectacles which they would shrink from experiencing in reality. But the spectacle is a play which they enjoy partly because they know it to be a representation.

Now so far as the imitation of the real is a source of joy, joy tends to maintain the imitation. The play is consciously acted, and restrained within the limits of a representation. Thus in different ways the control of instincts and other tendencies is acquired in play through the action of the fundamental tendency of joy in which these instincts are for the time being organised.

The conclusion to which our study of Play, as the typical form of the behaviour of joy, now brings us, is that Joy, notwithstanding the apparent monotony which impressed us in the last chapter, is richer in instincts and acquired tendencies than any other emotional system. For whereas other systems are principally confined to the instincts which are originally connected with them, there are scarcely any which may not be called into activity through the enjoyment of play. Thus at one time or another all the instincts of flight, of pursuit, 1 'Confessions,' B. iii. 2.

of concealment, of killing or destruction, of threatening or defiance, of fighting for supremacy, of subjection, may be active in play, as well as the acquired tendency consciously to inflict pain, and innumerable other acquired tendencies, as to imitate the expression and behaviour of all human emotions,until life itself in all its contrasts becomes represented in play. But in joy there is this significant fact that all these instincts and acquired tendencies do not originally belong to itself, but to other systems. Still it makes them its own, and impresses its peculiar character on all of them.

Has Joy then no special instinct to account for the transformations it effects, so that tragedy itself becomes a delight? That will depend on whether we are to call its system, or any part of it, an instinct. Joy has a special impulse innately organised for the pursuit of a distinctive end. Like Fear and Anger, it subordinates the proximate ends of the various instincts it employs to this fundamental end. And this fundamental end is to maintain the situation which is the cause of joy, so long as the joy in it is felt. Notwithstanding the astonishing variety of its behaviour a general character pervades it. For whereas Anger is aggressive and Fear avoids aggression, and both work to effect some change in the existing situation, Joy alone attends and behaves in such a way as to maintain it as it is; and this behaviour, while much of it may be acquired in the course of an animal's life, is, at bottom, innately determined. According to the definition of Instinct we adopted in Chapter I, the system of joy should not be called an instinct, because it pursues a certain end; but so far as it innately determines a characteristic form of behaviour for the attainment of this end, this disposition should be called an instinct.

CHAPTER IX

SORROW

1. Of the Common Varieties of Sorrow and Melancholy

OF all the primary emotions Sorrow is the most difficult to interpret. It has been alternately lauded for its beneficial effects and condemned for its sterility. It seems to have many and even opposite tendencies. Yet we cannot doubt that whether for good or ill it is one of the great forces which mould character. But when, passing from these generalities, we turn to examine it, how marked is the contrast to anger, fear, or joy! What variety of instincts can we expect to find in its monotonous and depressing system? What strength can it have for carrying them into effect if it have them, or for choosing between their alternative impulses? Surely our instincts, requiring some energy for their accomplishment, should be organised in any other system than that of sorrow! Let us first study its varieties as disclosed through the different types of behaviour which they manifest.

There is a sorrow that gives free vent to its tears, sobs, and groans, and by its violence and abandonment moves the spectator more than any other variety. "When a mother," says Darwin, "suddenly loses her child, sometimes she is frantic with grief, and must be considered to be in an excited state; she walks wildly about, tears her hair or clothes, and wrings her hands."1 Gogol, in his celebrated novel, "Dead Souls," thus describes its effect on his hero:-" Hopeless sorrow, like a carnivorous worm, coiled itself about his 1 'The Expression of the Emotions,' ch. iii.

heart, . . . he sobbed aloud in a voice which pierced the thick walls of his prison . . . dashed his head against the wall, and struck the table with his fist, so that he wounded it till it bled; but he felt neither the pain in his head nor the violence of the blow." 1 He "fell upon a chair, completely tore off the skirt of his coat, which was hanging in shreds, flung it away from him, and, thrusting both hands in his hair, over the improvement of which he had formerly taken so much pains, he tore it out remorselessly, enjoying the pain by which he strove to deaden the unquenchable torture of his heart." 2

There is a second and opposite type of sorrow, which is tearless and mute, and concentrated within the mind. This sorrow "too deep for tears," or with "tears that at their fountains freeze,"3 is held to be the worst. People say, 'if she could only weep she would feel relief.' De Quincey in interpreting this type says: "The sentiment which attends the sudden revelation that all is lost! silently is gathered up into the heart; it is too deep for gestures or for words; and no part of it passes to the outside. Were the ruin conditional, or were it at any point doubtful, it would be natural to utter ejaculations, and to seek sympathy. But where the ruin is understood to be absolute, where sympathy cannot be consolation, and counsel cannot be hope, this is otherwise. The voice perishes; the gestures are frozen; and the spirit of man flies back upon its own centre. Here the difference between the two types is made to depend on the nature of the loss or ruin experienced, or on the interpretation placed upon it. But there are other causes. How a man manifests sorrow often seems to rest on innate differences of temper or character, or on different stages of mental development. The child approximates to the first type; the man with his self-control to the second. But there are men also with the expansive, emotional character of the child, and who exercise a like charm, in spite of their weakness. There are others as innately disposed to reserve, and to repress emotional expression, although this tendency may be only shown at an age at 1 Ch. xvi.

2 Ibid.

"4

3 Tennyson, 'In Memoriam,' xx.; 'fill'd with tears that cannot fall,' xix, 4 'Works,' 'Suspiria de Profundis.'

which self-control becomes possible. They are those of the 'ardent temper.' If the others express more than they feel, these feel more than they express. Their "still waters run deep." "O have a care of natures that are mute!" says Meredith; "They punish you in acts.” 2

4

There is a third type of sorrow which is without either the impulsiveness of the first or the concentration and self-control of the second, but which sinks under a sense of weakness and discouragement, because it produces, or is conditioned by, loss of energy and physical depression. This is the sorrow which the physiological psychologists describe as having a “paralysing action . . . over the voluntary muscles,"3 and as accompanied by a "feeling of fatigue, of heaviness." The sorrowful man "moves slowly, staggers, creeps along swinging his arms, his voice is weak, without brilliancy, in consequence of the weakness of the muscles of expiration and of the larynx; in preference he remains inert, prostrate and silent." 5 This type, while it is sometimes the immediate effect of misfortunes, is also the subdued state into which violent sorrows pass after they have exhausted us. There is a mood corresponding to it, a depressed condition of body, which disposes us to feel it.

There is a fourth type at the opposite extreme to the last, which is not accompanied by a feeling of fatigue or prostration, but by an activity approaching frenzy. It is that one of "our Ladies of Sorrow" which De Quincey named the "Mater Tenebrarum." She, he says, does not move slowly, but " with incalculable motions, bounding, and with a tiger's leaps." "She is the defier of God. She is also the mother of lunacies, and the suggestress of suicides." Lear in his grief curses. his daughters, and cries, "O, let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven! Keep me in temper; I would not be mad."7

If we compare these four types of sorrow, which illustrate different varieties of its behaviour, we must judge that two of them at least are not pure, but mixed. The second is due to self-control. This self-control so characteristic of certain 2 Modern Love,' xxxv. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid.

1 See supra, book i. ch. xv.

3 Lange, 'Les Emotions,' 'La Tristesse.'

6

Suspiria de Profundis,'' Our Ladies of Sorrow.'

7 A. i., sc. v.