writers regard fear as the essential emotion of melancholia. "We give the name of melancholia," says one, "to this condition in which we see the gradual development of a state of apprehensive depression, associated with more or less fully-developed delusions."1 There are certain forms of melancholy caused by visceral disease, and persisting as a mood, in which we find the same union or alternation between sorrow and fear. The depressed mood "comes on suddenly without reason and forces the patient to seek some solitary place. If it attacks him during a meal the patient will rise and leave the table as if to vomit. He will sit in some obscure corner of the ward away from his fellows or will retire to his own room and shut himself in. He will leave his home and seek some solitary place where he may weep alone and unseen. . . . He usually has an intense desire to weep-a desire that in many cases he is unable to control, and yet he is unable to say why he is miserable or why he weeps."2 Many "are haunted by a vague idea of impending ill. They do not know the nature of this ill nor to whom it will happen." "3 If we disconnect Sorrow from the other systems which may interfere with it, or may control it,-from fear and anger in the one case, and from love in the other-its several varieties seem reducible to two, the depressed and the excited. Are these so contrary in their manifestations—primitive varieties of the same emotional system, or is one or the other to be explained by the influence of some factor extraneous to it? If sorrow were always a depressing emotion we should expect to find it always conditioned or accompanied by, or tending to produce, a depressed condition of bodily functions. We should not expect to find an energetic type at all. But not only are acute sorrow and melancholia sometimes accompanied by unusual energy, but certain calm and energetic natures are by temperament or habit melancholic. Aristotle thought that men of genius were of 1 Krepelin 'Lectures on Clinical Psychiatry' (trans. Th. Johnstone), Lect. I., p. 6. 2 Henry Head, 'Certain Mental Changes that Accompany Visceral Disease,' 'Brain,' vol. xxiv. pt. iii. 3 Ibid. a melancholic temperament. Albert Dürer in his "Melancholia" represents not weakness but strength. She is a "robust female figure . . . . not melancholy either from weakness of the body or vacancy of mind. She is strong and she is learned; yet though the plumes of her wings are mighty, she sits heavily and listlessly, brooding amidst the implements of suspended labour, on the shore of a waveless sea." "1 This is not the sadness of the idle, but "the sadness of the most learned, the most intelligent, the most industrious.” 2 For he that "increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow." Our attempt to understand the system of sorrow through a study of its most conspicuous varieties of behaviour has not disclosed its essential nature, because these varieties have been shown to be determined either by the influence of some extraneous system, as anger or fear, or by variations in the amount of energy present in the organism. For we have to take account of the facts that the degree of energy possessed by any given individual may not only differ considerably from that which another possesses, but from that which he himself possesses at other times. If we suppose a sudden sorrow to overtake a man in whom there is little available energy to resist its depressing influence, it is obvious that it will have a more crushing effect than in the case of a man in whom there is a great store of such energy. In the one case its influence may be unresisted; in the other, it may evoke a resistance so effective as to mask the depressing effect. The sorrow of a healthy child is often violent in its manifestations when things with which he is engrossed are taken from him: the sorrow of an energetic man is often restless, because there is present the energy to restore, where that is possible, the loss sustained. Let us now pass from considering the behaviour of sorrow to consider the nature of its system; and as this is so much more concealed than in the case of anger or fear, we shall endeavour to trace the causation of sorrow, and to discover the difference that any new sorrowful event makes to the state that precedes it. 1 P. G. Hamerton, ‘The Intellectual Life,' part x. letter ii. 2. Of the Causation of Sorrow As there is a primitive fear or anger aroused by stimuli innately connected with its excitement, and an acquired fear or anger dependent on preformed sentiments, so there is also a primitive sorrow, and a sorrow which is dependent on an acquired love or hate. Miss Shinn, in her careful observations of her niece, records in the second half of the first year "three or four instances every month of crying, sometimes bitterly, over disappointments or withdrawal of something enjoyed." At first there was "no grief" at such withdrawal; but in the twenty-third week "she nearly cried several times at having things taken from her, or being interfered with while she was playing with them; and in the next week she was bitterly grieved at such incidents, and cried till her eyes were red." 1 Now we notice that in this case sorrow is caused by some interference with or frustration of a present impulse. The child's activity is engaged. He is playing with something. There is an impulse to continue the occupation. Now we have noticed that one of the most familiar causes of anger is interference with present impulse; and here we find this interference evoking not anger but sorrow. Still, there is a difference in the degree of the interference. While a certain degree of interference tends to arouse anger, an interference that amounts to frustration tends rather to arouse sorrow. Similarly while some bodily pains excite anger, as the sharp or smarting pain of a blow, other bodily pains crush us, and take away the power of resistance and of anger, and excite sorrow. Just then as we can resist some pains but not others, so we can resent a certain degree of interference with or opposition to impulse, but not a greater degree. The causation of sorrow is then connected with some event that overpowers us or is irremediable. Where we can resist we may become angry, where we cannot there is room only for sorrow. Sorrow is the emotion of weakness. But we can be overpowered in one of two ways: (1) by an opposition to impulse so great that we cannot resist it; 1 'Notes on the Development of a Child,' part iii. p. 243. (2) by a pain so great as to deprive us of energy to resist it. There are therefore two kinds of weakness: (1) our bodies may be weak, and the amount of energy for resistance small; (2) or our bodies may be strong and energetic, but the opposition to our impulse or desire may be so much stronger that resistance is unavailing. Thus in the later sorrows of life as those that depend on the death or destruction of an object loved-whatever our strength and energy, we recognise that it is unavailing. Here sorrow is the emotion of conscious weakness, conscious not of the weakness of the body, but that all its strength is weakness in comparison with the force opposed to it. But the young child is weak in both ways: it has little strength and energy, and the power of those that control it is supreme. Thus in the first year we should expect that the general situation would dispose the child to sorrow much more frequently than to anger. The sorrow of the child arises not only from interference with its occupations, but from other causes, such as bodily pain and discomfort. All pain is connected with an impulse to be rid of it, an impulse of repugnancy or distaste. But the child does not know how to be rid of its pain: the pain persists, and its impulse is unavailing. Here again there is present a situation of weakness, which is one of the essential conditions of sorrow, whether the child is conscious of its weakness or not. Hence the frequent crying of the young child when suffering bodily discomfort or pain, which calls the mother to its assistance. When the period of dentition arrives, fretfulness becomes chronic. Miss Shinn observes that her niece possessed a joyous disposition. "Besides the pure joy in existence that seemed to fill her, her pleasure in her own increasing freedom of muscular movement and sense activity, her delight in motion and frolic, seemed to fill her days with an exuberant joyousness." 1 when dentition commenced, her mood changed from joy to sorrow: "for several hours she would be restless, fretful, ready to cry on slight occasion, and would demand attention and diversion constantly." 2 Again the hunger of the child may not be satisfied at the 1 Op. cit. ch. ii. p. 239. 2 Ibid., p. 241. proper time. The impulse of its hunger is impeded by its weakness, by not possessing the congenital endowment by which so many animals find the teat. Its mother sleeps, but the first cries of its sorrow awaken her. This is that which Descartes regarded as "la première tristesse de l'enfant,— la faute de nourriture." The absence of light is also a cause of sadness. Thus a sick child tried to lessen her disagreeable sensations and her suffering," by the light. La disparition de la lumière attriste le petit patient. Son regard est fixé au loin et les yeux peu mobiles; il est évident qu'il ne cherche que la lumière." 2 In all these cases there appear to be two constant conditions of the causation of sorrow: (1) a present impulse; and (2) the frustration of this impulse, whether by a force opposed to it which is overpowering, or by the insufficiency of energy, strength, skill, or knowledge at the disposal of the impulse. This holds both of primitive sorrow, which is due to the frustration of some fundamental impulse, as that of hunger or of the repugnance to discomfort or pain,-and of the sorrow to which we render ourselves liable through our sentiments, as that which overtakes us when the object we love is injured or destroyed. But in primitive sorrow there is an innate connexion between the emotion and the stimulus or cause which excites it; in the later sorrows this connexion is acquired. The first may therefore be entitled, in accordance with our usage of the word, instinctive sorrow, in the same sense in which we speak of an "instinctive sympathy." The second or later sorrows are sometimes not caused by the frustration of an impulse which had been active in us before the emotion was aroused. Thus when told of the sudden death of someone we love, our minds till that moment may have been occupied with something else; but at the news of the catastrophe this sentiment becomes active. Our thought, at first, is often surprised and confused, and it takes some time before we are able to realise our loss, and feel the sorrow consequent on it. It is not until the desires of this sentiment, -its desires of union and companionship, and reciprocating 1 'Les Passions de l'Âme,' 2me part. * Sikorski, quoted by B. Perez, 'L'Enfant de trois à sept ans,' ch. ii. iii. |