Sorrow has then a useful function to perform even in selflove and pride, and some of the worst changes of character ascribed to it have their utility for the systems to which it belongs. The bad effects of sorrow may be traced either to the system which it subserves or to its being insufficiently controlled. Hence the significance of the line, "Let Love clasp grief lest both be drowned." 1

To give a profound, comprehensive, and adequate interpretation of sorrow would tax the powers of the greatest minds, nor could it be accomplished by them until all the diverse effects of sorrow in the different systems of the mind had themselves been severally understood. But by degrees, by accumulating a great variety of facts from real life and literature, and by tracing in each case the particular circumstances, we may at length be able to achieve what the greatest would now fail in attempting.

1 Tennyson,' In Memoriam,' I.

B B

CHAPTER XIV

DISGUST

1. Of Primitive Disgust and its Distinction from the Emotion Developed from it

WE shall consider, in the present and subsequent chapters, two emotional systems which, in respect of their earliest forms, are also primary, and, like sorrow, are in a certain sense opposites of joy. While Disgust, which we shall first study, has great biological importance as a force of character it is inferior to joy, sorrow, fear, and anger. What has been said of suffering: "Tu fais l'homme, ô douleur, oui, l'homme tout entier,"1 could hardly be applied to Disgust.

We have throughout our study of the primary forces of character laid little emphasis on them as emotions and much more on them as emotional systems; that is, as systems which are both constituted of emotions and of the instincts and other tendencies organised with them. We have not wished to imply that when any one of these is active it is always accompanied by the emotion. When the activity of the instinct is most sudden and unopposed, the emotion, if it be brought into activity at all, will be of low intensity and definiteness. This fact is conspicuous in both fear and anger. Further, the activity of an instinct, though, in normal cases, it has some psychical impulse complementary to it, has not, therefore, a distinctive emotion complementary to it. There are many instincts of great individual importance and distinctness that have no corresponding distinctive emotions. What single distinctive emotion is connected with the nest1 Lamartine, quoted by Littré, 'Dict.' Art. 'Douleur.'

building instinct? May it not evoke different emotions in different situations?-joy, for instance, when the nest is finished; but, during the process of building it, vague, changing emotions, of which the analogues in our minds are hope, anxiety, and despondency? So, also, the locomotory instincts of different animals have some impulse connected with them, which precedes or accompanies their activity; but they possess no distinctive emotions. They become organised, as we have seen, in a variety of emotional systems, as anger, fear, hunger, and others, without altering fundamentally their emotional character. For, although such instincts have each their own impulse and qualitatively distinct sensations connected with them, an impulse with its sensations does not constitute a distinct emotion. Impulses, which during excitement have some resemblance to emotions, are vague in quality, and present little difference from one another.

This is the case with primitive disgust. It is at first an instinct with an impulse, but not a definite emotion; later, when it becomes also a definite emotion, this instinct is less active and obtrusive. When the peculiar sensations of this instinct are most violent and oppressive, the emotion, instead of being correspondingly intense, does not even exist; and when the emotion is most clearly felt, these sensations are less felt and fall into the background of consciousness. But whether a

definite emotion or only a definite instinct, whether in its primitive or acquired form, it is still at bottom the same force directed to the same instinctive ends of ejecting, repulsing, or withdrawing from the thing that disgusts us. These two forms of the same force continue to subsist in us together, having both their utility, like the roadway and the railway in the State. We still at times experience the impulse and the violent sensations of vomiting, and, at others, the feeling of disgust for persons of uncleanly habits or lives.

In the preceding chapters of this book no attempt has been made to retrace the process by which the primary

1 Such highly-complicated or "chain-instincts" (see Art. "Instinct, especially in solitary wasps," by Prof. C. Read, The British Journal of Psy., vol. iv., pt. i.) form a class apart. They cannot be connected with any one emotion.

emotions have been developed. It is buried in the obscure past of the race, a past darker on the psychical than on the biological side. But we may, perhaps, assume that instincts have preceded definite emotions,1 though the excitement of the instinct was normally accompanied by an impulse—an impulse that was felt with increasing intensity under conditions of arrest, and that, when most intense, bore some resemblance to an emotional state. Now, in the case of disgust, Nature has admitted us a little way into her laboratory, and has disclosed to us, in part at least, how from certain definite instincts there has been developed a definite emotion.

M. Richet has investigated the causes and physiological conditions of the most familiar variety of disgust, and has shown that its excitement is due to a sensory stimulus affecting the nerves of taste or smell, thence spreading to other nerves, and leading at last to the contraction of the muscular fibres of the stomach, and producing vomiting or nausea. The bitter taste of vegetable poisons, unwholesome food, and the smell of putrescent matter, arouse this primitive disgust; as also, when we are surfeited, the excess of food, or, when we are ill, the taste or the smell even of the food which ordinarily pleases us. This disgust is obviously of service to the organism by protecting it against the appropriation of substances poisonous or unwholesome, as well as from excessive feeding, and from taking food at times at which we should be unable to digest it. But this primitive disgust is not yet a constituent of our character, nor is it any more an emotion than the impulses that expel waste products from the body. It is, however, accompanied by the oppressive sensations of vomiting or of nausea.

The second variety of disgust is aroused by sensations of touch, or by the perception of certain objects by means of touch, and does not require the co-operation of gustatory or

1 M. Ribot holds that the complex emotions have been developed from simple emotions, and the latter from needs and instincts.'-' Psy. of the Emotions,' 2 part, introduction, ii.

2 'L'Homme et l'Intelligence,' pp. 41-84. See also Th. Ribot, 'The Psychology of the Emotions,' 2 part, ch. i. ii.

olfactory sensations. We are disgusted by the touch of certain parasitical insects, or by the cold and clammy touch of snails, slugs, and reptiles; and afterwards the sight of them will arouse this disgust. In distinction from the first type we notice here the absence of vomiting and its accompanying sensations; faint sensations of nausea may indeed be present, but this does not appear to be always the case, unless the sense of smell is also stimulated. In this type we come nearer to an 'emotion' of disgust, for the violent sensations of the first type are not aroused. The touch of a toad arouses sensations of shuddering rather than of nausea.

Before considering this second type further we must notice that there is a more developed variety of the first in which sensations of disgust are aroused through taste or smell,— and, afterwards, indirectly, through association,-but the cause of these sensations is also perceived through sight or touch as when after noticing a disagreeable odour in the neighbourhood of some animal we regard it with disgust; or when we feel disgust at the sight of some dish of food on account of our former experience of its disagreeable taste. And so by association we are disgusted at the sight of animals of filthy habits, and of such as feed on dead bodies,— especially when we are in their near neighbourhood,—and also at human beings who appear unclean in their persons.

This type, with its perception of the object to which the disgusting sensations are due, is probably not primitive. We can trace in many cases its development. In primitive disgust we are absorbed by our internal sensations. The sick infant may only be aware of its disagreeable sensations and of the impulse that expels the liquid from its stomach and mouth. The disgust it feels is a mass of sensation with this impulse. Probably it does not at first perceive the cause, and refer its sensations to that. It is the same with any other voluminous and disagreeable bodily state. We are absorbed by the sensations and impulse connected with them. But the child, as it develops and increases in experience, connects the effect with the cause, and at the sight of the cause has its former disagreeable sensations and impulse revived in a less intense form, and refers these to the