Classics in Psychology

Robert H. Wozniak - Bryn Mawr College

Alexander Bain: The Emotions and the Will (1859)

The Emotions and the Will is the sequel to Alexander Bains seminal text, The Senses and the Intellect. 28

Like its predecessor, it was for many years the most widely read English language treatise on the topic. Alsolike its predecessor, it was thoroughly associationistic in approach, taxonomic in form, andpsychophysiological in content. Focusing especially on the latter two divisions of his tripartite classification ofmind into intellect, feeling (including sensation and emotion), and will (including the link between feeling andaction), Bain presented a much broader treatment of emotional and volitional phenomena than was typical forthe period. He also conceptualized belief in a novel and influential fashion.

The first section of Bains book was devoted to the emotions. It began with a seminal discussion of the natureof emotion that not only stressed the importance of the muscular movements, secretions, and other organicchanges that accompany mental states, but explicitly recognized the necessity of supplementing introspectionwith the observation of expression in the study of emotion. In his emphasis on emotional expression, Baincame close to the view that would eventually become known as the James-Lange theory of emotion. In theJames-Lange theory, the subjective character of emotion was held to be identical to the experience of thebodily changes directly precipitated by an emotion-producing event. 29

Bains view, which was more moderate, was that emotional expression enters as one, albeit a crucial,component of the subjective experience of emotion. The fundamental proposition, respecting Emotiongenerally, he wrote, (is that) the state of Feeling, or the subjective consciousness which is known to eachperson by his own experience, is associated with a diffusive action over the systema wave of nervousinfluence(affecting) the moving members. Some of these are more readily agitated than othersforexample, the features of the face; which therefore constitute the principal medium of the expression of feeling.But observation shows that all parts of the moving system are liable to be affected by an emotional waveThe emotion of Fear, for example, would not have its characteristic mental development if the currents fromthe brain to the moving organs and viscera were arrested. What we take merely as signs of the emotion are apart of its own essential workings, in whose absence it would be something entirely different. 30

Besides pointing to expression as a central feature of emotion, Bain identified aspects of subjectiveexperience such as pleasure, pain, and excitement, differences among the stimulants to emotion, andcharacteristic actions and consequences as features that differentiate among emotions. On the basis of thisfeatural typology, he went on to treat the data on emotion according to what he liked to call his NaturalHistory Method. Nowhere in his voluminous writings was his predilection for botanizing clearer than in histaxonomy of the emotions into eleven broad families further subdivided into species.

Among the more notable aspects of this discussion were Bains treatment of the emotions of terror andintellect. The common source of terror, he pointed out, is uncertainty: Nothing more readily dissolves thecomposure of the frame than the sense of the unstable, or insecure(such as) the giving way of the bodilysupportany breach of expectation is eminently discomposing.

In this he anticipated later views typically associated with John B. Watson (loss of support) and Donald B.Hebb (breach of expectation). His description of the expression of terror, published thirteen years beforeDarwins treatise on emotional expression, 31 was remarkable in its detail. Terror, he wrote, is seen in thestare of the eyes, elevation of the eye-brows, and inflation of the nostrilin the hair standing on end underthe increased action of the muscle of the scalp, and in the contraction or creeping of the skina convulsiveclench of the handthe dropping of the jawthe loosening of the sphinctersloss of appetitethe generalconvulsive tremorthe cold sweat and the pallor of the skin

The emotions of intellect were those accompanying operations of intelligence such as the contiguous train ofassociations, recog-nition of similarity, discovery, or problem solution. Bains treatment of these emotions ismost often cited for his emphasis on the pleasure associated with the first recognition of similarity (i.e.,analogical thinking) and the pain and intellectual revulsion attendant upon exposure to contradiction. Baineven approached the modern concept of cognitive dissonance in describing the minds tendency to resolve

contradiction by abandonment of one of the contraries, orrepudiationof both 32

After dealing with emotion, Bain turned to will. His theory of will is perhaps best known, thanks largely to thecriticism it received from William James,33 for ascribing the springs of human action exclusively to pleasureand to pain. Bains approach to will, however, was far more important for the fact that it not only conceived ofvolition in terms of the link between feeling and action but gave explicit recognition to the circular mechanismby which this link becomes established in experience. As Bain described it: An acute pain is a strongstimulant, under which every action that we are predisposed to is made more intense. In the course of theseexcited spontaneous discharges, a movement happens that makes the pain to ceaseat the beginning ofconscious life, a first coincidence of this nature amounts to very little. But let the thing happen a second, third,or fourth time, and important consequences will ensuethe mind is alive to the coincidence of this withdecreasing or vanished pain 34 Both Baldwin and Piaget later made fundamental use of this concept. 35

Finally, The Emotions and the Will is also well known for Bains statement regarding the nature of belief. Belief, he wrote, has no meaning, except in reference to our actionsthe primordial form of belief isexpectation of some contingent future about to follow on our actionaction is the basis and ultimate criterionof belief. 36 As has been amply documented, this conception of belief served a pivotal role in CharlesSanders Peirces formulation of pragmatism. 37

28 Bains dates are 18181903; for biographical information on Bain, see Bain, A. (1904). Autobiography.London: Longmans, Green. The work under discussion here was first published as Bain, A. (1859). TheEmotions and the Will. London: John W. Parker and Son. The first volume in what Bain liked to call his Systematic Exposition of the Human Mind (see Bain, op. cit., p.iii) was Bain, A. (1855). The Senses and theIntellect. London: John W. Parker and Son.

29 See, for example, James, W. (1890). The Principles of Psychology (Vol. 2). New York: Henry Holt, p. 449.

30 Bain (1859), op. cit., pp. 5, 910.

31 Darwin, C. (1872). The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animal. London: John Murray. Bain had, ofcourse, ready access to Charles Bells classic treatise on expression, Bell, C. (1806). Essays on the Anatomyof Expression in Painting. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, which he cites; but his descriptions ofemotional expression go well beyond those of Bell. It would be interesting to know whether he was familiarwith the other major work on emotional expression of the period, Piderit, Th. (1858). Grundstze der Mimikund Physiognomik. Braunschweig: Vieweg und Sohn.

32 Bain (1859), op. cit., p. 200, 205.

33 James, op. cit., pp. 54955.

34 Bain (1859), op. cit., p. 352.

35 Baldwin, J.M. (1895). Mental Development in the Child and the Race. Methods and Processes. New York:Macmillan; Piaget, J. (1936). La Naissance de lintelligence chez lenfant. Neuchatel: Delachaux & Niestl.

36 Bain (1859), op. cit., pp. 56970.

37 Fisch, M.H. (1954). Alexander Bain and the genealogy of pragmatism. Journal of the History of Ideas, 15,41344.

Extracted from Classics in Psychology, 18551914: Historical Essays ISBN 1 85506 703 X Robert H. Wozniak, 1999

Classics in Psychology, 18551914 Historical Essays - Contents Classics in Psychology, 1855-1914