_Law of Decay: its formula, and its general application in psychology—Difficulties where the affective life is concerned—Successive disappearance of the disinterested emotions (the æsthetic and intellectual), of the altruistic (moral and social), the ego-altruistic (religious feeling, ambition, etc.), and lastly, the egoistic—Converse proof: cases of arrested development—Theory of degeneration—Its relation to decay._
At the opening of this work I gave a general survey of the evolution of the affective life; at its close we have to undertake a task of an opposite nature: the survey of its decay. Does this take place at haphazard, varying from one man to another? or does it follow a regular and ascertainable course? Is it reducible to any formula which can be referred to a law?
The law of decay, in psychology, consists in a continuous retrogression, descending from the higher to the lower, from the complex to the simple, from the unstable to the stable, from the most to the least organised; in other words, those manifestations which are the latest in date of evolution are the first to disappear; while those which were the first to appear are the last to vanish. Evolution and decay follow opposite courses.
I have already shown that the slow and continuous disappearance of memory verifies this formula, and, as a converse proof, that, in the rare cases where this faculty is recovered, the restoration proceeds, step by step, in the opposite direction, up the path previously descended. The methodical process of decay is still better seen in motor psychology. I may perhaps be permitted, by way of elucidation and preparation, to recapitulate briefly what I have detailed at greater length elsewhere: motor retrogression in the well-known case of drunkenness. There is, first, a period of excitement, even of exuberant spirits, which is the very antithesis of reflection; that is to say that attention under its highest form, as the result of a motor convergence, can no longer exist. Next, a man can no longer control his tongue, he tells all his secrets; the will, under its higher, inhibitory form, has disappeared. After this, he becomes incapable of any continuous plan or action: the will, even under its lower or impulsive form, remains powerless. Then the most delicate voluntary movements, those of speech and of the hands, cease to be coordinated. One degree lower, he loses the semi-automatic movements, those of walking: he staggers and loses his balance. Still lower, the muscular tonicity is weakened, he falls from his seat under the table; then the reflex movements are abolished; and finally, if the condition is continued long enough, there is cessation of the automatic movements—those of respiration and of the heart. Here is a well-marked, easily determinable retrograde process, the psychological function of the movements being comparatively simple.
The object of this chapter is to prove that the disappearance of feelings, when it takes place gradually and continuously, in consequence of age or of some slowly evolved malady (general paralysis, senile dementia, etc.), conforms to the same law. But, by reason of the complexity of the affective life, the question presents some difficulties which we must first of all point out.
The first is this: May not affective retrogression be simply the consequence of an intellectual retrogression? or must we take it as primary, independent, and self-determined, not secondary and consequent upon the decay of intellect? Or else—and this view appears to me the most probable—do both cases occur? It is impossible to give a categorical answer; the two elements, the intellectual and the affective, being closely associated. Yet, as retrogression is irremediable and results from organic decay or waste, the presumption is rather in favour of a gradual extinction of the tendencies.
The second difficulty is at least equally important. We have admitted that in every normal person all the primary tendencies exist; but their coexistence does not imply their equality. Experience proves this. The individual character results from the preponderance of one or more tendencies: the æsthetic or the sexual, the moral or the religious; one man is constitutionally timid, and another choleric. It follows from this that all cases of retrogression are not strictly comparable with one another; for it is evident that the dominant tendency is better able than the rest to withstand shocks and assaults, and to resist destructive action. This, in my opinion, explains how it is that—as in a case mentioned below—the æsthetic sentiment, one of the most delicate and latest in formation, is of very late extinction in an artist. This apparent exception is, in fact, a confirmation of the law.
The ideal case for illustrating our subject would be this: An average man, all of whose tendencies are nearly equipollent, is struck down by a disease involving slow retrogression, so that the order in which the feelings are weakened and extinguished can be noted; then the decadence stops short, and is followed by a restoration of the affective life, which can be followed, step by step, in its gradual ascent, so as to ascertain whether it is or is not the repetition, in reversed order, of the period of dissolution. The search for such a case, however, would be no less than the pursuit of a chimera. The only practical method would be to collect a great number of observations on different patients, and thus draw up a schematic table of decay, analogous to Galton’s composite photographs—formed by the accumulation of resemblances and the elimination of individual differences. This is what I shall try to do, as far as the extreme scarcity of material and the difficulties of an unexplored subject will permit. I shall first examine dissolution properly so called; then, by way of converse proof, the arrest of development.
