The Analysis of Mind, Bertrand Russell [best desktop ebook reader .txt] 📗

in other cases—e.g. erotic desire in those who have had

little or no experience of its satisfaction—mistakes are to be

expected, and do in fact very often occur. The practice of

inhibiting impulses, which is to a great extent necessary to

civilized life, makes mistakes easier, by preventing experience

of the actions to which a desire would otherwise lead, and by

often causing the inhibited impulses themselves to be unnoticed

or quickly forgotten. The perfectly natural mistakes which thus

arise constitute a large proportion of what is, mistakenly in

part, called self-deception, and attributed by Freud to the

“censor.”

 

But there is a further point which needs emphasizing, namely,

that a belief that something is desired has often a tendency to

cause the very desire that is believed in. It is this fact that

makes the effect of “consciousness” on desire so complicated.

 

When we believe that we desire a certain state of affairs, that

often tends to cause a real desire for it. This is due partly to

the influence of words upon our emotions, in rhetoric for

example, and partly to the general fact that discomfort normally

belongs to the belief that we desire such-and-such a thing that

we do not possess. Thus what was originally a false opinion as to

the object of a desire acquires a certain truth: the false

opinion generates a secondary subsidiary desire, which

nevertheless becomes real. Let us take an illustration. Suppose

you have been jilted in a way which wounds your vanity. Your

natural impulsive desire will be of the sort expressed in Donne’s

poem:

 

When by thy scorn, O Murderess, I am dead,

 

in which he explains how he will haunt the poor lady as a ghost,

and prevent her from enjoying a moment’s peace. But two things

stand in the way of your expressing yourself so naturally: on the

one hand, your vanity, which will not acknowledge how hard you

are hit; on the other hand, your conviction that you are a

civilized and humane person, who could not possibly indulge so

crude a desire as revenge. You will therefore experience a

restlessness which will at first seem quite aimless, but will

finally resolve itself in a conscious desire to change your

profession, or go round the world, or conceal your identity and

live in Putney, like Arnold Bennett’s hero. Although the prime

cause of this desire is a false judgment as to your previous

unconscious desire, yet the new conscious desire has its own

derivative genuineness, and may influence your actions to the

extent of sending you round the world. The initial mistake,

however, will have effects of two kinds. First, in uncontrolled

moments, under the influence of sleepiness or drink or delirium,

you will say things calculated to injure the faithless deceiver.

Secondly, you will find travel disappointing, and the East less

fascinating than you had hoped—unless, some day, you hear that

the wicked one has in turn been jilted. If this happens, you will

believe that you feel sincere sympathy, but you will suddenly be

much more delighted than before with the beauties of tropical

islands or the wonders of Chinese art. A secondary desire,

derived from a false judgment as to a primary desire, has its own

power of influencing action, and is therefore a real desire

according to our definition. But it has not the same power as a

primary desire of bringing thorough satisfaction when it is

realized; so long as the primary desire remains unsatisfied,

restlessness continues in spite of the secondary desire’s

success. Hence arises a belief in the vanity of human wishes: the

vain wishes are those that are secondary, but mistaken beliefs

prevent us from realizing that they are secondary.

 

What may, with some propriety, be called self-deception arises

through the operation of desires for beliefs. We desire many

things which it is not in our power to achieve: that we should be

universally popular and admired, that our work should be the

wonder of the age, and that the universe should be so ordered as

to bring ultimate happiness to all, though not to our enemies

until they have repented and been purified by suffering. Such

desires are too large to be achieved through our own efforts. But

it is found that a considerable portion of the satisfaction which

these things would bring us if they were realized is to be

achieved by the much easier operation of believing that they are

or will be realized. This desire for beliefs, as opposed to

desire for the actual facts, is a particular case of secondary

desire, and, like all secondary desire its satisfaction does not

lead to a complete cessation of the initial discomfort.

Nevertheless, desire for beliefs, as opposed to desire for facts,

is exceedingly potent both individually and socially. According

to the form of belief desired, it is called vanity, optimism, or

religion. Those who have sufficient power usually imprison or put

to death any one who tries to shake their faith in their own

excellence or in that of the universe; it is for this reason that

seditious libel and blasphemy have always been, and still are,

criminal offences.

 

It is very largely through desires for beliefs that the primitive

nature of desire has become so hidden, and that the part played

by consciousness has been so confusing and so exaggerated.

 

We may now summarize our analysis of desire and feeling.

 

A mental occurrence of any kind—sensation, image, belief, or

emotion—may be a cause of a series of actions, continuing,

unless interrupted, until some more or less definite state of

affairs is realized. Such a series of actions we call a

“behaviour-cycle.” The degree of definiteness may vary greatly:

hunger requires only food in general, whereas the sight of a

particular piece of food raises a desire which requires the

eating of that piece of food. The property of causing such a

cycle of occurrences is called “discomfort”; the property of the

mental occurrences in which the cycle ends is called ” pleasure.”

The actions constituting the cycle must not be purely mechanical,

i.e. they must be bodily movements in whose causation the special

properties of nervous tissue are involved. The cycle ends in a

condition of quiescence, or of such action as tends only to

preserve the status quo. The state of affairs in which this

condition of quiescence is achieved is called the “purpose” of

the cycle, and the initial mental occurrence involving discomfort

is called a “desire” for the state of affairs that brings

quiescence. A desire is called “conscious” when it is accompanied

by a true belief as to the state of affairs that will bring

quiescence; otherwise it is called “unconscious.” All primitive

desire is unconscious, and in human beings beliefs as to the

purposes of desires are often mistaken. These mistaken beliefs

generate secondary desires, which cause various interesting

complications in the psychology of human desire, without

fundamentally altering the character which it shares with animal

desire.

 

LECTURE IV. INFLUENCE OF PAST HISTORY ON PRESENT OCCURRENCES IN

LIVING ORGANISMS

 

In this lecture we shall be concerned with a very general

characteristic which broadly, though not absolutely,

distinguishes the behaviour of living organisms from that of dead

matter. The characteristic in question is this:

 

The response of an organism to a given stimulus is very often

dependent upon the past history of the organism, and not merely

upon the stimulus and the HITHERTO DISCOVERABLE present state of

the organism.

 

This characteristic is embodied in the saying “a burnt child

fears the fire.” The burn may have left no visible traces, yet it

modifies the reaction of the child in the presence of fire. It is

customary to assume that, in such cases, the past operates by

modifying the structure of the brain, not directly. I have no

wish to suggest that this hypothesis is false; I wish only to

point out that it is a hypothesis. At the end of the present

lecture I shall examine the grounds in its favour. If we confine

ourselves to facts which have been actually observed, we must say

that past occurrences, in addition to the present stimulus and

the present ascertainable condition of the organism, enter into

the causation of the response.

 

The characteristic is not wholly confined to living organisms.

For example, magnetized steel looks just like steel which has not

been magnetized, but its behaviour is in some ways different. In

the case of dead matter, however, such phenomena are less

frequent and important than in the case of living organisms, and

it is far less difficult to invent satisfactory hypotheses as to

the microscopic changes of structure which mediate between the

past occurrence and the present changed response. In the case of

living organisms, practically everything that is distinctive both

of their physical and of their mental behaviour is bound up with

this persistent influence of the past. Further, speaking broadly,

the change in response is usually of a kind that is biologically

advantageous to the organism.

 

Following a suggestion derived from Semon (“Die Mneme,” Leipzig,

1904; 2nd edition, 1908, English translation, Allen & Unwin,

1921; “Die mnemischen Empfindungen,” Leipzig, l909), we will give

the name of “mnemic phenomena” to those responses of an organism

which, so far as hitherto observed facts are concerned, can only

be brought under causal laws by including past occurrences in the

history of the organism as part of the causes of the present

response. I do not mean merely—what would always be the

case—that past occurrences are part of a CHAIN of causes leading

to the present event. I mean that, in attempting to state the

PROXIMATE cause of the present event, some past event or events

must be included, unless we take refuge in hypothetical

modifications of brain structure.) For example: you smell

peat-smoke, and you recall some occasion when you smelt it

before. The cause of your recollection, so far as hitherto observ

able phenomena are concerned, consists both of the peat smoke

(present stimulus) and of the former occasion (past experience).

The same stimulus will not produce the same recollection in

another man who did not share your former experience, although

the former experience left no OBSERVABLE traces in the structure

of the brain. According to the maxim “same cause, same effect,”

we cannot therefore regard the peat-smoke alone as the cause of

your recollection, since it does not have the same effect in

other cases. The cause of your recollection must be both the

peat-smoke and the past occurrence. Accordingly your recollection

is an instance of what we are calling “mnemic phenomena.”

 

Before going further, it will be well to give illustrations of

different classes of mnemic phenomena.

 

(a) ACQUIRED HABITS.—In Lecture II we saw how animals can learn

by experience how to get out of cages or mazes, or perform other

actions which are useful to them but not provided for by their

instincts alone. A cat which is put into a cage of which it has

had experience behaves differently from the way in which it

behaved at first. We can easily invent hypotheses, which are

quite likely to be true, as to connections in the brain caused by

past experience, and themselves causing the different response.

But the observable fact is that the stimulus of being in the cage

produces differing results with repetition, and that the

ascertainable cause of the cat’s behaviour is not merely the cage

and its own ascertainable organization, but also its past history

in regard to the cage. From our present point of view, the matter

is independent of the question whether the cat’s behaviour is due

to some mental fact called “knowledge,” or displays a merely

bodily habit. Our habitual knowledge is not always in our minds,

but is called up by the appropriate stimuli. If we are asked

“What is the capital of