Littell's Living Age/Volume 131/Issue 1691/The Luxury of Grief
THE LUXURY OF GRIEF.
Mr. Herbert Spencer remarks, in his "Principles of Psychology," upon the indulgence generally known as the "luxury of grief," and otherwise called "self-pity." He offers an explanation of its meaning, but admits that his explanation does not completely satisfy himself. One explanation is, as he remarks, that, pity being in some sense an agreeable feeling, the pleasure remains even when we are ourselves the object of the emotion. This explanation, if partly sound, still leaves it to be explained why pity should be agreeable. We need not consider how Mr. Spencer accounts for this last phenomenon, as he offers a different account of the pleasure of "self-pity." He thinks that it may perhaps arise from a vague impression in the mind of the sufferer that he has received less than his deserts. It is natural, for example, to a rejected contributor to think that the editor must be stupid. By a natural association of ideas, he learns, to dwell upon the fact of the rejection as illustrating the fact that he is not properly appreciated. Logically speaking, such a fact is hardly consolatory. The true conclusion is, "The world does not value me as it ought." The proposition confounded with it is, "I am worth more than the world thinks." If my own merits are taken as the starting-point, the opinion is painful; if the world's opinion is the starting-point, the opinion is pleasant. The bare fact, then, that a certain person does not do me justice can afford no legitimate ground for satisfaction; but when converted by an illogical process into a proof that I am worth more than that person thinks, it may be made to flatter that most illogical passion, my vanity.
The pleasure which people often take in contemplating injustice to themselves seems to show that this explanation is often correct. A pet grievance becomes a hobby with many men. In setting forth their grievance to the world, or even on brooding over it in solitude, they are necessarily dwelling upon their own virtues. And it is not surprising that, in many cases, the habit should generate an unreasonable self-complacency. We should doubt, however, whether this doctrine is wide enough to cover all cases. The most familiar examples of the "luxury of grief" seem to be but indirectly connected with any form of vanity. A sentimentalist takes a perverse pleasure in cultivating melancholy, after the fashion of Jaques, and delights in self-abasement and exaggeration of his own incapacity for action; or a widow cherishes her grief for a dead husband till she resents any attempts at comfort, and takes a pride in self-torture. In such cases, unfortunately familiar enough, it is often almost impossible to say what are the ultimate components of the passion. We have such marvellous skill in deceiving ourselves that nothing is more difficult than to give a fair account of our own emotions. The morbid recluse may be really nothing but a thoroughly indolent man, who dwells upon his weaknesses to excuse himself from action. Excessive grief for the dead easily connects itself with personal vanity. We are really seeking for the praise of constancy, or yielding to a sort of superstitious belief that the dead will take pleasure in our useless sacrifice of our own happiness. The play of motives is so intricate that the attempt to analyze them or sum up the result in a single formula is necessarily illusory. Much, therefore that passes for self-pity may be really some more intelligible passion in a metamorphic state.
The feeling, however, seems to be so distinct that we do not doubt its real existence. Without attempting a full explanation, or denying the validity of Mr. Spencer's explanation as far as it goes, we are inclined to ask the previous question, whether any logical explanation is to be expected. An emotion is something different from a belief, though the two are closely connected. Now the method applied by Mr. Spencer seems to assume that any emotion must have, so to speak, a given formula, and that, if this formula be contradictory, the emotion ought to be impossible. In the case under consideration, the formula seems to be, "I am glad because I am sorry." That is manifestly absurd. A cause of sorrow cannot, as such, be a cause of pleasure. Therefore the luxury of grief implies a belief in contradictories. This is the perplexity. Let us see if it may not be diminished if we approach the subject from another side.
One of the most familiar symptoms of the state of mind in question is the feminine pleasure in crying. You cry, we are apt to say, because you are unhappy. How then can you find pleasure in crying? The answer would probably be that, although crying is caused by grief, it implies a transformation of grief which, at the moment, is agreeable. The mind has been in a state of tension, and the tension is relaxed when the tears come. The process is one of relief from a painful state of the system. Grief, like other emotions, swells and falls, as every one must have observed, in a series of waves. The passion gradually increases to a culminating point; then comes a period of relaxation during which it declines, and, by comparison, this period is agreeable. In men, and especially in women, of weak and irritable nerves, this second period announces itself by weeping. The stress of the torture is over; the tension is relieved by the discharge. The two periods are generally translated in terms of sentiment by a feeling of blank despair during the first period, implying a hopeless impulse to struggle against the inevitable, and, during the second period, by a sense of resignation or readiness to accept the position against which it is in vain to struggle. It is not surprising that, under certain circumstances, this latter period should be regarded as absolutely pleasant, and finally become an object of desire.
Still, it may be said, the feeling is obviously illogical. It is absurd to go up a mountain in order to have the pleasure of coming down, or to go through an illness in order to have the pleasure of convalescence. This is quite true, though we may suppose that, in morbid states of the organism, the illness partly loses its terrors, whilst the pleasure of recovery continues to be attractive. Nay, it is possible that there may be diseases which thus produce more pleasure than pain. The actual suffering may be small, and the pleasure of recovery great. Doubtless it is better to be healthy on any showing; nor do we assert that any such disease actually exists in fact. To suppose its existence, however, is not to accept a contradiction; and still less is it a contradiction to suppose a state of mind in which the pleasures of relief are more attractive in anticipation than the pains of the preliminary stage are repulsive. We assume, at worst, that people make a false calculation. The mind, for some reason, is so impressed by the equivocal charm of the melting mood that it anticipates a balance of pleasure, even when it has to pay the cost of the preliminary mood of congealment. Indulgence of the luxury of grief is in all cases objectionable, and indicative of some morbid tendency. But, admitting so much, it does not follow that it implies more than a very common error of judgment, or rather — for the word "judgment" implies too much conscious reasoning — of erroneous instinctive appreciation.
Nothing, of course, is commoner than the phenomenon so often remarked by moralists, that an immediate pleasure blinds us to the remoter consequences of pain. Every day thousands of men get drunk who know perfectly well that the pleasure will have to be atoned by pains incomparably worse than the momentary exhilaration. Why should not the reverse take place in some cases? The more distant pleasure, that is, may overbalance the nearer pain in its effect upon the imagination, if the pleasure has a specially attractive side to it and the pain is one which, for some reason, has ceased to be very repulsive. Most vices fortunately may be shown to involve bad reasoning, even upon the simplest utilitarian grounds; but, unfortunately, that does not prevent people from indulging in them. In the case we are considering the bad reasoning involved seems to be more palpable than in most others; but still, all that is implied is bad reasoning in the sense of erroneous calculation, not bad reasoning in the sense of consciously accepting a self-contradictory proposition. This last is the only kind of bad reasoning of which we can plausibly say that it is not constantly illustrated in the daily behavior of mankind.
After all that can be said, it must be admitted that there is a glaring absurdity in the desire for what can at most be described by the paradoxical phrase of a pleasurable kind of pain. We may observe, however, that in all such problems the view which identifies feeling with the implied logic is apt to lead us to palpable errors. It is a familiar argument, for example, with pessimists that life must be painful because all desire implies want. If I eat or drink it is because I am hungry or thirsty. My action amounts to saying some different state is preferable to my present state. I wish for change, therefore I must be unhappy. All action means change; therefore all action springs from want of ease. We cannot examine the metaphysical groundwork of this argument; but it certainly contradicts the testimony of experience. Many states of desire are exquisitely pleasant. A good appetite is thoroughly agreeable so long as it does not pass beyond certain limits. We like to be hungry, and we enjoy satisfying our hunger. The system is stored with certain energies the exercise of which is a source of pleasure, perhaps the only source of pleasure, although the exercise implies a constant state of change. If this is admitted, whatever may be the ultimate explanation, it follows that the bare proof that a certain state of mind or body implies a desire for change does not make it illogical. The state, for example, in which grief passes into another form may be actually productive of a surplus of pleasure. The painful stage during which grief is, so to speak, accumulating within our system, may be a stage during which the grief is rather latent than overt. It exists, but it exists in such a way as not to impress our imagination. It is a dumb, inarticulate form, and therefore easily overlooked. The mood in which we accept the inevitable and derive a pleasure from abandonment to our impulses has, on the contrary, a conspicuous side which pleases the imagination in prospect, and in unhealthy states we commit the solecism of cultivating the grief in order to have the pleasure of relief from grief.
The cases, indeed, are rare, if they ever occur, in which a person would deliberately encounter sorrow in order to indulge the pleasure of weeping. The most ordinary case is that in which a person hugs a sorrow to his breast instead of seeking immediately for happiness. And in such a case, the true nature of the process is obscured by moral and aesthetic considerations. The indulgence in grief seems to be demanded as a proof of fidelity, or there is something shocking to the imagination in too speedy a transition from the mood of sorrow to the mood of happiness. We look at our own lives as we look at a tragedy. We are not pleased in the bare representation of suffering virtue; but we are impressed by the general harmony and beauty of the sentiment wrung from the martyr by his sufferings. We admire the actor who can thus set before us the very essence of a noble nature; and we are always tempted to become actors for our own edification. We see ourselves in imagination performing the part of tragic hero with unbounded applause; and feel that any cheerfulness, however pleasant for the moment, would produce a discord. Such a sentiment, possibly legitimate within certain limits, gradually initiates us in the habit of finding pleasure in melancholy; and in weak or morbid characters the habit gradually strengthens, and leads to the waste of life and the production of much vapid sentimentalism.