Letter: More than emotion (1976)

Letter to the Editors from the July 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

More than emotion

Thank you for printing my letter “Spiritual Matters” and your reply. I think for the most part I have to agree with you, although I have been partly misunderstood.

In using the word “mere” in connection with explanations I meant “solely” and not in the sense of trivial and unworthy of attention. A work of art can be analyzed and explained, but this will not necessarily explain why they create an emotional response. This, as far as I am aware, is peculiar to Man and differentiates him from other animals. This response is a contemplative condition and “spiritual” is the only word I know to describe it, although you would probably prefer to keep to “emotional”. To me it is something more than emotion.

Your extract from J. W. Draper’s History of the Intellectual Development of Europe was well chosen but I didn’t say that spiritual conditions are independent of physical forces. An explanation of the earth’s axis of rotation doesn’t help me to understand why Man should glory in the phenomena. In talking of spirituality you seem to have assumed that I meant an ability to appreciate beauty. I didn’t say this. I don’t know what beauty is and certainly, as you say, ideas about it can change in time and place. Love, hate, compassion, aspiringness, pride, indignation, joy — are these not things of the spirit? and although related to physical conditions I wonder if they can be fully accounted for by them. Why should Man be moved to these states of mind? Indeed, why Socialism, which concerns itself with the wellbeing of the human race?

Your point about ridding the mind of cant is taken, but I see no reason to bar membership to anyone holding similar views to those I have expressed. It is not helping the SPGB to spread its message.

George Pearson

London S.W.20

Reply

Man produces emotional reactions to stimuli simply because he is physically equipped to do so. Darwin, in his Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, put forward three principles in broad explanation of them. It is now generally accepted that the experience in feeling or emotion depends on the activity of centres in the portion of the brain known as the hypothalamus. However, the forms the reactions take are dependent on social custom and law. In the opinion of some experimenters, smiling and laughter are respiratory phenomena which, being approved or rewarded, are “selected” as socially appropriate (while other respiratory or expressive mechanisms are disapproved). The difference in usage between emotional reactions and “spiritual” ones is that the latter term is reserved for more highly sanctioned spheres of interest.

You have missed the purpose of the quotation from Draper and the remarks about social conditioning. You say the mechanical explanation does not tell us “why Man should glory in the phenomena”. Our point was that Man does not glory in it. Some men do, under some circumstances. A simple illustrative story is of the townsman and the farmer together gazing at the landscape: the townsman rhapsodizes about the multi-coloured vista, the farmer spits and says “Thirty-bob-an-acre stuff”.

However, in your repeated question about SPGB membership we suspect another kind of misapprehension about materialism. Obviously you value emotional experience: so do Socialists. To understand the reasons for phenomena does not dissolve or disvalue them. We may know that being in love is a combination of the activity of hormones, certain portions of the central nervous system, and the social climate; that does not at all exempt us from it. Materialists appreciate works of art and sunsets too.

Editors.