3. Destructive pleasures of a social character, which are connected, not with the suffering of the individual himself, but with that of others. Such is the pleasure felt in killing and seeing killed—in sanguinary spectacles, bull-fights, fights between animals, and, in a much feebler degree, in hearing or reading tales of bloodshed. These pleasures can be explained; they denote the satisfaction of tendencies to violence and destruction, which, strong or weak, conscious or unconscious, exist in all men. They may be studied under the heading of the pathology of tendencies, which I shall treat later on; let me only remark in passing that these tendencies involve a certain display of energy, which is one of the conditions of active pleasure. One question in conclusion. Can pleasure, and joy in particular, be the cause of a grave catastrophe, such as madness or death? Some alienists—Bucknill, Tuke, Guislain, etc.—quote cases of madness which they attribute to sudden joy, such as an unforeseen inheritance, or success in obtaining a long-wished-for situation. The same thesis has been maintained in the case of death[48] occurring suddenly, or after syncope. Griesinger maintains that it is extremely rare—if it ever happens—for excessive joy _by itself_ to produce madness. Others absolutely deny the fact.[49] It is certain that joy is seldom seen figuring in any enumeration of the causes of madness. Joy, as a state of consciousness, could not have such effects. The catastrophe can only be explained by sudden and violent organic troubles, which cannot have this effect unless there already exists a predisposition. It is not joy which maddens or kills, but the shock received by a being in an abnormal state. It would be more correct to say that an event which, in the generality of men, _ought_ to cause joy, here produces a peculiar pathological state ending in madness or death. Footnote 48: For some facts, which may or may not be well authenticated, see Féré, _op. cit._, p. 234. Footnote 49: Féré, _Pathologie des Emotions_, pp. 293, 294. II. The other side of the subject may be briefly disposed of. We occasionally, though rarely, meet with people who grieve over good fortune when it comes to them; these have the pain of pleasure. I do not think that any psychologist has dwelt on them, and it seems to me useless to make a study of these cases. Though in form the reverse of the pleasure of pain, it fundamentally resembles it. This disposition of mind, found in certain pessimists, is rightly called eccentric or bizarre—_i.e._, general opinion instinctively looks on it as a deviation, an anomaly. This, moreover, is only a special instance of a general state of mind—morbid or pathologic sadness—which we are about to study. I have remarked above that, as pain and sadness always involve a morbid element, the expression _abnormal_ would be more accurate and less open to criticism.