Chapter I: The Feelings Defined
1. Value of Feelings.
Cognitions Classified.
Hitherto, young gentlemen, our first class in philosophy has been occupied with inquiries into the intellect exclusively; the set of faculties by which the human soul has cognitions; more plainly, the knowing faculties. These we explored with an approximate completeness, under the heads of the presentative faculties (consciousness and sense-perception); the representative (suggestion, memory and imagination); the elaborative (judgment, generalization and reasoning); and the regulative (the a priori, necessary and immediate cognitions, notions and judgments of the reason). We reached the conclusion that we have thus found the source and methods of all the ideas, all the abstract or a priori notions, and all the judgments which the mind validly forms. The territory of human cognitions is thus fully mapped out, at least in outline, and the boundaries and relations of the several parts shown.
Feelings Defined, Importance of Their Study Argued.
But this same consciousness, in the field of which we found all these facts of cognition, reveals to our slightest glance that there is another great class of the functions of the human spirit, connected always with, yet differing most obviously from, mere cognitions—the Feelings. The best definition of the feelings and of their difference from bare cognitions is that given you immediately in your own consciousness. Admiration, disgust, desire necessarily wait on ideas of objects. But these feelings as consciously differ from the mere acts of intellection as the warmth of the solar ray differs from its brightness. “Feeling is the temperature of thought.” The powers of feeling do not constitute the least important department of the human spirit, nor the least noble. The lectures of Sir William Hamilton close with brief, and those of Dr. Porter with no discussion of them—a reprehensible omission. Writers seem to think that the whole glory of mental science is in its intellectual discriminations. Here, it is supposed, is the acumen, the glory of mental talent. But I remind you that acumen is no less necessary in the analysis of the feelings than in that of the logical steps of the mind. I assert, on the contrary, that the psychology of these functions of the mind is more noble than, and as important as, that of the cognitions. For, (A), the conative emotions constitute the energetic and the operative part of motives to volitions. Thus, in a scientific point of view, they are most decisive of the moral character and desert of the person. (B), The morality of acts turns wholly on the moral quality of subjective motive, but in the latter it is the emotive which is the active element, and, therefore, the ethical one. Hence the analysis which eliminates the ultimate elements of complex feelings, and presents to view their essential ethical or non-ethical character, is far more important to the moral guidance of the mind than any psychology of the mere intelligence. It is chiefly feelings (not the cognitions) which qualify the man as praise- or blameworthy. (C), Hence nobleness and greatness of emotion are higher functions of the soul than vigor of mere cognition. These, and not the functions of mere mental perspicacity, are what mark the soul as grand. The serpent was more subtile than any beast. Affection is greater than talent. To be magnanimous in self-sacrifice is nobler than to invent. To be able to feel nobly is better than to think acutely. He that has the greatest heart is the greatest man. And when we remember (D), that the vigor of cognition itself in every man depends more on the power of incentive energizing the faculty than on the mere strength of the faculty, our argument is complete. Many a man whose mental vision had a native power like that of the eagle has been practically of inert and feeble mind, the luminous ray of his nature being dimmed and quenched by the murky fogs of indolence or vile affection. On the other hand, the noble incentive of generous feeling, energizing the will, has so exercised and whetted the common intelligence that it has grown until it pierces the very heavens of truth. The feelings practically make the man. Intellect is the cold, feeble magnetism which gives the ship its compass to steer by. Feeling is the motive power, throbbing within the vessel and propelling it; without which the ship, in spite of the needle pointing with its subtle intelligence to the pole, rots in the harbor and makes no voyage any whither.
2. Apparent Complication and Innumerability of Feelings.
Difference of Degree.
It may be supposed that an almost insuperable difficulty will beset the psychology of the feelings from their multiplicity and complexity. If we examine the lexicon of any civilized language, we find an almost countless number of terms by which human feelings are named—e. g., in a single subdivision: pleasure, joy, gladness, content, delight, rapture, cheerfulness, etc., etc.; in another: wish, desire, lust, craving, covetousness, hope, expectation, assurance, etc., etc.; in another: uneasiness, apprehension, fear, panic, terror, alarm, etc., etc. But the faculties of cognition are few, distinguishable and easily enumerated. Hence the inference that there can be no psychology of the feelings, no true science of them; that this department of the functions of the human spirit must remain the cloudland, reducible to no scientific laws and method.
Simplification Practicable.
But I reply: If the feelings are of such practical importance in the working of human souls, and yet so diversified and complicated, there is all the more necessity to find some analysis by which they may be reduced to an intelligible method. I hold that the intelligent effort to do so will be rewarded with success. We shall find that, as in the intellect, so in the human heart, the elements of feeling are few. The diversified appearances are only differences in degree and combinations of these elements. Science can bring order out of this seeming confusion. The most precious result will be that the right emotions will be safely discriminated from the wrong, as we ascertain the elements that color them and the line where normal affection passes into the abnormal.
1. By Differences of Degree.
One simplification of the multiplex subject of the feelings is at once effected by noticing that they differ in degree, and that many of the names of feelings belong to the same essential affection of soul, only marking the degrees; thus, apprehension, fear, terror, are but three grades of the same affection, calmer or more intense. So cheerfulness, joy, rapture, transport. The word “passions” is often used in speech, and even defined in scientific books, as properly meaning feelings in their highest intensity. Thus displeasure would be called a feeling, but the rage of anger “passion,” while both are but different degrees of the one feeling of resentment. But we shall see that this use of the word “passion” does not correspond with its etymology. Another very important remark to be made concerning the degrees of feeling is, that the calmer degrees, although true feelings, are often mistaken and spoken of as if they were only functions of rational judgment. The calmest are still feelings, not judgments. The man under the influence of calm emotion (caution, for instance) is said to be acting “rationally,” while the man under the influence of an intense degree of the same feeling of fear is said to be acting “passionately.” This is all false analysis, and it greatly perverts our understanding of the functions and value of the feelings of the human soul. We must learn to separate from our conception of the essence of the feelings the supposed traits of urgency, intensity, agitation. These necessarily characterize only the higher degrees of the feelings. Feeling may be feeling and yet be calm and even. “Feeling is the temperature of thought.” Well, the temperature of a beam of light may vary in intensity from the faint, almost imperceptible warmth of a ray of wintry sunlight to the fierce, burning heat of the midsummer beam condensed by a lens. Yet both are caloric, not mere light. Heat is usually thought of as imbuing fiery and molten masses. Yet the physicist convinces us that there is a smaller degree of caloric even in a block of ice, for it can be so made to radiate from that ice as to affect a thermometer.
The Proof.
That these calm states of soul are truly feelings may be proved thus: There is and can be no motive, and so no action, without feeling. No object can be an objective inducement to action except as the soul takes it into the category of the real and the good. But what is the good except the desirable? Thus it appears that the calmest rational motive must include desire.
Feelings Continuous in the Soul.
Hence we learn our mistake in supposing that feeling is intermittent in the soul's functions, while cognition is supposed to be constant. We erroneously think of feelings as states of soul that ebb totally or flow, while thoughts abide. This is a mistake. Feeling is as perpetual in its calmer degrees as thoughts in all the conscious conditions of our soul; it is only its intensity which ebbs and flows. In fact, were feeling really and wholly to desert a human soul for a time, that soul would be as truly frozen into fatuity as water into ice by the departure of the caloric. Suppose a man walking along the street under the influence of some purpose wholly deserted by feeling. He would not take another step, for thought is not purpose, except as it involves desire. The sight of the crown in the goal makes the racer rush forward to it. Would the sight of a clod there make him do so? What is the practical difference between the two objects? Both are equally cognized by sense-perception. Desire cleaves to the idea of the crown, and not of the clod. No feeling, no action. If a man for one moment lost all feeling, his attention could not possibly direct itself to any object of thought; for the motive to energize attention would be totally lacking, and thus conscious thought would die away out of the soul after the death of feeling; man would be reduced to both apathy and idiocy. Let us learn then from these just views how universal and essential are the functions of feeling to the very life of the soul, and how much more valuable to human existence and action are those calm and equable grades of feeling I have pointed out than the rare accesses of intensity to which the name of feeling is usually applied.
3. Original and Derivative Feelings.
Associational Analysis.
The next step towards simplifying the multifarious subject of the human feelings is to inquire which of them are original, distinct and immediate in the human soul, and which are derived from these original ones by modifications and combinations. A moment's reflection will show us that this inquiry cannot be successfully pursued except by the help of a correct classification of all the feelings. This analysis and classification must go together, in order to lead to clear results.
Hartley's Reduction of All to Pain and Pleasure is Incorrect.
But there is one answer to the question, Which are the truly original feelings of human nature? that is so extreme and radical in its simplification, that it demands our consideration at the outset. It is that of Hartley, and the associational psychologists, followed by the Mills and even the witty Sidney Smith. The leaning of this school, as we have seen, is to attempt to account for all the faculties and capacities of the soul by taking the fewest original elements and combining them by the action of the faculty of the association of ideas. Thus we saw in our study of intellectual science they attempt to construct memory, imagination, reasoning and primitive judgments themselves, such as our belief in causation, out of mere association of ideas derived from sense-perception. So Hartley and his followers say: Give us two passive elements, the susceptibility to pain and pleasure, and we need nothing else beside the action of the association of ideas to generate all the wonders of feeling and desire. Take, for instance, fear; the ignorant child has no fear of a given object at first; e. g., the infant does not fear to grasp the flame, but craves it. He does not fear the shining adder, but laughs as he handles it. Fear, therefore, is not an original feeling. But when once the child has felt the pain inflicted by the burning candle, association has only to put the idea of that flame in juxtaposition to the idea of the pain first felt, and this gives him the uneasiness we call fear. So the feeling of sympathy is supposed to be only a suggestion of our former grief or pain by the sight of another's grief. No other original capacity of soul, say they, need be assumed than the associative faculty, together with the susceptibility in ourselves to pleasure or pain. So they endeavor to resolve the most disinterested personal affections, as the son's love for his mother, into association. He first knew her as the instrument of his own pleasures, the source from which he drew the food that gave him the animal pleasure of satisfied hunger, the bringer of toys, candies, raiment, the tender succorer of his pains. Association gradually connected her person with these remembered selfish pleasures, until her person and image became pleasant simply because of the remembered pleasure connected with her presence. This is filial love! If we ask them, How comes this love, purely selfish and even sensuous in its genesis, to take on the disinterested form, and to work that generous gratitude which seeks to confer instead of exacting happiness? they answer: Oh, this is one of those transmutations which the associational faculty often works by gradually dropping out the middle link of the chain and uniting the extremes by force of familiar and repeated occurrence of the suggestions. The idea of the pleasure remains, connected with the kind mother's image, after the mind of the child has ceased to bethink itself of the mediate fact, that it was his selfish pleasure of which she had been the regular instrument.
This worthless analysis derives its plausibility from the success with which it resolves the feeling of fear into pains of the past, associated with the idea of the object which was their source. Here the analysis is approximately just.
Its Defects—Pains and Pleasures Not One, but Many.
But (A), the apparent success of the other analysis is due partly to the trick of wrapping up under the two general terms, capacity for pleasures or pain, a number of capacities equally original. Are our natural pleasures all one? are our natural pains all one? or many? All of them are not animal; but some are animal and some mental. Is the smart of the blow from the rod, quivering in the animal nerves of the gross and selfish child the same with the pain of conscience awakened in the spirit of the ingenuous boy by the tears of the mother, who, while she disapproves, is too loving to smite? Can the one pain be analyzed into the other by this jugglery of associations? No. So that we find this Hartleian analysis begs the question in the outset, by confounding under the common name of pain and pleasure, functions of feeling widely distinct and equally original.
Association Colligates, Does Not Transmute.
Again, (B), the theory perverts the essential nature and law of the associative faculty. The sole power of that faculty is to connect, and by connecting, enable the soul to reproduce mental states present in consciousness before. But this theory represents the associative faculty as transmuting previous mental states into new ones essentially distinct and even opposite. The only feelings which mere association would connect with the image of the mother as the known instrument of experienced animal pleasures, would be feelings terminating on self. But the very essence of filial love, that deserves the name, is a disinterested delight and gratitude, that goes wholly out of self to bless the dear mother in whom it delights.
Again, how do we get, by such a genesis, an ethical affection for this mother, which rises far beyond the memory of the animal pleasures she has brought us, to ground itself in moral judgments of the nobleness and virtue of her self-sacrifice for our advantage? Why do regards generated by these groveling associations rise any higher than those the child feels for the kindly cow which relieved his hunger even more fully than the mother's breasts; or the jolly toy, which gave him as many gay moments as the mother's caresses? There are loves, again, which go out, not towards the source of our joys, but of our griefs; loves which attach to the child, whose faults and cruelties only pierce the loving heart with pangs of anguish. Some other analysis than this of selfish associations must be found to account for such love.
Sympathy Not Mere Association.
The corresponding analysis of the instinctive affection of sympathy has also these effects. Before we could sympathize with a given kind of grief exhibited to us, it would be necessary, on this theory, that we should also have felt the grief ourselves. This is not true to fact. The happy child sympathizes with the grief of a parent which it witnesses, but is wholly unable to comprehend or imagine, because its little experiences have never included that form of sorrow. Yet it sympathizes, and all the more tenderly and quickly because it is unhackneyed of grief. The explanation is, moreover, clearly untrue to our consciousness. When I witness and sympathize with the grief of my fellow, my thought does not first, nor necessarily, run back to my own former suffering of a similar type of sorrow. The truer and purer my sympathy the more complete my self-forgetfulness. When the tender nurse stands by your pillow and strives to soothe the agony of your aching head, it is not necessary that she shall have thought of her own agony under the same disease. She may never have felt it. She may be so generous in her self-forgetfulness as not to bethink herself at all of it, but to think only of your pain and the prompt desire to relieve it. This suggests the crowning refutation of this solution. On the consciousness of the sympathetic grief there always waits, as an essential part of the affection, the immediate and disinterested desire to succor the sufferer. No association of the memory of the selfish desire of relief you felt in your hour of pain can account for this impulse. For the impulse to succor is disinterested; it leads directly out of yourself. Your remembered desire of relief was self-interested and personal, pointing to self exclusively.
When we thus reject this analysis into mere results of association we do not mean to deny the extensive concern which our suggestive faculty has with our affections. It concurs with the original springs of feeling in manifold and marvelous ways, as we shall see; but co-operation requires the previous and independent existence of the power to be co-operated with.
4. Distinction Between Sensibilities (Passive Feelings) and Desires or Appetencies (Active Feelings).
The reduction of our feelings to their elements, then, cannot be so easily effected as this plausible jugglery of association would represent. Far deeper inquiry must take place before the secrets of the human heart are explored and numbered. I attempt this more thorough work by stating and establishing a series of propositions and of distinctions, and providing as I proceed a simple nomenclature for the different classes of feelings; and, (1.) At the beginning of the analysis of feelings I insist again on the all-important distinction, so commonly omitted in our books, between feelings of sensibility and feelings of conation.
Our Nomenclature Fixed.
Let the word feelings stand as the universal term, including all forms of sensibility and of desire and of emotion. Let the word sensibility stand for our passive feelings, in which the soul is simply subject and not agent. Let the word desires or appetencies stand for those opposite feelings in which the soul acts from within outwards, by the outflow of its own spontaneity. It will be understood that we include under the term appetencies those repulsions which are really the counterparts of appetencies, and yet are equally with them the outgoings of the subjective spontaneity.
The Great Distinction Proved by Consciousness and Experience—Instances.
Now, it is true that sensibilities (passive) and appetencies (active) are often intimately conjoined. It is also very true that the sensibilities, when impressed from without, are the occasions, even the conditions, sine qua non, for the rise and outflow of the active and subjective appetencies. But, none the less, is the distinction fundamental and all-important. For fidelity to consciousness requires and justifies it. When I am impressed from without through a sensibility or passive capacity of feeling, I am conscious that so far I am only subject and not spontaneous agent. I do not emit action of soul; I am acted on. The causation is from without, not from within. I have no more free agency, either in the form of appetency or volition about the result, than the iron has for being struck by the hammer. But when I harbor appetency, though not matured into volition, I am conscious that now the ego is acting, the exercise is spontaneous (in that sense voluntary, though not voluntary in the other and ambiguous sense of being a result of volition). The desire (or repulsion) tends to act from within outwardly, from the ego on an object. The emotion is in its tendency transitive and its exact expression is an active verb. Thus an aggressor does me a sudden corporeal injury. The first result is pain. This is a feeling of susceptibility. The aggressor impresses it upon me from without; I am passive in it; I experience it, but I do not act it. Let this pain now be followed by the desire to retaliate. It is very true that the pain is the occasion and condition of this appetency, but the desire to retaliate is now contrasted with it in its source. It is subjective, it tends from within the ego outward on him who was before aggressor. I am spontaneous in the appetency instead of passive. So inspection of consciousness will tell you that the feeling of wonder is a sensibility, passive and involuntary. The appetency of curiosity, or the desire to have the astonishing facts explained, to comprehend them, is subjective and spontaneous. So sympathy is a sensibility; the answering impulse to succor connected with it is an active and subjective appetency. So sensibility to pain and pleasure are passive feelings. Desire of one's own well-being is an active appetency related thereto. So in the appetites called corporeal the sense of privation is a passive sensibility. The desire of indulgence is clearly distinguishable, and is an active appetency; distinguishable, for let hunger be felt, and let one convince you as you are about to project yourself on the savory food before you that eating at this time will cause you violent pain, though hunger remains, appetency to eat is gone, abolished by stronger feelings of fear and love of life. Take a second instance: Here is a loving mother violently struck by her own child. There is the sensibility of pain and also of inward grief. But there is no appetency to retaliate because her heart is imbued with a tender forgiveness which entirely quenches that desire. Or, here is a friend who experiences acute pain from the unintentional act of his friend. Here is the sensibility in its acutest degree, but there is not a trace of the appetency to retaliate, because the total lack of intention in the friend's act forbids the rise of this desire in a just mind. I claim that such instances give me a perfect demonstration of my doctrine; the sensibility and the appetency, however entwined, are distinct functions of soul. The proof is that the one may exist while the other is totally absent.
