for arranging, in certain classes, that almost infinite variety of
phenomena, which the mind exhibits,--pointing out to you the peculiar
difficulty of such a classification, in the case of phenomena so
indefinite and fugitive, as those of the mind, and the nature of that
generalizing principle of analogy or resemblance, on which every
classification, whether of the material or mental phenomena, must
alike proceed. I then took a slight view of the primary, leading,
divisions of the phenomena of the mind, which have met with most
general adoption,--the very ancient division of them, as of two great
departments, belonging to the _understanding_ and the _will_,--and
the similar division of them, as referable to two classes of powers,
termed the _intellectual_ and _active powers_ of the mind. I explained
to you the reasons, which led me to reject both these divisions, as
at once incomplete, from not comprehending all the phenomena, and
inaccurate, from confounding even those phenomena, which they may truly
be considered as comprehending.
After rejecting these, it became necessary to attempt some new
arrangement, especially as we found reason to believe that some
advantage could scarcely fail to arise from the attempt itself, even
though it should fail as to its great object; and we, therefore,
proceeded to consider and arrange the phenomena, as nearly as possible,
in the same manner as we should have done, if no arrangement of them
had ever been made before.
In thus considering them, the first important distinction which
occurred to us, related to their _causes_, or immediate antecedents,
as foreign to the mind, or as belonging to the mind itself; a
distinction too striking to be neglected as a ground of primary
division. Whatever that may be, which feels and thinks, it has been
formed to be susceptible of certain changes of state, in consequence of
the mere presence of external objects, or at least of changes produced
in our mere bodily organs, which, themselves, may be considered as
external to the mind; and it is susceptible of certain other changes of
state, without any cause external to itself, one state of mind being
the immediate result of a former state of mind, in consequence of those
laws of succession of thoughts and feelings, which He, who created the
immortal soul of man, as a faint shadow of His own eternal spirit, has
established in the constitution of our mental frame. In conformity
with this distinction, we made our first division of the phenomena
of the mind, into its _external_ and _internal_ affections; the word
_affection_ being used, by me, as the simplest term for expressing a
mere change of state induced, in relation to the affecting cause, or
the circumstances, whatever they may have been, by which the change was
immediately preceded.
The class of _internal affections_,--by far the more copious
and various of the two,--we divided into two great orders, our
_intellectual_ states of mind, and our _emotions_, words which are,
perhaps, better understood, before any definition is attempted of
them, than after it, but which are sufficiently intelligible without
definition, and appear to exhaust completely the whole internal
affections of the mind. We have sensations or perceptions of the
objects that affect our bodily organs; these I term the sensitive or
external affections of the mind; we remember objects--we imagine them
in new situations--we compare their relations; these mere conceptions
or notions of objects and their qualities, as elements of our general
knowledge, are what I have termed the intellectual states of the mind;
we are moved with certain lively feelings, on the consideration of what
we thus perceive, or remember, or imagine, or compare, with feelings,
for example, of beauty, or sublimity, or astonishment, or love, or
hate, or hope, or fear; these, and various other vivid feelings,
analogous to them, are our _emotions_.
There is no portion of our consciousness, which does not appear to me
to be included in one or other of these three divisions. To know all
our sensitive states or affections,--all our intellectual states,--and
all our emotions, is to know all the states or phenomena of the mind;
“Unde animus scire incipiat, quibus inchoet orsa
Principiis seriem rerum tenuemque catenam
Mnemosyne; Ratio unde, rudi sub pectore tardum
Augeat imperium, et primum mortalibus ægris
_Ira, dolor, metus, et curæ_ nascantur inanes.”[60]
It must not be conceived, however, that, in dividing the class of
internal affections of the mind, into the two distinct orders of
intellectual states, and emotions; and, in speaking of our emotions as
subsequent in their origin, I wish to be understood, that these never
are combined, at the same moment, in that sense of combination, as
applied to the mind, which I have already explained too frequently,
to need again to define and illustrate it. On the contrary, they
very frequently concur; but, in all cases in which they do concur,
it is easy for us to distinguish them by reflective analysis. The
emotion of _pity_, for example, may continue in the mind, while we
are _intellectually_ planning means of relief, for the sufferers who
occasioned it; but, though the pity and the reasoning _co-exist_, we
have little difficulty in separating them in our reflection. It is the
same with all our vivid desires, which not merely lead to action, but
accompany it. The sage, who in the silence of midnight, continues still
those labours which the morning began, watching, with sleepless eye,
the fate of some experiment, that almost promises to place within his
hand the invisible thread, which leads into the labyrinths of nature,
or exploring those secrets of the mind itself, by the aid of which
he is afterwards to lay down rules of more accurate philosophizing,
and to become the legislator of all who think, is not cheered, in his
toils, merely by occasional anticipations of the truths that await his
search. The pleasure of future discovery is, as it were, a constant
light, that shines upon him and warms him; and, in the very moments
in which he watches, and calculates, and arranges, there are other
principles of his nature, in as lively exercise as his powers of
observation and reasoning. The warrior, at the head of an army, which
he has often led from victory to victory, and which he is leading
again to new fields of conflict, does not think of glory only in the
intervals of meditation or action. The passion which he obeys, is
not a mere inspiring genius, that occasionally descends to rouse or
invigorate. It is the _soul_ of his continued existence,--it marches
with him, from station to station,--it deliberates with him in his
tent,--it conquers with him in the field,--it thinks of new successes,
in the very moment of vanquishing; and, even at night, when his body
has yielded at last to the influence of that fatigue, of which it was
scarcely conscious, while there was room for any new exertion by which
fatigue could be increased, and when all the anxieties of military
command are slumbering with it, the passion that animates him, more
active still, does not quit him as he rests, but is wakeful in his very
sleep, bringing before him dreams, that almost renew the tumults and
the toils of the day. Our emotions, then, may _co-exist_ with various
sensations, remembrances, reasonings,--in the same manner as these
feelings, sensitive or intellectual, may variously co-exist with each
other. But we do not think it less necessary to class our sensations of
vision as different from our sensations of smell, and our comparison,
as itself different from the separate sensations compared, because we
may, at the same moment, both see and smell a rose, and may endeavour
to appreciate the relative amount of pleasure which that beautiful
flower thus doubly affords. In like manner, our intellectual states of
mind, and our emotions, are not the less to be considered as distinct
classes, because any vivid passion may continue to exist together with
those intellectual processes of thought, which it originally prompted,
and which, after prompting, it prolongs.
In all these cases, however, in which an emotion _co-exists_ with the
results of other external or internal influences, it is still easy to
distinguish its subsequence to the feelings that preceded it. Pity, for
example, as in the case to which I have before alluded, may co-exist
with a long train of thoughts, that are busily occupied in endeavouring
to relieve most effectually the misery which is pitied; but the misery
must have been itself an object of our thought, before the state of
mind which constitutes pity, could have been induced. The emotion which
we feel, on the contemplation of beauty, may continue to co-exist with
our mere perception of the forms and colours of bodies; but these forms
and colours must have been perceived by us, before the delightful
emotion could have been originally felt. In short, our emotions,
though like the warmth and radiance, which seem to accompany the very
presence of the sun, rather than to flow from it--they may seem in many
cases to be a part of the very feelings which excite them, are yet,
in every instance, as truly secondary to these feelings, as the light
which beams on us, on the surface of our earth, is subsequent to the
rising of the great orb of day.
As yet, we have advanced but a short way, in our generalization of the
mental phenomena: though, as far as we have advanced, our division
seems sufficiently distinct and comprehensive. The mind is susceptible
of certain existing affections, of certain intellectual modifications
which arise from these, and of certain emotions which arise from both;
that is to say, it is capable of existing in certain states, the
varieties of which correspond with these particular designations. We
see, we remember, or compare, what we have seen, regard what we see, or
remember, or compare, with desire or with aversion; and of these, or of
states analogous to these, the whole of life, sensitive, intellectual,
or moral, is composed. Every minute, therefore, of every hour, in
all its variety of occupation, is but a portion of this complicated
tissue. Let us suppose ourselves, for example, looking down from an
eminence, on the prospect beneath.--On one side all is desolation,--and
we see perhaps, at a little distance, some half-roofless hovel, as
miserable, as the waste immediately around it, which has scarcely
the appearance of a dwelling for any living thing, but seems rather,
as if Nature herself had originally placed it there, as a part of
the general sterility and ruggedness. On the other side, all is
plenty and magnificence;--and we see, amid lawns and wooded banks, a
mansion as different in aspect, as if the beings that inhabited it
were of a different race,--which, as a part of the scene, where it is
placed, accords so harmoniously with the whole, that, without it, the
scene itself would appear incomplete, and almost incongruous, as if
stripped of some essential charm. To view these separate dwellings,
and all the objects around them--if no other feeling arose--would be
to have a series of external or sensitive affections only. But it is
scarcely possible for us to view them, without the instant rise of
those intellectual states of mind which constitute comparison, and of
those affections of another order, which constitute the emotions of
admiration and desire in the one case, and in the other the emotions
that are opposite to admiration and desire, together perhaps with some
of those bitter emotions which the sight of misery makes in every
breast that is not unworthy of so sacred an influence.
In this example, our intellectual states of mind, and our emotions,
have for their objects things really existing without; but the external
affections of our senses, though the most permanent, and usually the
most vivid, and therefore the best remembered, of all the sources of
our internal feelings are far from being necessary, in every instance,
to the production of these. There is a constant, or almost constant
succession of internal affections of mind, of thoughts, and emotions,
following thoughts and emotions, which even though we were to be
rendered incapable of a single new sensation,--if our animal life
could in these circumstances be long protracted,--would still preserve
to us also that _intellectual_ and _moral_ existence, which is the
only life, that is worthy of the name. The knowledge which we acquire
from _without_, lives in us _within_; and, in such a case as that
which I have now imagined, our memory would be to us in some measure
every sense, which we had lost, creating to us again that very world
which had vanished before us. If we could compare and love or hate
only things actually present, we should be far from the maturity and
perfection of an infant's mind, and should scarcely be advanced to the
rank of idiocy, which limited as it is in its range, still comprehends
in its little sphere of foresight and memory, some few moments at
least of the past, and even a moment or two of the future. It is with
the future and with the past, that, intellectually and morally, we
are chiefly conversant. To these high capacities of our being, the
subjects, which can exercise our powers and feelings, however distant
in time or place, are as it were _everlastingly present_,--like that
mysterious eternal _now_, of which theologians speak,--in which past,
present, and future are considered, as, in every moment of every age,
alike visible to the omniscient glance of the Divinity. We love the
virtues, of which we read, with the same sort of emotion, with which
we love the virtues that are mingling with us in the present hour.
The patriot of the most remote age,--of whom we know nothing, but
the historical tale, of his voluntary perils or sufferings, in some
generous cause,--is like the friend of our familiar intercourse; and
the sacrifices, that wrought the happiness of millions of beings, who
are now not merely _unknown_ to us, but of whom not a single name is
remembered on the earth, awake a sort of veneration, that is almost
combined with gratitude, as if we were in the presence of a personal
deliverer. It is the same with absolute _unreality_, nor merely with
that which no longer exists, but with that which never had existence.
We are struck with the beauty of what we only imagine, in the same
manner, though perhaps not with the same liveliness of feeling, as
we are struck with the beauty of external things. Our emotions then,
however dependent they may have been originally, are _now_ no longer
dependent, on these external things. They may arise, from memory or
imagination, as readily as from perception; but when they arise from
memory or imagination, they are as truly distinguishable from what we
remember and imagine, as they are distinguishable from our perceptions
of mere forms and colours and other sensible qualities, when they arise
from what we perceive.
To have arranged all the varieties of feelings of which the mind is
susceptible, in the three great divisions to which our arrangement
as yet has extended,--though it is unquestionably to have made some
advance in our generalization,--is yet to have made only a small part
of the necessary progress; since each of these three orders comprehends
almost innumerable phenomena, which require the aid of more minute
division. In the class of our external affections, indeed, this
subdivision is very simple and easy; since our separate organs of sense
furnish, of themselves, a very evident ground of distinction. But the
two orders of our internal affections have no such obvious and tangible
distinction, to serve as the basis of their subdivisions. They admit,
however,--as I trust we shall find,--of distinctions, which, though
not equally _obvious_, are almost equally definite, and require only
a very little reflection, to be understood as clearly, as the organic
relations, according to which we distinguish our sensations of sound,
or smell, or sight. It is not my intention, however, to proceed, at
present, to the consideration of these subdivisions; since the nature
of the more minute arrangement will, I conceive, be better understood,
when we come to treat of each separate order fully, than they could be
now, by the mere enumeration of a few names, of the propriety of which,
as mere names, and, still more of the propriety of the arrangement
which they involve, you could not be expected to form any accurate
judgment, without a fuller elucidation.
All which I must request you, then, at present, to keep in remembrance,
is the _primary_ division, which we have made, of the different states
of the mind into two great classes, and the _secondary_ division which
we have made of _one_ of these classes, into its two very comprehensive
orders.--You will remember, then, that the various affections, of which
the mind is susceptible, are either _external_, as they arise from
causes without the mind, or _internal_, as they arise from previous
states, of the mind itself;--that of these internal affections, some
are mere conceptions or notions of former feelings, or of objects and
of the qualities or relations of objects, as remembered or variously
combined or compared,--results of different susceptibilities of
our intellectual constitution, to which different names have been
given, conception, memory, imagination, abstraction, reason, and
other synonymous terms;--that these internal affections or states
of the mind, which I have denominated its intellectual states, are
distinctly separable, in our reflective analysis, from certain vivid
feelings, that may arise instantly in the mind, on the consideration
of these mere intellectual results, or on the perception of objects
without,--feelings of admiration, love, desire, and various other
analogous, or opposite states of the mind;--but that there is such
an order of vivid feelings, which arise, in many cases, on the mere
consideration of what we perceive or remember, or imagine, or compare,
and that this order is what I wish to be distinguished by the name of
_emotions_.
According to this division, therefore, of the mental phenomena, into
those which are of external and those which are of internal origin,
and the subdivision which we have made of this latter class, I shall
proceed to consider, first, The external powers or susceptibilities
of the mind; 2dly, The intellectual powers or susceptibilities of the
mind; and, 3dly, Its susceptibilities of emotion,--beginning with that
class, which we have every reason to suppose to be first, in the actual
order of developement,--the powers or susceptibilities of the mind, in
its immediate relation to its own bodily organs.
Certain states of our bodily organs are directly followed by certain
states or affections of our mind;--certain states or affections of
our mind are directly followed by certain states of our bodily organs.
The nerve of sight, for example, is affected in a certain manner;
vision, which is an affection or state of the mind, is its consequence.
I will to move my hand; the hand obeys my will, so rapidly, that the
motion, though truly subsequent, seems almost to accompany my volition,
rather than to follow it. In conformity with the definitions before
given of power and susceptibility, the one as implying a reference to
something consequent, the other a reference to something antecedent,
I should be inclined to consider the sensation which follows the
presence of an external object as indicating a mental susceptibility
of being so affected;--the production of muscular motion by the will,
as indicating a mental power. But the terms are of less consequence,
if you understand fully the distinction that is implied in them; and
you may be allowed still, in compliance with the general language, to
speak of the power or faculty of sensation or perception, if you mean
nothing more, as often as you use these terms, than that the mind is
affected in a certain manner, and, therefore, must have had a previous
susceptibility of being thus affected whenever certain changes have
previously taken place, in that nervous system, with which it is
connected.
In considering the susceptibilities of the mind, I comprehend, under
its _external_ affections, all those phenomena or states of the
mind, which are commonly termed _sensations_; together with all our
internal organic feelings of pleasure or pain, that arise from states
of the nervous system, as much as our other sensations. Many of these
are commonly ranked under another head, that of _appetites_,--such
as hunger, thirst, the desire of repose, or of change of muscular
position, which arises from long-continued exertion; the oppressive
anxiety, which arises from impeded respiration, and various other
diseases, arising from bodily uneasiness. But these appetites evidently
admit of being analysed into two distinct elements,--a pain of a
peculiar species, and a subsequent desire of that which is to relieve
the pain,--states of mind, of which one may immediately succeed the
other; but which are, unquestionably, as different in themselves, as
if no such succession took place,--as different as the pleasure of
music is from the mere desire of enjoying it again, or as the pain of
excessive heat, in burning, from the subsequent desire of coolness.
The pain, which is _one_ element of the appetite, is an _external_
affection of the mind, to be classed with our other sensations,--the
succeeding desire, which is another element of it, is an _internal_
affection of the mind, to be classed with our other emotions of desire.
We might have felt the same pain of hunger, though we had not been
aware, that it arose from want of food, and consequently could not
have felt any desire of food, but merely the general desire of relief
which attends every disagreeable sensation. We might have felt the
same uneasiness, which we term thirst, though we had not been aware,
that it would be relieved by a draught of any beverage,--and the same
pain of impeded respiration or fatigue, though nature had not led
us instinctively, in the one case to perform the muscular actions
necessary for expiration and inspiration; in the other, to change
our posture, and thus give repose to the wearied limbs. Whatever be
the organic states, which occasion these painful feelings, that are
elementary in our appetites, there can be no doubt, that some organic
affections precede them, as truly as some affection of an external
organ precedes the pain of a burn, or the painful temporary blindness,
when we are dazzled with excessive light. And though, in the case of
the appetite, we may give the same name to the pain, and to the desire
of that which is to relieve the pain; or rather, may give one name
to the combination of the two feelings,--which is not to be wondered
at, where the two feelings are so universally and so immediately
successive,--this error, or rather this mere abbreviation of language,
is no reason that we should consider the elementary pain itself, as
different, in kind, from our other pains, that have not merely half
a term to express them, but a whole undivided word of their own. The
pain, of which the appetite desires the relief, is a _sensation_, as
much as any other internal bodily pain which we feel,--a state or
affection of the mind, arising, immediately and solely, from a state or
affection of the body,--which is the only definition that can be given
of a _sensation_.
The pain of hunger and thirst, then, and, in general, every internal
pain arising from a state of the bodily organs,--and distinct from the
subsequent desires which they occasion,--are as truly _sensations_,
as any other sensations; and the desires that follow these particular
sensations, are as truly _desires_, as any other desires of which we
have the consciousness. We may, indeed, if we resolve to invent a
new name, for those particular desires, that terminate immediately
in the relief of bodily pain, or the production of bodily pleasure,
give to such desires the name of _appetites_; but it is surely a very
simple analysis only, that is necessary to separate, from the desire of
relief, the feeling of the pain which we wish to be relieved; since it
is very evident, that the pain _must_ have existed primarily _before_
any such desire could be felt.