Part 16 (1/2)
”EMOTION is the name here used to comprehend all that is understood by feelings, states of feeling, pleasures, pains, pa.s.sions, sentiments, affections. Consciousness, and conscious states also for the most part denote modes of emotion, although there is such a thing as the Intellectual consciousness.
”VOLITION, on the other hand, indicates the great fact that our Pleasures and Pains, which are not the whole of our emotions, prompt us to action, or stimulate the active machinery of the living framework to perform such operations as procure the first and abate the last. To withdraw from a scalding heat and cling to a gentle warmth, are exercises of volition.”
The last of these definitions, which we may most conveniently take first, seems to us very faulty. We cannot but feel astonished that Mr. Bain, familiar as he is with the phenomena of reflex action, should have so expressed himself as to include a great part of them along with the phenomena of volition. He seems to be ignoring the discriminations of modern science, and returning to the vague conceptions of the past--nay more, he is comprehending under volition what even the popular speech would hardly bring under it. If you were to blame any one for s.n.a.t.c.hing his foot from the scalding water into which he had inadvertently put it, he would tell you that he could not help it; and his reply would be indorsed by the general experience, that the withdrawal of a limb from contact with something extremely hot, is quite involuntary--that it takes place not only without volition, but in defiance of an effort of will to maintain the contact. How, then, can that be instanced as an example of volition, which occurs even when volition is antagonistic? We are quite aware that it is impossible to draw any absolute line of demarcation between automatic actions and actions which are not automatic. Doubtless we may pa.s.s gradually from the purely reflex, through the consensual, to the voluntary.
Taking the case Mr. Bain cites, it is manifest that from a heat of such moderate degree that the withdrawal from it is wholly voluntary, we may advance by infinitesimal steps to a heat which compels involuntary withdrawal; and that there is a stage at which the voluntary and involuntary actions are mixed. But the difficulty of absolute discrimination is no reason for neglecting the broad general contrast; any more than it is for confounding light with darkness. If we are to include as examples of volition, all cases in which pleasures and pains ”stimulate the active machinery of the living framework to perform such operations as procure the first and abate the last,” then we must consider sneezing and coughing, as examples of volition; and Mr. Bain surely cannot mean this.
Indeed, we must confess ourselves at a loss. On the one hand if he does not mean it, his expression is lax to a degree that surprises us in so careful a writer. On the other hand, if he does mean it, we cannot understand his point of view.
A parallel criticism applies to his definition of Emotion. Here, too, he has departed from the ordinary acceptation of the word; and, as we think, in the wrong direction. Whatever may be the interpretation that is justified by its derivation, the word Emotion has come generally to mean that kind of feeling which is not a direct result of any action on the organism; but is either an indirect result of such action, or arises quite apart from such action. It is used to indicate those sentient states which are independently generated in consciousness; as distinguished from those generated in our corporeal framework, and known as sensations. Now this distinction, tacitly made in common speech, is one which Psychology cannot well reject; but one which it must adopt, and to which it must give scientific precision. Mr. Bain, however, appears to ignore any such distinction. Under the term ”emotion,” he includes not only pa.s.sions, sentiments, affections, but all ”feelings, states of feeling, pleasures, pains,”--that is, all sensations. This does not appear to be a mere lapse of expression; for when, in the opening sentence, he a.s.serts that ”mind is comprised under the three heads--Emotion, Volition, and Intellect,” he of necessity implies that sensation is included under one of these heads; and as it cannot be included under Volition or Intellect, it must be cla.s.sed with Emotion: as it clearly is in the next sentence.
We cannot but think this is a retrograde step. Though distinctions which have been established in popular thought and language, are not unfrequently merged in the higher generalizations of science (as, for instance, when crabs and worms are grouped together in the sub-kingdom _Annulosa_;) yet science very generally recognizes the validity of these distinctions, as real though not fundamental. And so in the present case. Such community as a.n.a.lysis discloses between sensation and emotion, must not shut out the broad contrast that exists between them. If there needs a wider word, as there does, to signify any sentient state whatever; then we may fitly adopt for this purpose the word currently so used, namely, ”Feeling.” And considering as Feelings all that great division of mental states which we do not cla.s.s as Cognitions, may then separate this great division into the two orders, Sensations and Emotions.
And here we may, before concluding, briefly indicate the leading outlines of a cla.s.sification which reduces this distinction to a scientific form, and developes it somewhat further--a cla.s.sification which, while suggested by certain fundamental traits reached without a very lengthened inquiry, is yet, we believe, in harmony with that disclosed by detailed a.n.a.lysis.
Leaving out of view the Will, which is a simple h.o.m.ogeneous mental state, forming the link between feeling and action, and not admitting of subdivisions; our states of consciousness fall into two great cla.s.ses--COGNITIONS and FEELINGS.
COGNITIONS, or those modes of mind in which we are occupied with the _relations_ that subsist among our feelings, are divisible into four great sub-cla.s.ses.
_Presentative cognitions_; or those in which consciousness is occupied in localizing a sensation impressed on the organism--occupied, that is, with the relation between this presented mental state and those other presented mental states which make up our consciousness of the part affected: as when we cut ourselves.
_Presentative-representative cognitions_; or those in which consciousness is occupied with the relation between a sensation or group of sensations and the representations of those various other sensations that accompany it in experience. This is what we commonly call perception--an act in which, along with certain impressions presented to consciousness, there arise in consciousness the ideas of certain other impressions ordinarily connected with the presented ones: as when its visible form and colour, lead us to mentally endow an orange with all its other attributes.
_Representative cognitions_; or those in which consciousness is occupied with the relations among ideas or represented sensations: as in all acts of recollection.
_Re-representative cognitions_; or those in which the occupation of consciousness is not by representation of special relations, that have before been presented to consciousness; but those in which such represented special relations are thought of merely as comprehended in a general relation--those in which the concrete relations once experienced, in so far as they become objects of consciousness at all, are incidentally represented, along with the abstract relation which formulates them. The ideas resulting from this abstraction, do not themselves represent actual experiences; but are symbols which stand for groups of such actual experiences--represent aggregates of representations. And thus they may be called re-representative cognitions. It is clear that the process of re-representation is carried to higher stages, as the thought becomes more abstract.
FEELINGS, or those modes of mind in which we are occupied, not with the relations subsisting between our sentient states, but with the sentient states themselves, are divisible into four parallel sub-cla.s.ses.
_Presentative feelings_, ordinarily called sensations, are those mental states in which, instead of regarding a corporeal impression as of this or that kind, or as located here or there, we contemplate it in itself as pleasure or pain: as when eating.
_Presentative-representative feelings_, embracing a great part of what we commonly call emotions, are those in which a sensation, or group of sensations or group of sensations and ideas, arouses a vast aggregation of represented sensations; partly of individual experience, but chiefly deeper than individual experience, and, consequently, indefinite. The emotion of terror may serve as an example. Along with certain impressions made on the eyes or ears, or both, are recalled in consciousness many of the pains to which such impressions have before been the antecedents; and when the relation between such impressions and such pains has been habitual in the race, the definite ideas of such pains which individual experience has given, are accompanied by the indefinite pains that result from inherited experience--vague feelings which we may call organic representations. In an infant, crying at a strange sight or sound while yet in the nurse's arms, we see these organic representations called into existence in the shape of dim discomfort, to which individual experience has yet given no specific outlines.
_Representative feelings_, comprehending the ideas of the feelings above cla.s.sed, when they are called up apart from the appropriate external excitements. As instances of these may be named the feelings with which the descriptive poet writes, and which are aroused in the minds of his readers.
_Re-representative feelings_, under which head are included those more complex sentient states that are less the direct results of external excitements than the indirect or reflex results of them. The love of property is a feeling of this kind. It is awakened not by the presence of any special object, but by ownable objects at large; and it is not from the mere presence of such object, but from a certain ideal relation to them, that it arises. As before shown (p. 311) it consists, not of the represented advantages of possessing this or that, but of the represented advantages of possession in general--is not made up of certain concrete representations, but of the abstracts of many concrete representations; and so is re-representative. The higher sentiments, as that of justice, are still more completely of this nature. Here the sentient state is compounded out of sentient states that are themselves wholly, or almost wholly, re-representative: it involves representations of those lower emotions which are produced by the possession of property, by freedom of action, etc.; and thus is re-representative in a higher degree.
This cla.s.sification, here roughly indicated and capable of further expansion, will be found in harmony with the results of detailed a.n.a.lysis aided by development. Whether we trace mental progression through the grades of the animal kingdom, through the grades of mankind, or through the stages of individual growth; it is obvious that the advance, alike in cognitions and feelings, is, and must be, from the presentative to the more and more remotely representative. It is undeniable that intelligence ascends from those simple perceptions in which consciousness is occupied in localizing and cla.s.sifying sensations, to perceptions more and more compound, to simple reasoning, to reasoning more and more complex and abstract--more and more remote from sensation. And in the evolution of feelings, there is a parallel series of steps. Simple sensations; sensations combined together; sensations combined with represented sensations; represented sensations organized into groups, in which their separate characters are very much merged; representations of these representative groups, in which the original components have become still more vague. In both cases, the progress has necessarily been from the simple and concrete to the complex and abstract: and as with the cognitions, so with the feelings, this must be the basis of cla.s.sification.
The s.p.a.ce here occupied with criticisms on Mr. Bain's work, we might have filled with exposition and eulogy, had we thought this the more important.
Though we have freely pointed out what we conceive to be its defects, let it not be inferred that we question its great merits. We repeat that, as a natural history of the mind, we believe it to be the best yet produced. It is a most valuable collection of carefully-elaborated materials. Perhaps we cannot better express our sense of its worth, than by saying that, to those who hereafter give to this branch of Psychology a thoroughly scientific organization, Mr. Bain's book will be indispensable.
VIII. ILLOGICAL GEOLOGY.
That proclivity to generalization which is possessed in greater or less degree by all minds, and without which, indeed, intelligence cannot exist, has unavoidable inconveniences. Through it alone can truth be reached; and yet it almost inevitably betrays into error. But for the tendency to predicate of every other case, that which has been found in the observed cases, there could be no rational thinking; and yet by this indispensable tendency, men are perpetually led to found, on limited experience, propositions which they wrongly a.s.sume to be universal or absolute. In one sense, however, this can scarcely be regarded as an evil; for without premature generalizations the true generalization would never be arrived at. If we waited till all the facts were acc.u.mulated before trying to formulate them, the vast unorganized ma.s.s would be unmanageable. Only by provisional grouping can they be brought into such order as to be dealt with; and this provisional grouping is but another name for premature generalization.
How uniformly men follow this course, and how needful the errors are as steps to truth, is well ill.u.s.trated in the history of Astronomy. The heavenly bodies move round the Earth in circles, said the earliest observers: led partly by the appearances, and partly by their experiences of central motions in terrestrial objects, with which, as all circular, they cla.s.sed the celestial motions from lack of any alternative conception.
Without this provisional belief, wrong as it was, there could not have been that comparison of positions which showed that the motions are not representable by circles; and which led to the hypothesis of epicycles and eccentrics. Only by the aid of this hypothesis, equally untrue, but capable of accounting more nearly for the appearances, and so of inducing more accurate observations--only thus did it become possible for Copernicus to show that the heliocentric theory is more feasible than the geocentric theory; or for Kepler to show that the planets move round the sun in ellipses. Yet again, without the aid of this approximate truth discovered by Kepler, Newton could not have established that general law from which it follows, that the motion of a heavenly body round its centre of gravity is not necessarily in an ellipse, but may be in any conic section. And lastly, it was only after the law of gravitation had been verified, that it became possible to determine the actual courses of planets, satellites, and comets; and to prove that, in consequence of perturbations, their orbits always deviate, more or less, from regular curves. Thus, there followed one another five provisional theories of the Solar System, before the sixth and absolutely true theory was reached. In which five provisional theories, each for a time held as final, we may trace both the tendency men have to leap from scanty data to wide generalizations, that are either untrue or but partially true; and the necessity there is for these transitional generalizations as steps to the final one.
In the progress of geological speculation the same laws of thought are clearly displayed. We have dogmas that were more than half false, pa.s.sing current for a time as universal truths. We have evidence collected in proof of these dogmas; by and by a colligation of facts in antagonism with them; and eventually a consequent modification. In conformity with this somewhat improved hypothesis, we have a better cla.s.sification of facts; a greater power of arranging and interpreting the new facts now rapidly gathered together; and further resulting corrections of hypothesis. Being, as we are at present, in the midst of this process, it is not possible to give an adequate account of the development of geological science as thus regarded: the earlier stages are alone known to us. Not only, however, is it interesting to observe how the more advanced views now received respecting the Earth's history, have been evolved out of the crude views which preceded them; but we shall find it extremely instructive to observe this.