Book I. CH. II. PART III. $ 19. Emotions comparison. truth of Aristotle's well known remark, that wonder is the parent of philosophy. There is in English no single good name for the desire of knowledge; for if we call it curiosity or inquisitiveness we are describing arising from it by its results, characterising it by what it appears to be in contrast to something else, not defining it. The whole of purely intellectual activity, of the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, rests not upon the desire to know much or to know more than at present, for we easily acquiesce in a limit to our knowledge once ascertained to be irremovable, but upon the desire to remove an incongruity or dissimilarity in things which we already know or suspect to exist. Hence springs the a priori certainty of the axiom in Kant, In natura non datur saltus, non datur hiatus; to which he adds also-non datur casus, non datur fatum. That is to say, we cannot acquiesce in their continuance, but must endeavour to fill up the gap. The name I would propose instead of curiosity is logical instinct. 3. But although wonder is itself uneasy and requires removing by the completion of knowledge, the whole activity, of which it is the first step, is not painful but pleasurable; the want and its satisfaction together are an activity which is a natural need, and the absence of which is painful. This absence of the activity of wonder, logical instinct, and knowledge, is one branch of the feeling of Ennui; the other branch is the absence of emotional activity. In the first branch there is a craving for activity on the part of the intellect, which requires its natural food and stimulus. If wonder is the parent of philosophy, ennui is the parent of wonder, in the sense of being the appetite or hunger for intellectual activity, as it is BOOK I. CH. II. PART III. § 19. Emotions comparison. also for emotional. (See the remarks in Auguste Comte's Pol. Pos. Vol. i. Ch. iii. p. 686.) 4. Before leaving this group of emotions I must arising from mention one peculiar feeling, which seems to belong to it, and to be a particular mode of dread or terror, but for which I confess I am at a loss to assign a representational framework. Perhaps the very circumstance that there is no framework at hand in the feeling may be partly itself a constituent of its character. I mean to speak of that peculiar kind of awe or dread which makes the night-fears of children, and at times of older people also; which seems to be the same with the feeling, often sudden and marked in the moment of its arising, inspired by lonely mountain tops, or monuments of human agency in long deserted places, or by caverns or woods when we visit them alone. There is perhaps no better name for this feeling than Eeriness. It would seem that animals are not exempt from it; that children suffer most from it; and that the unoccupied mind is most liable to it. If it should be thought, as is not unlikely, that it is a feeling or consciousness of the presence of one's self without this consciousness being represented in a distinct shape, it would then be the emotion attending the first dawning of reflection or self-consciousness. It must be held too that men in the earliest stages of civilisation are the most subject to it, and feel it the most frequently and the most strongly, and on the incitement of the greatest number of objects; that it is in fact the main ingredient in what is to them religion, but which we are apt to call superstition. And this view seems to be confirmed by the circumstance that religious feeling is the special antidote to the pain of eeriness, as many an understanding mother no doubt instructs her children; an antidote which combats the shadowy terror with weapons more subtil and penetrating than its own, namely, with the sense of repose beneath the protection of Almighty God, from whom no secrets are hid. § 20. 1. In all the emotions hitherto examined there has been involved only the representation of objects as they have been actually presented; for in speaking of music and painting we have considered them from the spectator's not the composer's point of view; memory alone has been employed. But when new combinations of objects are introduced by redintegration, that is, old objects broken up and their fragments recombined in other shapes, this is to introduce new objects; and this kind of redintegration, whether it is spontaneous or voluntary, is imagination. First, objects of aversion or grief represented as future, or as likely to become presentations again, are objects of Fear. The representation of them as future is imaginative, since the remembered object is thereby represented in a new combination; an evil is imagined, the same with the old in point of content, but different from it in the circumstances which introduce and follow it. The simple consideration of happening in the future makes the representation imaginative. This is the simplest case; but the content of the future evil may also be represented as slightly different from before; this is an additional imaginative change. In the same way objects of joy or of fondness, represented as future, are imagined, and then become objects of Hope. It is plain that all the differences which attach to the objects and emotions of grief, joy, aversion, and fond VOL. I. M BOOK I. CH. II. PART III. § 20. Imaginative emotions arising from the matter. BOOK I. CH. II. PART III. $ 20. Imaginative emotions arising from the matter. ness, will attach also to fear and hope; and this will be the case also when they are carried over into reflection, or when personal or reflective emotions are their objects. It is noticeable that the emotions of hope and fear refer indifferently to the historical past and the historical future; it is in the order of cognition that they refer only to the future. We say, for instance, that we hope or fear that a thing has happened when we know that the event has already decided one way or the other. The emotions refer only to the state of our knowledge and feeling about objects, not to the state those objects are really in did we know it. Yet the general knowledge that the event has been decided, though we do not know in what way, is not without effect upon the emotions of hope and fear, since it modifies the frameworks of those emotions. Its effect is to lessen the agitation of doubt as to the causes which tend to produce either result, and to fix the thoughts upon the consequences first of one result, then of the other, and so to brace the mind to the contemplation of either alternative. 2. The representation or imagination of the future in hope and fear brings into emotion a new element, that of certainty or uncertainty. The certainty of anything happening is a feeling which depends on the strength of the association connecting it with the rest of the framework, whether the links or steps in association are few or many; and the strength of the association depends in many cases on actual knowledge and reasoning. If it is a mere feeling without good grounds, the association is precarious; and the grounds may vary in quality. In itself, however, certainty is a feeling, a feeling of connection between two objects of representation; and this feeling of cer tainty has many degrees, from perfect certainty, if the connection is indissoluble, to mere suspicion if the connection is feeble or fluctuating. The other element in hope and fear is the pleasure or pain, of all kinds, of the objects feared or hoped for; and this differs both in kind and in degree of intensity. These two elements are the whole of hope and of fear taken generally; for in so doing we abstract from the particular objects, with their particular pleasures and pains, which may be feared or hoped for, and retain the feature of pleasure and pain which is common to all; the object of every hope being pleasureable, of every fear painful. Now these two elements, that of certainty or uncertainty and that of pleasure or pain, supply each other's place and each other's deficiency, in all cases where action is taken upon the emotions of hope or fear. "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" expresses this relation of the two elements. Between two courses of action, of which one offers a small but certain, the other a great but uncertain, enjoyment, the choice will fix upon that the elements of which taken together outbalance the elements of the other taken together. The balance is struck by the vividness of the feeling; there are no means of accurate measurement of either element separately; the fact of choice alone decides which is the weightiest. Yet the two elements can be accurately measured against each other, as is done in betting. You can measure the degree of certainty by the sum of money a man is willing to pay if his opinion is wrong; because, the more certain he feels, the more money he will stake upon his opinion. In this case the motive to stake the money must come from elsewhere; since there Воок І. CH. II. PART III. $ 20. Imaginative emotions arising from the matter. |