BOOK I. CH. IV. $ 65. The dutyloving type; Morality. emotion. The representation of this future course may be called the career of that emotion or desire. This career is the represented image of what is desired in all cases of volition, when the desired image the Passion of is considered as possible, probable, improbable, or impossible. If the image of the career of an emotion either contains in itself a contradiction, or stands. in contradiction with known facts or with stronger emotions, that career will not be entered on, or if entered soon abandoned, and the emotion not indulged. Those emotions which have a career assured to them have a great advantage over others; and such a career is supplied by justice; the justice of any emotion is its ultimate and complete compatibility with other permanent emotions. When we say that any feeling is just, we mean to say that we think it to be compatible with others already judged to be just, without diminution of its intensity. Justice, therefore, which is itself the equation of conflicting emotions, is one condition of the career of all emotions besides itself, no matter what may be the emotions to which this career is opened. And so long as a career is necessary where emotions are in conflict, so long will justice be necessary as an element of that career. The conscious and voluntary harmonising of emotions, so as to open a certain career for all, is an operation which must take place as long as there are conflicting emotions to be harmonised by reflecting reason. Inasmuch then as it is founded in justice as one of its elements, the moral sense, an emotion of which the sense of duty is the passion, is as permanent as the reasoning faculties themselves, containing, as it does, the essential condition of harmonising the conflicting emotions. BOOK I. § 66. The erotic type. § 66. 1. The sympathetic emotions fall into two groups which are the foundations of two distinct yet allied types of character. There is in English but one name for them both, Love; we must have recourse to the Greek to distinguish them as gws and pinia, which I shall call eros and love. The lowest foundation or root of eros lies deep in the bodily organisation and in the sexual appetite. This combines with direct æsthetic emotions, those of beauty and grace; and these latter it is which, when seen or represented in a person whom we think may possibly feel eros for us, make up the complete and reflective emotion of eros, of which that person is the object. Eros is thus inseparable from anteros; in other words, eros is an emotion which must have a career represented as at least possible in order to be sustained; and this career is made possible by representing the eros as reciprocated, or as anteros in the person for whom the eros is felt. The equalisation of eros and anteros is the end of this career. The desire in eros for the equalisation of the anteros, for the undoubting conviction that the anteros is equal, which is a fact of representation, is what makes the emotion of eros a passion. Hence it is possible to feel the passion of eros intensely with the very smallest hope of return, or with the bare imagination of its being possible, to hope against hope as it is called; and the stronger the emotion the less the need of represented success, and conversely; this being a case falling under the general law stated in § 20. Eros cannot be considered to be an end in itself, since the end which its passion desires is not a greater intensity in the emotion itself, but the bringing up the anteros to an equal degree of intensity. And this circumstance, together with the close de- BOOK I. CH. IV. § 66. The erotic type. BOOK I. CH. IV. § 66. sation, is not condemned by the moral sense; it is the repetition of this representation in voluntary redThe erotic integration, or in spontaneous redintegration not resisted by volition, that is the object of the judgment. type. 2. This case deserves an attentive consideration, for, if we ask ourselves the further question, Why this representation of the satisfaction of appetite will not combine with the moral sense, a difference is disclosed which divides into two different classes the things which must be held morally bad because they will not combine with the moral sense. One class contains the representations of satisfaction of appetites, with the actions which they engender, such as drunkenness and gluttony; the other contains representations which manifestly involve injustice. Now only the latter class is immediately and at first sight condemned by the moral sense, condemned because the objects of it are the direct contradictories of the sense of justic. But the objects of the former class, the appetites whose indulgence is condemned by the moral sense, are not in themselves unjust; and it seems therefore that, if they are condemned by the moral sense, the criterion and validity of the moral sense cannot consist, as here maintained, in the sense of justice, but must have some other source. This class of objects, then, has probably been the chief support of the theory of Utility, that the pleasureable or painful consequences of actions, weighed by prudence, constitute them morally right or wrong. They by no means however necessitate this conclusion; the moral badness of the acts and representations in question may flow ultimately but indirectly from the sense of justice; and this indirectness of derivation makes of the acts in question a separate class, and, besides, a class which falls under the head of character not of emotions taken separately. The moral sense establishes a certain hierarchy of emotions, approves certain classes of habits, and commands a certain type of character. It is as destructive or injurious to these emotions, habits, and character, not to the moral sense or the sense of justice itself, that the indulgence of the appetites in question is condemned, when it is condemned, by the moral sense. In this way arise virtues and vices of character, consisting of emotions, representations, and habits, which are not in themselves separately perceivable as either just or unjust, but which are immediately and by themselves perceivable as compatible or not compatible with the habits composing the character commanded by the moral sense. The immediate source of deciding as to the morally good or bad character of this class of objects is the moral ideal; the ultimate source is the sense of justice. If a moral ideal was not produced and established upon the sense of justice, there would be no criterion by which to judge any habits, that is, virtues or vices of character, as morally good or morally bad. Hence also, if any other ideal besides the moral ideal were to be set up as equal or superior to it in validity, many habits of character might be approved or admitted which are now condemned, and vice versa. The importance of this will be seen when we come to treat of the poetical and religious types of character, since the most favourite alliance of poetical imagination is with the erotic type, and this again is closely bound up with representations of indulgence of appetite. 3. Eros is found to be stimulated artificially by BOOK I. CH. IV. § 66. The erotic type. |