we see that the Mind can suffer great changes, and pass now to greater, now to less perfection, -the suf fering of which changes explains to us the emotions of Joy and Sorrow. Accordingly by Joy I shall in future mean a passion by which the Mind changes to greater perfection. By Sorrow likewise a passion by which it changes to less perfection. What Desire is I have already explained in the Scholium to Prop. 9 of this Part; and besides these three I recognise no other primary emotion; the remaining emotions, as I will show in the sequel, arise from these three." 13. Thus joy and sorrow and all the other emotions are explained by Spinoza as successful or unsuccessful efforts at self-preservation or self-perfection. The characters of feeling which we know by the names joy and sorrow are apparently explained, because we all know that, in cases where there is a distinct conscious effort for a purpose, it is pleasant to feel powerful, pleasant to be successful in selfpreservation, pleasant to succeed in doing what we try to do, and that the opposites are painful. But this explanation fails, or is only apparent, because it is not shown either, first, that there is such an effort at self-preservation underlying all the emotions, or secondly, why this effort should be pleasureable if it succeeds, painful if it fails; that is to say, why there are such feelings as pleasure and pain at all, and why, if there are, they should be attached respectively to successful and unsuccessful effort. 14. The remaining emotions and passions are all explained by Spinoza as so many minutely differentiated modes of successful or unsuccessful efforts at self-preservation or self-perfection. But he does not BOOK I. CH. II. PART II. § 15. Spinoza's theory examined. BOOK I. CH. II. PART II. $ 15. Spinoza's theory examined. show the cause or origin of the specific character of feeling involved in these emotions, any more than of those of joy and sorrow from which he derives them, or any more, it may be said, than of the sense of effort itself. What he has really done is to characterise the emotions in terms of second intention, in terms expressing their relation to successful or unsuccessful effort, when such effort for a purpose is really felt. For that there is pleasure and pain attached to such success and unsuccess is a fact of experience, and a distinct relation between the two is observable as a phenomenon of consciousness. It will be seen, when the emotions are analysed in this and the following Chapter, that they have, besides their specific character, another and a general character of pleasure or pain, derived from or consisting in this success or unsuccess in attaining the purpose aimed at. I do not propose to follow Spinoza farther in his deduction of the emotions; a complete examination of his system is not to be done as a bywork; and I have discussed it only so far as it opposed an obstacle to the analysis of the emotions as phenomena, by appearing to be an exhaustive explanation of them. It will now, I think, be evident that his deduction can at the most be only partially true; and that to attain a more complete truth it is requisite to undertake the analysis of the emotions for themselves, as phenomena or states of consciousness, without attempting to deduce them from a single principle a priori. This analysis, which will also be a classification, it now remains to take in hand. CHAPTER II. PART III. THE DIRECT EMOTIONS. Ce qu'il éprouvait échappe aux paroles; l'émotion est toujours neuve et le mot a toujours servi; de là l'impossibilité d'exprimer l'émotion. Victor Hugo. § 16. 1. IN proceeding to the analysis of the emotions it will be well perhaps to enumerate some of the chief distinctions at our disposal. There is 1st, the great distinction between the emotion and its framework of representation; 2nd, the distinction between comparisons where the things compared differ in kind of specific feeling, as colour from colour for instance, and comparisons where they differ in the additional introduction of the formal element, as for instance differently pitched tones in music, or different shapes in space, as circle and triangle; 3rd, the distinction of pleasure and pain from the specific feeling to which they belong; 4th, the distinction of pleasure and pain of enjoyment from pleasure and pain of admiration; 5th, the distinction of sense of effort from pleasure and pain, on the one hand, and from the specific feeling in which it arises on the other; 6th, the distinction between sense of effort and sense BOOK I. CH. II. PART III. $16. General distinctions and method. BOOK I. CH. II. PART III. $16. General distinctions and method. of effort for a purpose, or volition; 7th, the distinction between cases where emotions differ in general kind from each other and cases where one emotion differs from another only in circumstantials, and the difference is of variety from species, or species from genus, as for instance in avarice, where the excessive fondness for different kinds of objects gives but varieties of excessive fondness for possessions geneally; 8th, the distinction between the two great modes of representation, direct and reflective; and, within each of these, that between representation which is pure remembrance and representation which is imagination; and 9th, the distinction between the different degrees of complexity, in the emotions and their frameworks at once, which distinction will be the guiding thread of the analysis of the emotions, as it was before in that of the sensations. 2. Casting a glance back over these distinctions and referring to the remarks made in § 8, it becomes clear that the distinction between the direct and reflective modes of representation is the most general of all, breaking up the whole group of emotions into two sub-groups, each of which contains within it all the other distinctions, and thus forming the main fundamental division of the subject. In the next place, each of these sub-groups is similarly divisible into two, by the distinction between representation which is pure remembrance and representation which is imagination; and each of the sub-groups so formed again contains within it all the remaining distinctions. After this we come to minor distinctions which can only be exhibited by applying the canon of greater or less complexity to the emotions in detail. The four sub-groups which are thus laid at the basis of our examination are those of the direct, the direct and imaginative, the reflective, the reflective and imaginative emotions. BOOK I. CH. II. PART III. $17. Emotions the matter. § 17. 1. The first great group of emotions is accordingly that of the direct emotions which do not arising from include imagination in their representational framework. These will be found to fall under four heads, first, according as they are or are not mixed with sense of effort or with volition,-emotions proper and desires or passions; secondly, according as they include pleasures and pains of enjoyment or pleasures and pains of admiration. The simplest emotions proper, those which stand nearest to sensations, are those of joy, grief, fondness, and aversion. These arise from representation of external or internal sensations. Suppose a child tastes a bitter kind of food, he feels a pain of taste. When that same kind of food is presented to him again, to see only and not to taste, the painful taste is represented, and there arises a feeling of dislike or aversion to the food, which is quite distinct from the notion of the probability of his having again to eat it, i. e., which has nothing to do with hope or fear. The aversion is a feeling now attaching to the food, arising from the pain of taste, but different from that pain, although it is itself also painful. Suppose a child to suffer from cold, he feels pain; when he suffers from cold a second time, or if the pain of cold is continued the first time, he feels grief or pain of representation. The cold may be said in popular phrase to act on the mind, and produce a painful mental state as well as a painful bodily state. The same reasoning applies to pleasureable states, the emotions of joy and fond ness. |