BOOK I. CH. II. PART III. § 17. Emotions arising from the matter. 2. Now when sensations and representations like those mentioned are attached to objects which are separate from the body of the person feeling them, so as to be capable of approaching and removing from it, it is proper to describe the emotions as aversion and fondness; when they arise within the body itself, then it is proper to describe them as grief and joy. Even in this their simplest shape these emotions admit of as many differences in kind as there are differences in the sensations or groups of sensation, in representing which they arise; and of course also of innumerable differences of degree or intensity. But they do not depend upon imagination, upon the expectation of a future feeling, a feeling different in mode of combination from what has been already actually experienced; nor yet upon reflection, upon the distinction between the self and its modes of feeling. It is true that there is a joy and grief, an aversion and fondness, in reflection; pleasure and pain of all kinds when contemplated in representation are grief, joy, aversion, and fondness, of that particular kind to which their representational framework belongs; and grief and joy, aversion and fondness, are properly defined as the representation of the pain or pleasure of enjoyment in any object, whether direct or reflective, a thing or a person. In reflection it is emotions themselves which, when contemplated as pleasureable or painful, are the objects or frameworks of the reflective modes of joy or grief, fondness or aversion. For instance, the pleasure of being loved, when represented, is joy; the pain of humiliation, when represented, is grief. There is pleasure in being loved, and a further pleasure in the thought or representation of it; there BOOK I. CH. II. PART III. § 17. Emotions the matter. is pain in being humiliated, and a further pain in the representation of it. These are in fact often found distinct in point of time, so as to be capable of easy distinction; I mean they are so in the phenomena arising from of paroxysms of grief or of joy, which are the moments when a sense of one's state, as pleasureable or painful, comes home to one as it is called, that is, when a clear representation of it arises. The reflective modes of these four emotions, then, stand at the end of the series of reflective emotions, as their simple modes stand at the beginning of the direct, or rather at the end of the sensations. 3. When the sense of effort arises within these emotions, it is volition, for the representation of the object makes the object of the effort distinct; there is desire of a particular object, or sense of effort with a purpose. This desire being added to grief, joy, aversion, fondness, or, generally, to any emotion, makes the emotion passion. When the emotion is joy or fondness in objects of certain classes of sensation, namely, those of the digestive and reproductive organs, and those of the sense of taste, the corresponding or arising passion has usually been called appetite. All appetite is a mode of passion. The distinct kinds of fondness are most easily marked as attached to particular kinds of separate, remote, objects; hence the corresponding passions, or desires for those objects, are more easily classified also. Fondness of such objects with desire is the love of possessions of various kinds, and its excess is avarice in its various forms, which it is needless to enumerate. But the reflective modes of them must be distinguished from the direct, as in other cases. Power of all kinds is a kind of possession; so also many BOOK I. PART III. $18. Emotions the form. personal accomplishments, titles, honour, and reputa- may § 18. 1. The four emotions and corresponding arising from passions just described relate to or contain only pleasures and pains of enjoyment, not of admiration. Objects of all the senses are their objects. But only objects of hearing and sight, or of sight and touch combined, since all remote objects of the one are remote objects of the other, though touch contributes no portion of their specific pleasure, form the representational framework of the next class of direct emotions, the pleasures and pains of which are pleasures and pains of admiration. These are the æsthetic emotions, properly so called. Reference should be made here to §§ 11. 12. in which the pleasure and pain of admiration in sights and sounds was described in its earliest or sensational stage. The æsthetic emotions take up those sensations repeated in representation. When I hear a piece of music of a length greater than can be perceived by the ear at once, I represent the beginning of it when it reaches its close, and compare the two; the pleasure or pain which results from or arises in this comparison is a pleasure or pain of admiration, only different from that in sensation by the greater amount of representation or memory involved. Similarly in a picture, the harmony of form, the correspondence of an object here to an object there, all that is called technically "composition," differs only in quantity, subtilty, and complexity, from the arrangement of shapes in a kaleidoscope which I can take in at a glance. The subtilties of composition which Mr. Book I. CH. II. PART III. $ 18. Emotions the form. Ruskin points out in Turner's pictures, Mod. Painters, Part viii. Chap. ii., and the harmony of parts in a Greek statue, or in one by Michael Angelo, in a Greek Temple or Gothic Cathedral, all repeat the arising from same pleasure on a larger scale, a scale which requires representation as well as presentation. Add now to this source of pleasure that which gives pleasures of enjoyment in sound or sight alone, as the harmony of different kinds of musical instruments and that of different colours, and suppose both kinds of pleasure combined, either in the piece of music or in the picture, statue, or temple, and there will arise from the combination a new pleasure which is at once a pleasure of admiration and of enjoyment, but in which the former element largely preponderates; since even the pleasure of enjoyment is given only by a comparison of two kinds or qualities of sensation, each pleasing in itself. This whole pleasureable emotion, in which the pleasure is chiefly one of admiration, is æsthetic emotion. The general name for the object of the æsthetic emotions, of that quality in the representational framework which is æsthetic emotion on its emotional side, is Beauty if pleasureable, Deformity or ugliness if painful. In this way, in representation, the object of hearing and the object of sight develop, or become distinguished into, a double character, an emotion and its framework; or in other words, the sounds and sights in which representation is involved, when they are of a regular, harmonious, or musical kind, become the frameworks of emotions which, from their similar character, are called by one general name, æsthetic emotion, or the sense of beauty. The beauty is the characteristic of the framework, the sense of beauty VOL. I. L Book I. CH. II. PART III. § 18. Emotions the form. is the æsthetic emotion with which we contemplate the framework, its pervading emotional aspect. 2. Let us now examine farther this pleasureable arising from æsthetic emotion, the object of which is beauty. Since it consists in representation, and representation requires a certain considerable length of time both in objects of hearing and in objects of sight, two things must be distinguished in it; first, the whole object may be treated as a whole, or statically; secondly, it may be treated as a movement, or dynamically. Take first a piece of music. Statically considered it is harmony; dynamically it is melody. The movement from note to note, different yet agreable in their relations of pitch and quality, is melody. The quick succession of many notes, each of which is not far removed in pitch from that before it and after it, is a pleasure of enjoyment from its ease or facility; it is the emotion of cheerfulness, gaiety, or joy. The interruption of this succession by several long intervals of pitch between the notes, when equally rapid, gives a sense of difficulty or pain. A slow succession gives the sense of gravity or dulness; if interrupted by long intervals of pitch it adds difficulty or pain. Again, when the succession of sounds is emphasised by loudness or intensity in some of the notes as contrasted with others, or by longer intervals of time interposed between some than between others, the succession is broken up into feet or measures, and a character is impressed upon the succession, which character is also one of enjoyment not of admiration. But when these feet are perceived to have a relation to one another, when they form a system, then we pass over into harmony as well as melody. |