BOOK I. § 64. the emotional in or as part of the specific emotion or quality of which it consists, just as sweetness of taste is pleaSubdivisions of sureable; - that these evil emotions, although pleatendency; the sureable and seeming to carry their justification along several types with them in their pleasure, are nevertheless not of equal rank and value, in point of permanence and promise of development, with those emotions and passions which either constitute or will combine with the moral sense or sense of duty, or with those which are the imaginative or ideal perfection of these. The difficulty lies in the apparent self-justification inherent in every feeling that is pleasureable, which is apparently complete when these feelings are intense, and still more when so intense as to be absorbing or exclusive. The man who is occupied by one such feeling cannot even listen to or feel any antagonistic one, still less can he feel the antagonism between his own feeling and the moral sense or sense of duty. He feels at the moment completely justified by the interest of the feeling which is in possession of him. The value or interest of the moral sense also consists in a specific pleasureable feeling; and its superiority to the interest of the antagonistic feelings can be felt only when the two are compared, that is, in a reasoning process, a reflection upon feelings which have once been, but have ceased to be, violent. That the moral sense is of far higher interest when so judged by reflection, that its specific quality as an emotion is much better than other and antagonistic feelings, can only be felt by actual experience, and proved, or rather rendered verifiable, only by analysis of its representational framework, such as was offered in § 37. This analysis may be said to give the proof of its de jure supremacy, its superiority in specific kind of feeling; and the case admits of proof because of the formal element involved in the framework of the emotion, just as in the case of the æsthetic emotions or sense of beauty. This de jure supremacy of the emotion would remain untouched, even should it be shown that the sense of duty was to last only for an hour longer, or that it was involved in a course of rapid and inevitable decay. But the problem now before us is to prove what may be called the de facto supremacy of the emotion, the de jure and de facto supremacy of the character founded upon it, by showing that both the emotion and the character have in themselves the promise of permanence and development, so as to assimilate and subordinate some, and eliminate other, emotions and passions, thereby unifying and harmonising the elements and types of character, and contributing to the total advancement and improvement both of the individual and of the race. The degree to which this improvement may be carried, how far the elimination of some emotions, the assimilation and combination of others, may proceed, in other words, the degree of perfectibility of the human character, is another question, and one which it is not necessary to discuss here, especially since it depends in a great, perhaps the greatest, measure upon the influences of bodily organisation and external circumstances operating on it. these purposes in view, let us now proceed to consider the several groups of the reflective emotions with their representational frameworks. With § 65. 1. Let us begin with the moral sense, since that is the central focus of all the emotions, the criterion of them all as good or bad, by combining or rejecting them from combination with itself. In it BOOK I. $ 65. The duty loving type; Morality. self it is the ground of a special type of character; as will be readily admitted, since no class of men is more marked out from others than those who act in the Passion of all cases and circumstances from a sense of duty, or in whom the predominant thought and desire is to do their duty "in scorn of consequence." The moral sense, when its emotion in greater intensity is made an object of desire, that is, when it becomes a passion, may be properly designated as the passion of duty, or the passionate desire to do one's duty. All moral sense is a command or law as well as an emotion, as its analysis in § 37 has shown. As a command it is duty, a debt or obligation, the validity of which is derived from justice, one of the two elements of the objects of moral sense, the other element being unfixed, consisting of any pleasureable feeling compatible or inseparably combined with justice, and therefore commanded or at least permitted by it. Those in whom the love or passion of duty is predominant are accordingly distinguished from those who are merely lukewarm servants of the moral law, by the importance they attribute to discovering the commands of the moral law, and to distinguishing these from what is merely permitted or not forbidden by it. It is their emotional Téos that its commands shall be obeyed as perfectly as possible; hence they dwell upon them, and enforce them on themselves, and if possible on others. Whatever the other traits of their character may be, this trait will be predominant; but wherever it is strongly predominant, it involves a great force of character, firmness, and energy of volition. The active disposition alone is found to be the accompanying trait in the character of the man of duty; since much has to be rejected which is pleasureable, and much done Book I. CH. IV. $ 65. The dutyloving type; Morality. which is in itself painful, acquiring its motive pleasure in the one case, and losing its hindering pain in the other, from being taken up into or combined with the sense of justice or of right. Courage, high the Passion of spirit, the Greek upos, and often rashness and audacity, are the accompanying characteristics. But the antipathetic emotions will lose all their elements which are incompatible with justice; hatred, anger, and revenge, will become indignation, végeois, and the man himself, if originally inclined to these emotions and passions, will gradually lay them aside or change them into an impersonal sternness, and conceive himself as the minister of some high and holy law. The errors and the vices of such a character will be derived, not from the sense or love of duty, but from the antipathetic emotions often found in combination with it, through the medium of the passions of an active disposition, courage and audacity, which the sense of duty has not completely eliminated. Where the sympathetic emotions are combined with this character of the love of duty, there the character of the whole man is most loveable and admirable, strong, chivalrous, tender; where the poetically imaginative and religious feelings are added besides, there will arise a total character of the most completely heroic type which human nature can assume. 2. But since it may easily be conceived to happen that the active disposition itself, and still more the passionate emotion of duty which partly depends on it, may be transient and destined to grow weaker in consequence of changes in the cerebral organisation which lie beyond our ken, let us see whether this emotion has in itself any traits which promise it durability beyond others; traits which, being ob BOOK I. § 65. The duty loving type; Morality. jects of general desire, will tend to make up for such physical deterioration (if any such is to be feared) by implanting it as a habit of all cerebral processes the Passion of whatever. If any activity or function of the brain may on this ground be expected to be permanent, it is this which underlies the love of duty; and for this reason, that it has always, as one of its constituent elements, justice, which is equality of the formal element, equality which is in itself a perpetual pleasure, and therefore a perpetual motive in producing the objects and emotions which involve it. So long therefore as there is any pleasure in equality and justice, so long there will be a moral sense and sense of duty, and that accompanied by an inherent pleasure and motive of continuance. The universality of this pleasure, since in everything there is form, gives the emotion or passion which it constitutes an immense advantage in what may be called, from Mr. Darwin, the struggle for existence. Its flexibility also, another form of its universality, since all pleasureable feelings, at least in some of their modifications, may possibly also be just, as, for instance, indignation a modification of anger, is another consideration in its favour. It is not absolutely or entirely hostile to any pleasureable feeling; it can make friends with part of it, and give a certain scope to the particular nervous energy which supports it; becoming thus the general transforming agent of the whole system, softening and assimilating all emotions into its own substance. 3. It is a doctrine already set forth in Chapter ii., that a certain degree of probability of success is requisite to every undertaking, a certain hope of permanence or increase to voluntary indulgence in every |