order of a tune he has been accustomed to play in as little time as he can run over these notes in his mind. So we many times in an hour cover our eyeballs, without perceiving that we are in the dark; hence the perception or idea of light is not changed for that of darkness in so small a time as the twinkling of an eye, so that, in this case, the muscular motion of the eyelid is performed quicker than the perception of light can be changed for that of darkness."-Zoonomia, vol. i. p. 24.

7 (p. 125). "It will easily appear from the observations here made upon words, and the associations which adhere to them, that the languages of different ages and nations must bear a general resemblance to each other, and yet have considerable particular differences; whence any one may be translated into any other, so as to convey the same ideas in general, and yet not with perfect precision and exactness. They must resemble one another because the phenomena of nature, which they are all intended to express, and the uses and exigencies of human life, to which they minister, have a general resemblance. But then, as the bodily make and genius of each people, the air, soil, and climate, commerce, arts, science, religion, &c., make considerable differences in different ages and nations, it is natural to expect that the languages should have proportionable differences in respect of each other."-Hartley's Theory of the Human Mind, by Dr. Priestley.

"Wherefore, as men owe all their true ratiocination to the right understanding of speech, so also they owe their errors to the misunderstanding of the same; and as all the ornaments of philosophy proceed only from man, so from man also is derived the ugly absurdity of false opinions. For speech has something in it like to a spider's web (as it was said of old of Solon's laws), for by contexture of words tender and delicate wit are ensnared and stopped; but strong wits break easily through them."-Hobbes, vol. i. p. 36.

CHAPTER VI.

THE EMOTIONS.

AN is patient and agent; he suffers certain passions, and

MAN

does certain actions: a calm deliberation involves an equilibrium between suffering and doing; but in so far as an idea is attended with some feeling, whether of pleasure or of pain, or of a more special character, it is to that extent emotional; and if the feeling preponderate, the idea is obscured, and the state of mind is then called an emotion or a passion. Strictly speaking, all conscious psychical states are, at first, feelings; but, after having been experienced several times, they are adequately and definitely organized, and become almost automatic or indifferent under ordinary circumstances. As long as the ideas or mental states are not adequately organized in correspondence with the individual's external relations, more or less feeling will attend their excitation; they will, in fact, be more or less emotional. When the equilibrium between the subjective and objective is duly established, there is no passion, and there is but little emotion. (1)

It has been sufficiently evident, up to the present point, that the condition of the nervous centres is of the greatest consequence in respect of the formation of the so-called mental faculties, and the manifestation of their functions; it will now be seen that this condition is of still more manifest consequence in regard to the phenomena of the emotions. Every one's experience teaches him that an idea which is at one time indifferent, being accompanied by no feeling of pleasure or discomfort, may, at another time, be attended by some feeling of discomfort, or become positively painful. And it requires no

very careful observation of men to discover that different persons are very differently affected by one and the same object, and often pass very different judgments upon it in consequence. So much is this the case that we are in the constant habit of distinguishing men by the difference of their emotional disposition, or of the temper of their minds, and of speaking accordingly of one man as timid; of another as courageous; of one as irritable, quick-tempered; of another as even-tempered, placid. One of the earliest symptoms of an oncoming insanity, and one that is almost universally present as the expression of a commencing deterioration, howsoever caused, of the nervous centres, is an emotional disturbance, upon which follows more or less perversion of judgment. It is feeling, or the affective life, that reveals the deep essential nature of the man.

The first occurring observation is, that an idea which is favourable to the impulses or strivings of the individual, to selfexpansion, is accompanied by a feeling of more or less pleasure; and that an idea which betokens individual restriction, which is opposed to the expansion of self, is attended with a feeling of more or less discomfort or pain. As the organic germ does, under circumstances favourable to its inherent developmental impulse, incorporate matter from without, exhibiting its gratification, so to speak, by its growth, and, under unfavourable conditions, does not assimilate, but manifests its suffering or passion by its decay; so likewise does the ganglionic nerve-cell of the hemispheres testify by a pleasant emotion to the furtherance of its development, and declares in a painful feeling of discomfort the restriction or injury which it suffers from an unfavourable stimulus. Even in the earliest sensation, therefore, the existence of pain or pleasure is a sort of obscure judgment on its advantage or disadvantage to the personality or self-a judgment in which, as Herbart has observed, the subject cannot yet be separated from the predicate that expresses praise or blame.* Among so many dangers, then, " to have a care of one's self is," in the words of Hobbes, "so far from being a matter scornfully to be looked at, that one has neither the power nor wish to have done otherwise. For every man is desirous of

"Ein Urtheil, in dem nur das Vorgestellte sich noch nicht von dem Prädicate, das Beifall oder Tadel ausdrückt, sondern lässt."-Herbart.

what is good for him, and shuns what is evil, but chiefly the chiefest of natural evils, which is death; and this he doth by a certain impulsion of nature, no less than that whereby a stone moves downwards." (2) Children and savages best exhibit in a naked simplicity the different passions that result from the affection of self by what, when painful, is deemed an ill; when pleasurable, a good.

It is necessary to bear in mind that a stimulus, which in moderation gives rise to a pleasant idea or rather emotion, will, when too prolonged or too powerful, produce discomfort or pain, and consequent efforts to escape from it. There is then a desire to shun the stimulus, like as one altogether noxious is shunned; the desire becoming the motive or spring of action. The impulse in such case is described as desire, because there is consciousness of it; but it is without doubt the equivalent in a higher organic element of that effort which the lowest animal organism exhibits, without consciousness, in getting away from an injurious stimulus. In both instances there is, in truth, the manifestation of the so-called self-conservative impulse which is immanent in all living organic elements-an impulse or instinct, which, whatever deeper facts of intimate composition it connotes, is the essential condition of its existence as organic element. Such reaction of organic element is as natural and necessary as the reaction of any chemical compound, because as much the consequence of the properties of matter thus organically combined. When the stimulus to a hemispherical nervecell is not in sufficient force to satisfy the demands of the latter, when, in fact, it is inadequate, then there is the manifestation of its affinity or attraction by the nervous. centre, an outward impulse, appetency, or striving, which, again, as it occurs in consciousness, is revealed to us as desire, craving, or appetite. There is no difference, indeed, as Spinoza observes, between appetite and desire, except in so far as the latter implies consciousness; desire is self-conscions appetite.). Because we have an appetite or desire for something, therefore we judge it to be good: it certainly is not. because a thing is judged, to be good that we have an appetite or desire for it. Here, again, there is an exact correspondence with that attraction, impulse, or striving of organic element

towards a favourable stimulus manifested throughout nature, and the necessary correlate of which is a repulsion of what is unfavourable. Because the affinity is exhibited in vital structure, we are prone, when observing it, to transfer our own states of consciousness to the organic element, and, therefore, to represent it on all occasions as striving, by means of a self-conservative impulse or instinct, for the stimulus favourable to its growth. But the attraction is no less a physical necessity than the attraction of an acid for an alkali, of the needle to the pole, or of positive for negative electricity; if there was no stimulus, there would be no reaction on the part of the organic element; if the stimulus was in injurious excess, or otherwise unfavourable, there must be disturbance of the statical equilibrium, and a reaction of repulsion; and when the stimulus is favourable but deficient, the reaction is manifest in the display of an attraction or affinity for an additional amount, like as a nonneutralized acid will take up more alkali, or as unsatisfied appetite craves for more nutriment. Now, it is most important that we do not allow the presence of consciousness to mislead us as to what is the fundamental condition of things in the ganglionic cells of the brain. Here, as elsewhere, healthy organic element manifests its fundamental properties, pursuing the good, eschewing the ill; and consciousness is something superadded, but which nowise abolishes them. The striving after a pleasing impression, or the effort to avoid a painful one, is at bottom a physical consequence of the nature of the ganglionic cell in its relation to a certain stimulus; and the reaction or desire becomes the motive of a general action on the part of the individual for the purpose of satisfying a want, or of shunning an ill. The care of himself no man in good health has the power of neglecting.

It is obvious then, not only how desires become the motives of action, but how they are gradually evolved into their complete form out of the unconscious organic appetites. In the desire of the adult there is necessarily some sort of conception of what is desired, though it is at times a not very definite one; but in the child, as in the idiot, we frequently witness a vague restlessness evincing an undefined want of, or desire for, something of which itself is unconscious, but which, when obtained, presently