following up, as is the true method, the genesis of emotion or the plan of its development. In the classification of the animal kingdom, the study of its plan of development is now acknowledged to be the only valid method of determining the true relations between one animal and another: in like manner the interpretation of the phenomena of mind cannot be rightly grounded except on an analysis of their development. Whosoever aspires to give an adequate account of the emotions should devote himself, then, to a careful investigation of their simplest manifestations in the higher members of the animal kingdom; to the study of the different grades of their evolution in the savage and the civilized person, in the child and the adult, the woman and the man, the idiot and him who is in his right mind; to the patient delineation of their special bodily expressions; and should patiently unfold that progressive specialization and increasing complexity which prevail here as in every other department of organic development. Like as ideas are blended, or coalesce, and connected in groups and series so that, by complex development, a character is formed, so are the feelings belonging to the ideas and the desires accompanying them blended and grouped in a corresponding complexity, and inclinations or disinclinations of every variety and complexity are thus formed as a part of the character. Again, the desire naturally attaching to a certain aim is often transferred after a time to the means by which that aim is attained, so that there ensue in this way manifold secondary formations: the end of wealth is to give enjoyment and comfort; but how often does a passion for the means oversway the end! By looking to a desirable end, au act naturally very distasteful, but which is necessary as means, may, by habituation, be rendered indifferent or even pleasing; and some consummate scoundrels are thus gradually fashioned, themselves unaware of the grievous issue in which many slight effects have insensibly culminated Nemo repente fuit turpissimus is reall, the expression of the physical nature the growth of character. "Custom Constrains e'en stubborn ture to obey ; [That Whom dispossessing oft, he doth essay As it is in the individual, so it is through generations. The internal organic adaptations which take place in correspondence with differences in the external conditions of existence, are sometimes observedly propagated through generations, and that which was a conscious acquisition in the parent becomes more or less an innate endowment of the offspring. It seems to admit of little doubt that this law works in the improvement of the human brain in the course of generations: as those who migrate from their native land to other and different climes do in course of time endow their progeny with an inherent adaptability to the new conditions, so that they do not perish, but flourish in them; or as the young fox or young dog inherits. as an instinct the cunning which its ancestors have slowly acquired by experience; so the records which are available prove that the brain of man has undergone considerable development in the course of generations. Between the inborn moral nature of the well-constituted civilized person and the brutal nature of the lowest savage, all question of education and cultivation put aside, the difference as a physical fact is not less than that which often exists between one species of animal and another. The exalted ideas of justice, virtue, mercywhich are acquired in the course of a true civilization, and which the lowest savage has not-do, without doubt, add something to the nervous endowment of succeeding generations; not only is there in their constitution the potentiality of such ideas, which there is not in the lowest savage, but there is generated an instinctive quality of mind, an excellent tone of feeling, which rebels against injustice of any kind; there is formed the potentiality of a so-called moral sense. Thus it is that the individual rightly developing in his generation is, by virtue of the laws of hereditary action, ordaining or determining what shall be pre-ordained or pre-determined in the original nature of the individual of a future age. But are we then to lose sight of the physical aspect of this development? Certainly not: the moral feeling betokens an improved quality, or higher kind of That she unawares is caught in his brace, And tho' deflowered and thralled night feels her foul disgrace." Stanza of Gilbert West, quoted by Coleridge in his hographia Literaria. nerve element, which ensues in the course of a due development, and which may easily again be disturbed by a slight physical disturbance of the nervous element. In the exaltation of mankind through generations, in the progress of humanization, so to speak, this height of excellence is reached: in the deterioration or degeneration of mankind, as exhibited in the downward course of insanity proceeding through generations, one of the earliest evil symptoms is, as we shall hereafter see, the loss of this virtue-the destruction of the moral or altruistic feeling. Insane persons are entirely wrapped up in self, though the selffeeling may take many guises. The intimate and essential relation of emotions to the ideas, which they equal in number and variety, is sufficient to prove that the law of progress from the general and simple to the special and complex prevails in their development. If such relation were not a necessary one, it would still be possible from a consideration of the emotions themselves to display that manner of evolution. And the recognition of this increasing specialization and complexity in the function compels us to assumie a corresponding development in the delicate organization of the nervous structure, although by reason of the imperfection of our means of investigation we are not yet able to trace a process of such delicacy in these inmost recesses to which our senses have not gained entrance. NOTES. 1 (p. 148). "Notre âme fait certaines actions et souffre certaines passions; savoir: en tant qu'elle a des idées adéquates, elle fait certaines actions; et en tant qu'elle a des idées inadequates, elle souffe certaines passions."-SPINOZA, Des Passions, Prop. i. (150).-"Among so many dangers, therefore, as the natural lusts of men do daily threaten each other withal, to have a care of one's self is so far from being a matter scornfully to be looked upon, that one has neither the power nor wish to have done otherwise. For every man - desirous of 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 move downwards."-HORBES, vol. ii. p. 8. 3 (p. 150).—"Le désir, c'est l'appétit, avec conscience de lui-même. Il résulte de tout cela que ce qui fonde l'effort, le vouloir, l'appétit, le désir, ce n'est pas qu'on ait jugé qu'une chose est bonne: mais, au contraire, on juge qu'une chose est bonne par cela même qu'on y tend par l'effort, le vouloir, l'appétit, le désir.”—SPINOZA, Des Passions, Schol. to Prop. ix. 4 (p. 154)." But we must frankly admit, on consideration, that the political rule of intelligence is hostile to human progression. Mind must tend more and more to the supreme direction of affairs; but it can never attain it, owing to the imperfection of our organism, in which the intellectual life is the feeblest part; and thus it appears that the real office of mind is deliberative; that is, to moderate the material preponderance, and not to impart its habitual impulsion."-COMTE, Positive Philosophy, vol. ii. p. 240. 5 (p. 156). "For it is not his disputations about pleasure and pain that can satisfy this inquiry; no more than he who should generally handle the nature of light can be said to handle the nature of particular colours; for pleasure and pain are to the particular affections as light is to particular colours."-BACON, De Augment. Scient. "Autant il y a d'espèce d'objets qui nous affectent, autant il faut reconnaître d'espèces de joie, de tristesse, et de désir; et en général de toutes les passions qui sont composées de celles-là, comme la fluctuation, par exemple, ou qui en dérivent, comme l'amour, la haine, l'espérance, la crainte," &c.-SPINOZA, Des Passions. On 6 (p. 157)." Mais il faut en outre remarquer ici qu'il n'est nullement surprenant que la tristesse accompagne tous les actes qu'on a continué d'appeler mauvais, et la joie tous ceux qu'on nomme bons. conçoit en effet par ce qui précède que tout cela dépend surtout de l'éducation. Les parents, en blâmant certaines actions, et répri mandant souvent leurs enfants pour les avoir commises, et au contraire en louant et en conseillant d'autres actions, ont si bien fait que la tristesse accompagne toujours celles-là et la joie toujours celles-ci. L'expérience confirme cette explication. La coutume et la religion ne sont pas les mêmes pour tous les hommes: ce qui est sacré pour les uns est profane pour les autres, et les choses honnêtes chez un peuple sont honteuses chez un autre peuple. Chacun se repent donc ou se glorifie d'une action suivant l'éducation qu'il a reçue,"-SPINOZA, Des Passions, p. 159. 7(p. 158). Many illustrations might be adduced from Shakspeare's plays of the wonderful harmony between the highest human feelings and the aspects of nature; some of these I have pointed out in an essay on "Hamlet" in the Westminster Review of January 1865. The best known passage is that in the "Merchant of Venice :" "Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold. Again, Milton in his Arcades: “But else in deep of night, when drowsiness And the low world in measured motion draw Sir T. Browne, in his Religio Medici, says: "It is my temper, and I like it the better, to affect all harmony and sure there is music even in the beauty and the silent note which Cupid strikes, far sweeter than the sound of an instrument: for there is music wherever there is harmony, order, or proportion; and thus far we may maintain the music of the spheres; for these well-ordered motions, and regular paces, though they give no sound to the ear, yet to the understanding they strike a note most full of harmony. . . . . It is a hieroglyphical and shadowed lesson of the whole world, and creatures of God; such a melody to the ear, as the whole world, well understood, would afford the understanding." Passages of like import might be quoted from Goethe, Jean Paul, Humboldt, Emerson, Carlyle, and many other men of genius. .... |