III.
A third type of classification, peculiar to the intellectualists, consists in classing according to the intellectual states, in so far as these are accompanied by affective elements. This system sprang from the psychology of Herbart, is based on it, and is met with in the works of the principal representatives of his school, Waitz, Drobisch, and especially Nahlowsky in Das Gefühlsleben (pp. 44 et seq.). This method is peculiar to Germany, and its influence is still perceptible even in Wundt, and more recently in Lehmann’s book (op. cit., pp. 338 et seq.). In England, Shadworth Hodgson approaches this type.
Apart from the procedure common to all, these classifications agree still less in detail than those of the first two types. Taken broadly, they have an academic aspect; they are frittered away in divisions, sub-divisions, distinctions, whence there arises more darkness than light. There is, however, a dichotomy peculiar to them corresponding to a reality which is not met with in the two previously-mentioned types, and, on this account, deserves notice.
This kind of classification, in the first place, establishes two great categories of emotions—those depending on the contents of the representations, and those depending on the course of the representations. Let us compare the flux of the states of consciousness to that of a river, which, according to the nature of the soil and the state of the sky, runs, sometimes clear, sometimes muddy, sometimes blue or green, sometimes greyish. Besides these various aspects, there is yet another kind, depending on the movement of the water, sometimes slow, sometimes rapid, here stagnant, there broken by the abrupt windings of the banks. One of these corresponds to the course, the other to the contents of the representations on which the affective states are based.
The first class (the contents) comprises the qualitative emotions, which are generally divided into inferior or sensory, and superior, which are intellectual, æsthetic, moral, or religious, according as the ideas exciting their feelings are those of the true, the beautiful, the good, or the absolute.
The second class (the course of the representations) comprises the formal emotions—i.e., those depending on the different forms of the course of ideas, on the relations existing between them. Nahlowsky distinguishes four species—(1) the feeling of expectation and impatience; (2) that of hope, anxiety, surprise, doubt; (3) of ennui; (4) of refreshment and work.
The only merit of this classification is its showing that there are affective manifestations depending only on relations—transitions from one intellectual state to another. This merit, however, depends on the essential defect of the system, which consists in dealing with perceptions, representations, and ideas only—not with affective states taken in themselves, and directly. As this method of procedure is, definitively, an intellectual classification, it ought not to omit any form of knowledge, not even those blurred and evanescent states—the relations—which unite, disjoin, exclude, draw together, eliminate, subordinate, in short, indicate the movements of thought, and which students have often made the mistake of forgetting. It remains to be known whether many relations are not states of an affective rather than an intellectual nature; this is a point which I shall examine later on.
We may console ourselves for this multiplicity and divergence of classifications by saying that the naturalists have not been more successful. It will be granted without difficulty that it is easier to classify animals than affective states; yet, to take our own century only, how many systems!—from Lamarck, Cuvier, Oken, to Blanville, Geoffroy St. Hilaire, Siebold, Ehrenberg, Richard Owen, Von Baer, Vogt, Agassiz, and finally to Häckel—if we cite only the principal names!
I have indicated in passing why a true classification of the emotions—i.e., a distribution into orders, genera, species, according to the dominant and subordinate characters—is impossible. Every classification, if not purely empirical, expresses a general theory of affective life, a “system,” and, consequently, a hypothesis. More than this, it can never congratulate itself on having exhausted its matter, for every emotion, simple or compound, admits of innumerable varieties determined by the individual, the race, the epoch, and the course of civilisation; some are extinct, others, again, of recent origin. Lastly, the existence of mixed emotions—which are numerous—is a fatal objection to every attempt at distribution into a linear series. The only track to follow is that of genetic filiation—viz., to state first the simple, primary emotions, then to find out by what mental processes, conscious or unconscious, the composite and derived emotions have arisen from them. We shall attempt to define these in a future chapter.[[95]] But this work is no longer a classification.
CHAPTER XI.
THE MEMORY OF FEELINGS.
Can emotional images be revived, spontaneously or voluntarily?—Summary of scattered facts relating to this subject—Inquiry into this question, and method followed—Emotional and gustative images—Internal sensations (hunger, thirst, fatigue, disgust, etc.)—Pleasures and pains; observations—Emotions: three distinct forms of revivability according to observations—Reduction of the images to three groups: revivability direct and easy, indirect and comparatively easy, difficult and sometimes direct, sometimes indirect.—The revivability of a representation is in proportion to its complexity and the motor elements included in it.—Reservations to be made on this last point—Is there such a thing as a real emotional memory?—Two cases: false or abstract, and true or concrete memory—Peculiar characters and differences of each case—Change of the emotional into an intellectual recollection—Emotional amnesia: its practical consequences—There exists a general emotional type and partial emotional types—Confirmatory observations—Comparative revivability of agreeable and disagreeable states—To feel acutely and to recall an acute impression of the feeling are two different operations.