IV. FEELINGS AND JUDGMENTS.
The fundamental difference between Professor Höffding and myself, and as it seems to me his πρῶτον ψεῦδος, lies in his definition of ethical judgments. He says:
"Ethical judgments, judgments concerning good and bad, in their simplest form are expressions of feeling, and never lose that character however much influence clear and reasoned knowledge may acquire with respect to them."
I am very well aware of the fact that all thinking beings are first feeling beings. Thought cannot develop in the absence of feeling. Without feeling there is no thought; but thought is not feeling, and feeling is not thought.[131] By thought I understand the operations that take place among representative feelings, and the essential feature of these feelings is not whether they are pleasurable or painful, but that they are correct representations. Judgments are perhaps the most important mental operations. There are logical judgments, legal judgments, ethical judgments, etc. In none of them is the feeling element of mental activity of any account. That which makes of them judgments is the reasoning or the thought-activity. Whether a judgment is correct or not does not depend upon the feeling that may be associated with it, but it depends upon the truth of its several ideas and the propriety of their connection.
[131] See the chapter "The Nature of Thought" in The Soul of Man, p. 354.
A judgment, be it logical, juridical, ethical, or any other, is the more liable to be wrong, the more we allow the feeling element to play a part in it. Judgments swayed by strong feelings become biassed; they can attain to the ideal of truth only by an entire elimination of feeling.[132]
[132] Professor Höffding says: "The feeling of pleasure is the only psychological criterion of health and power of life." Every physician knows the insufficiency of this criterion. Many consumptives declare that they feel perfectly well even a few hours before their death.
Ethics in which the feeling element is the main spring of action, is called sentimentalism. Sentimental ethics have no more right to exist than a sentimental logic or a sentimental jurisprudence.
The philosophy of Clärchen in "Egmont" appears to be very strong sentimentalism, and I do not believe that her demeanor can be set up as an example for imitation. Her love happiness is an intoxication. She vacillates between two extremes, now himmelhoch jauchzend and now zum Tode betrübt, and her life ends in insanity.
To consider ethical or any other judgments as feelings, and to explain their nature accordingly, seems to me no better than to speak of concepts as consisting of vowels and consonants, and to explain the nature of conceptual thought from the sounds of the letters. We cannot speak without uttering sounds, but the laws of speech or of grammar have nothing to do with sound and cannot be explained in terms of sound. When we think and judge, we are most assuredly feeling, but the feeling is of no account, and whether the feeling is pleasurable, or painful, or indifferent, has nothing to do whatever with the correctness or the ethical value of judgments.