The spread of the misconception that we have been combating is perhaps accounted for by the circumstance that imagination in one man is the cause of feeling in others. Wordsworth, by his imaginative colouring, has excited a warmer sentiment for nature in many spectators of the lake country. That, however, is a different thing. We may also allow that the poet intensifies his own feelings by his creative embodiments of them.
II.
ERRORS OF SUPPRESSED CORRELATIVES.[[4]]
By Relativity is here meant the all-pervading fact of our nature that we are not impressed, made conscious, or mentally alive, without some change of state or impression. An unvarying action on any of our senses is the same as no action at all. An even temperature, such as that enjoyed by the fishes in the tropical seas, leaves the mind an entire blank as regards heat and cold. We can neither feel nor know without recognising two distinct states. Hence all knowledge is double, or is the knowledge of contrasts or opposites: heavy is relative to light; up supposes down; being awake implies the state of sleep.
The applications of the law in the sphere of emotion are chiefly contemplated in what follows. Pleasure and pain are never absolute states; they have reference always to the previous condition. Until we know what that has been in any case, we cannot pronounce upon the efficacy of a present stimulation. We see a person reposing, apparently in luxurious ease; if the state has been immediately consequent upon a protracted and severe exertion, we are right in calling it highly pleasurable. Under other circumstances, it might be quite the reverse.
There is an offshoot or modification of the principle, arising out of the operation of habit. Impressions made upon us are greatest when they are absolutely new: after repetition they all lose something of their power; although, by remission and alternative, the causes of pleasure and pain have still a very considerable efficacy. Many of the consequences of this great fact are sufficiently acknowledged, or, if they are not, it is from other causes than our ignorance. The weakness is moral, rather than intellectual, that makes us expect that the first flush of a great pleasure, a newly-attained joy or success, will continue unabated. The poor man, probably, does not overrate the gratification of newly-attained wealth; what he fails to allow for is the deadening effect of an unbroken experience of ease and plenty. The author of "Romola" says of the hero and the heroine, in the early moments of their affection, that they could not look forward to a time when their kisses should be common things. So it is with the attainment of all great objects of pursuit: the first access of good fortune may not disappoint us; but as we are more and more removed from the state of privation, as the memory of the prior experience fades away, so does the vividness of the present enjoyment. It is the same with changes for the worse: the agony of a great loss is at first overpowering; gradually, however, the system accommodates itself to the new condition, and the severity dies away. What is called on these occasions the "force of custom" is the application of the law of Accommodation, or Relativity modified by habit.
[RELATIVITY IN PLEASURES.]
It is a familiar experience of mankind, yet hard to realise upon mere testimony, that the pleasures of rest, repose, retirement, are wholly relative to foregone labour and toil; after the first shock of transition, they are less and less felt, and can be renewed only after a renewal of the contrasting experience. The description, in "Paradise Lost," of the delicious repose of Adam and Eve in Eden is fallacious; the poet credits them with an intensity of pleasure attainable only by the brow-sweating labourer under the curse.