Some writers do not distinguish between emotions and feelings. Thus, Darwin, in his Descent of Man, calls pleasure and pain "emotions." Marshall (op. cit., chapter ii) makes emotions, and even intuitions, "instinct-feelings." Dewey, in his Ethics (p. 251), appears to treat emotions as synonymous with feelings. Gardiner, in his interesting and careful study, Affective Psychology in Ancient Writers after Aristotle (Psychological Review. May, 1919), treats of "what are popularly called the feelings, including emotions."
On the other hand, in ethical writings the word, "feelings," very often means no more than pleasure and pain. Thus, Seth (A Study of Ethical Principles, p. 63), makes feelings synonymous with pleasure and pain. Muirhead (Elements of Ethics, p. 46), says, "by feeling is meant simply pleasure and pain"; and to have "interest" in, he defines as to have pleasure in (p. 46).
This narrowing of the meaning of the word on the part of ethical writers is, perhaps, natural. The hedonistic moralists made pleasure and pain the only ultimate reasonable stimulants to action. Many moralists opposed them (see, later, Chapters XXIV and XXV). So pleasure and pain became "the feelings," par excellence. Both Dewey and Alexander sometimes speak as if, by the word "feeling," we meant no more than pleasure and pain. So does Kant.
The modern psychologist sometimes distinguishes pleasure and pain from "agreeableness" and "disagreeableness." Marshall, a high authority on pleasure and pain, refuses to draw the distinction (op. cit., Part III. chapter vi). But he also refuses to call pleasure and pain sensations, regarding them as "qualifications of our sensations," like intensity, duration, and the like.
Are pleasures, as pleasures, alike? and are pains, as pains, alike? Jeremy Bentham refused to distinguish between kinds of pleasures. On the other hand, John Stuart Mill did so (see Chapter XXV in this volume); and S. Alexander, in his work entitled Moral Order and Progress, maintains that pleasures differ in kind, and cannot be compared merely in their intensity (see page 202).
The whole matter is complicated enough, and there is occupation for the most disputatious. But I do not think that these disputes very directly affect the argument of my chapter.
Sec 50. That there is a relation between feeling and action, but that the two are by no means nicely adjusted to each other, has been recognized in many quarters.
Darwin, discussing the mental and moral qualities of man, points out that the satisfaction of some fundamental instincts gives little pleasure, although uneasiness is suffered if they are not satisfied. Seth (op. cit., p. 64) says that feelings "guide" action; and he claims that the energy of a moving idea lies in the feeling which it arouses (p. 70). On the quantity of emotion, and its relation to action, see Stephen, The Science of Ethics, ii, iii, 25.
Sec 51. It appears to be repugnant to Green to admit that feeling— pleasure—can be the direct object of action; and he denies roundly that a sum of pleasures can be made an object of desire and will at all (Prolegomena to Ethics, Sec 221; see Sec 113 of this book). Moreover, he maintains, and in this Dewey follows him, that the making of pleasure an object is evidence of the existence of unhealthy desires. I cannot but think this, taken generally, an exaggeration. Of course, what is called "a man of pleasure" is a pretty poor sort of a thing.
Sec 52. In this section I do not touch at all upon the immemorial dispute concerning what has been called "the 'freedom' of the will."