Mental Philosophy: Including the Intellect, Sensibilities, and Will

by Joseph Haven

NATURE, DIFFICULTY, AND IMPORTANCE OF THIS DEPARTMENT OF THE SCIENCE.

Previous Analysis.—In entering upon the investigation of a new department of our science, it may be well to recur, for a moment, to the analysis and classification of the powers of the mind which has been already given in the introduction to the present volume. The faculties of the mind were divided in that analysis, it will be remembered, into three grand departments, the Intellect, the Sensibilities, and the Will; the first comprising the various powers of thinking and knowing, the second of feeling, the third of willing. The first of these main divisions has been already discussed in the preceding pages. Upon the second we now enter.

Difference of the two Departments.—This department of mental activity differs from the former, as feeling differs from thinking. The distinction is broad and obvious. No one can mistake it who knows any thing of his own mental operations. Every one knows the difference, though not every one may be able to explain it, or tell precisely in what it consists. But whether able to define our meaning or not, we are perfectly conscious that to think and to feel are different acts, and involve entirely different states of mind. The common language of life recognizes the distinction, alike that of the educated and of the uneducated, the peasant and the man of science. The literature of the world recognizes it.

Relation of the two.—As regards the relation of the two departments to each other, the intellect properly precedes the sensibility. The latter implies the former, and depends upon it. There can be no feeling—I speak, of course, of mental feeling, and not of mere physical sensation—without previous cognizance of some object, in view of which the feeling is awakened. Affection always implies an object of affection, desire, an object of desire; and the object is first apprehended by the intellect before the emotion is awakened in the mind. When we love, we love something, when we desire, we desire something, when we fear, or hope, or hate, there is always some object, more or less clearly defined, that awakens these feelings, and in proportion to the clearness and vividness of the intellectual conception or perception of the object, will be the strength of the feeling.

Strength of Feelings as related to Strength of Intellect.—The range and power of the sensibilities, then, in other words, the mind's capacity of feeling, depends essentially upon the range and vigor of the intellectual powers. Within certain limits, the one varies as the other. The man of strong and vigorous mind is capable of stronger emotion than the man of dwarfed and puny intellect. Milton, Cromwell, Napoleon, Webster, surpassed other men, not more in clearness and strength of intellectual perception, than in energy of feeling. In this, indeed, lay, in no small degree, the secret of their superior power. In the most eloquent passages of the great orators of ancient or modern times, it is not so much the irresistible cogency and unrelenting grasp of the terrible logic, that holds our attention, and casts its spell over us, as it is the burning indignation that exposes the sophistries, and tears to shreds the fallacies of an opponent, and sweeps all argument and all opposition before it like a devouring fire. The orations of Demosthenes, of Burke, of Webster, furnish numerous examples of this.

Influence of the Feelings on the Intellect.—On the other hand, it is equally true that the state of the intellect in any case depends not a little on the nature and strength of the mind's capacities of feeling. A quick and lively sensibility is more likely to be attended with quickness and strength of intellectual conception; imagination, perception, fancy, and even reasoning, are quickened, and set in active play, by its electric touch.

A man with sluggish and torpid sensibilities, is almost of necessity a man of dull and sluggish intellect. A man without feeling, if we can conceive so strange a phenomenon, would be a man, the measure of whose intellectual capacity would be little above that of the brutes.

Importance of this Department of the mental Faculties.—Such being the nature of the sensibilities, the importance of this department of mental activity becomes obvious at a glance. The springs of human action lie here. We find here a clue to the study of human nature and of ourselves. To understand the complicated and curious problem of human life and action, to understand history, society, nations, ourselves, we must understand well the nature and philosophy of the sensibilities. Here we find the motives which set the busy world in action, the causes which go to make men what they are in the busy and ever changing scene of life's great drama. It is the emotions and passions of men which give, at once, the impulse, and the direction, to their energies, constitute their character, shape their history and their destiny. A knowledge of man and of the world is emphatically a knowledge of the human heart.

Extract from Brown.—The importance of this part of our nature is well set forth in the following passage from Dr. Thomas Brown:

"We might, perhaps, have been so constituted, with respect to our intellectual states of mind, as to have had all the varieties of these, our remembrances, judgments, and creations of fancy, without our emotions. But without the emotions which accompany them, of how little value would the mere intellectual functions have been! It is to our vivid feelings of this class we must look for those tender regards which make our remembrances sacred, for that love of truth and glory, and mankind, without which to animate and reward us in our discovery and diffusion of knowledge, the continued exercise of judgment would be a fatigue rather than a satisfaction, and for all that delightful wonder which we feel when we contemplate the admirable creations of fancy, or the still more admirable beauties of the unfading model, that model which is ever before us, and the imitation of which, as has been truly said, is the only imitation that is itself originality. By our other mental functions, we are mere spectators of the machinery of the universe, living and inanimate; by our emotions, we are admirers of nature, lovers of man, adorers of God....