Of Stewart.—Dugald Stewart makes two classes, the instinctive or implanted, and the rational or governing principles, under the former including appetites, desires, and affections, under the latter, self-love and the moral faculty. The desires are distinguished from the appetites, in that they do not, like the former, take their rise from the body, nor do they operate, periodically, after certain intervals, and cease after the attainment of their object. Under the title of affections, are comprehended all those principles of our nature that have for their object the communication of good or of ill to others.
Of Brown.—Dr. Brown divides the sensibilities, to which he gives the general name of emotions, with reference to their relation to time, as immediate, retrospective, and prospective. Under the former, he includes, as involving no moral feeling, cheerfulness and melancholy, wonder and its opposite, feelings of beauty and the opposite, feelings of sublimity and of the ludicrous; as involving moral feeling, the emotions distinctive of vice and virtue, emotions of love and hate, of sympathy, of pride and humility. Under retrospective emotion he includes anger, gratitude, regret, satisfaction; under prospective emotion, all our desires and fears.
Of Upham.—Prof. Upham divides the sensibilities into the two leading departments, the natural and the moral, the former comprehending the emotions and the desires, the latter, the moral sentiments or conscience. Under the class of desires, he includes our instincts, appetites, propensities, and affections.
Of Hickok.—Dr. Hickok classes the sensibilities under the departments of animal, rational, and spiritual susceptibility; the former comprehending instincts, appetites, natural affections, self-interested feelings, and disinterested feelings; the second, æsthetic, scientific, ethic, and theistic emotions; while the latter or spiritual susceptibility differs from each of the others, in not being, like them, constitutional, but arising rather from the personal disposition and character.
Remarks on the foregoing Divisions.—Our limits forbid, nor does the object of the present work require, a critical discussion of these several plans of arrangement.
It is but justice to say, however, that no one of these several methods of arrangement is altogether satisfactory. They are not strictly scientific. The method of Cogan, for example, derives all our sensibilities ultimately from the two principles of self-love, or desire for our own happiness, and the social principle, or regard for the condition and character of others; which again resolve themselves, according to this author, into the two cardinal and primitive affections of love and hate. This division strikes us at once as arbitrary, and, therefore, questionable; and, also, as ethical rather than psychological. There are many simple emotions which cannot properly be resolved into either of these two principles. On the other hand, the psychological distinction between the emotions and desires is overlooked in this arrangement. The same remarks apply substantially to several of the other methods noticed.
Objection to Stewart's Division.—The arrangement of Mr. Stewart is liable to this objection, that the principle of self-love, and also the moral faculty, which he classes by themselves as rational principles, in distinction from the other emotions as implanted or instinctive principles, are as really implanted in our nature, as really constitutional or instinctive, as any other. Appetite, moreover, is but one form or class of desires; self-love is but another, i. e., the desire of our own happiness.
To Upham's Division.—The division of Mr. Upham is still more objectionable on the same ground. The natural and the moral sentiments, into which two great classes he divides the sensibilities, are distinct neither in fact nor in name; the moral sentiments, so called, are as really and truly natural, founded in our constitution, as are our desires and affections; nor is the term natural properly opposed to the term moral as designating distinct and opposite things. The terms instinctive and rational, which Mr. Stewart employs, though not free from objection, much more accurately express the distinction in view, could such a distinction be shown to exist.
Difference of ethical and psychological Inquiry.—In a work, the main object of which is to unfold the principles of ethical science, it may be desirable to single out from the other emotions, and place by themselves, the principle of self-love, together with the social principle and the moral sentiments, as having more direct reference to the moral character and conduct. In a strictly psychological treatise, however, in which the aim is simply to unfold, and arrange in their natural order, the phenomena of the human mind, such a principle of classification is evidently inadmissible. The different operations and emotions of the mind must be studied and arranged, not with reference to their logical or ethical distinctions, but solely their psychological differences. Viewed in this light, the moral sentiments, so far as they are of the nature of feeling or sensibility at all, and not rather of intellectual perception, are simple emotions, and do not inherently differ from any other feelings of the same class. The satisfaction we feel in view of right, and the pain in view of wrong past conduct, differ from the pain and pleasure we derive from other sources, only as the objects differ which call forth the feelings. They are essentially of the same class, the difference is specific rather than generic. They are modifications of the one generic principle of joy and sorrow, and differ from each other not so much as each differs from a desire, or an affection of love or hate.
Objection to Brown's Arrangement.—The classification of Dr. Brown, if not ethical, is, perhaps, equally far from being psychological. The relation of the different emotions to time is an accidental, and not an essential difference, and it is, moreover, a distinction wholly inapplicable to far the larger portion of the sensibilities, viz., those which he calls immediate emotions, or "those which arise without involving necessarily any notion of time." This is surely lucus a non lucendo.