Mild as the breeze, yet rapturous as the song.”[59]
Our emotions, then, even in the cases in which they seem most directly to co-exist with perception, are still easily distinguishable from it; and, in like manner, when they arise from the intellectual states of memory, imagination, comparison, they are equally distinguishable from what we remember, or imagine, or compare. They form truly a separate order of the internal affections of the mind,—as distinct from the intellectual phenomena, as the class, to which they both belong, is distinguishable from the class of external affections, that arise immediately from the presence of objects without.
Footnotes
[57] Instead of “not to dethrone,” the original has “and not to mar.”
[58] Night Thoughts, viii. 595–599.
[59] Pleasures of Imagination, Book III. v. 464–478.
[LECTURE XVII.]
CLASSIFICATION OF THE PHENOMENA OF MIND.—CLASS I. EXTERNAL STATES.—INTRODUCTORY.
In my last Lecture, Gentlemen, I endeavoured to prepare the way, for arranging, in certain classes, that almost infinite variety of phenomena, which the mind exhibits,—pointing out to you the peculiar difficulty of such a classification, in the case of phenomena so indefinite and fugitive, as those of the mind, and the nature of that generalizing principle of analogy or resemblance, on which every classification, whether of the material or mental phenomena, must alike proceed. I then took a slight view of the primary, leading, divisions of the phenomena of the mind, which have met with most general adoption,—the very ancient division of them, as of two great departments, belonging to the understanding and the will,—and the similar division of them, as referable to two classes of powers, termed the intellectual and active powers of the mind. I explained to you the reasons, which led me to reject both these divisions, as at once incomplete, from not comprehending all the phenomena, and inaccurate, from confounding even those phenomena, which they may truly be considered as comprehending.