After rejecting these, it became necessary to attempt some new arrangement, especially as we found reason to believe that some advantage could scarcely fail to arise from the attempt itself, even though it should fail as to its great object; and we, therefore, proceeded to consider and arrange the phenomena, as nearly as possible, in the same manner as we should have done, if no arrangement of them had ever been made before.
In thus considering them, the first important distinction which occurred to us, related to their causes, or immediate antecedents, as foreign to the mind, or as belonging to the mind itself; a distinction too striking to be neglected as a ground of primary division. Whatever that may be, which feels and thinks, it has been formed to be susceptible of certain changes of state, in consequence of the mere presence of external objects, or at least of changes produced in our mere bodily organs, which, themselves, may be considered as external to the mind; and it is susceptible of certain other changes of state, without any cause external to itself, one state of mind being the immediate result of a former state of mind, in consequence of those laws of succession of thoughts and feelings, which He, who created the immortal soul of man, as a faint shadow of His own eternal spirit, has established in the constitution of our mental frame. In conformity with this distinction, we made our first division of the phenomena of the mind, into its external and internal affections; the word affection being used, by me, as the simplest term for expressing a mere change of state induced, in relation to the affecting cause, or the circumstances, whatever they may have been, by which the change was immediately preceded.
The class of internal affections,—by far the more copious and various of the two,—we divided into two great orders, our intellectual states of mind, and our emotions, words which are, perhaps, better understood, before any definition is attempted of them, than after it, but which are sufficiently intelligible without definition, and appear to exhaust completely the whole internal affections of the mind. We have sensations or perceptions of the objects that affect our bodily organs; these I term the sensitive or external affections of the mind; we remember objects—we imagine them in new situations—we compare their relations; these mere conceptions or notions of objects and their qualities, as elements of our general knowledge, are what I have termed the intellectual states of the mind; we are moved with certain lively feelings, on the consideration of what we thus perceive, or remember, or imagine, or compare, with feelings, for example, of beauty, or sublimity, or astonishment, or love, or hate, or hope, or fear; these, and various other vivid feelings, analogous to them, are our emotions.
There is no portion of our consciousness, which does not appear to me to be included in one or other of these three divisions. To know all our sensitive states or affections,—all our intellectual states,—and all our emotions, is to know all the states or phenomena of the mind;
“Unde animus scire incipiat, quibus inchoet orsa
Principiis seriem rerum tenuemque catenam
Mnemosyne; Ratio unde, rudi sub pectore tardum
Augeat imperium, et primum mortalibus ægris
Ira, dolor, metus, et curæ nascantur inanes.”[60]
It must not be conceived, however, that, in dividing the class of internal affections of the mind, into the two distinct orders of intellectual states, and emotions; and, in speaking of our emotions as subsequent in their origin, I wish to be understood, that these never are combined, at the same moment, in that sense of combination, as applied to the mind, which I have already explained too frequently, to need again to define and illustrate it. On the contrary, they very frequently concur; but, in all cases in which they do concur, it is easy for us to distinguish them by reflective analysis. The emotion of pity, for example, may continue in the mind, while we are intellectually planning means of relief, for the sufferers who occasioned it; but, though the pity and the reasoning co-exist, we have little difficulty in separating them in our reflection. It is the same with all our vivid desires, which not merely lead to action, but accompany it. The sage, who in the silence of midnight, continues still those labours which the morning began, watching, with sleepless eye, the fate of some experiment, that almost promises to place within his hand the invisible thread, which leads into the labyrinths of nature, or exploring those secrets of the mind itself, by the aid of which he is afterwards to lay down rules of more accurate philosophizing, and to become the legislator of all who think, is not cheered, in his toils, merely by occasional anticipations of the truths that await his search. The pleasure of future discovery is, as it were, a constant light, that shines upon him and warms him; and, in the very moments in which he watches, and calculates, and arranges, there are other principles of his nature, in as lively exercise as his powers of observation and reasoning. The warrior, at the head of an army, which he has often led from victory to victory, and which he is leading again to new fields of conflict, does not think of glory only in the intervals of meditation or action. The passion which he obeys, is not a mere inspiring genius, that occasionally descends to rouse or invigorate. It is the soul of his continued existence,—it marches with him, from station to station,—it deliberates with him in his tent,—it conquers with him in the field,—it thinks of new successes, in the very moment of vanquishing; and, even at night, when his body has yielded at last to the influence of that fatigue, of which it was scarcely conscious, while there was room for any new exertion by which fatigue could be increased, and when all the anxieties of military command are slumbering with it, the passion that animates him, more active still, does not quit him as he rests, but is wakeful in his very sleep, bringing before him dreams, that almost renew the tumults and the toils of the day. Our emotions, then, may co-exist with various sensations, remembrances, reasonings,—in the same manner as these feelings, sensitive or intellectual, may variously co-exist with each other. But we do not think it less necessary to class our sensations of vision as different from our sensations of smell, and our comparison, as itself different from the separate sensations compared, because we may, at the same moment, both see and smell a rose, and may endeavour to appreciate the relative amount of pleasure which that beautiful flower thus doubly affords. In like manner, our intellectual states of mind, and our emotions, are not the less to be considered as distinct classes, because any vivid passion may continue to exist together with those intellectual processes of thought, which it originally prompted, and which, after prompting, it prolongs.