Emotional excitement and expression are largely dependent upon habit and indulgence, although there is a great difference, of course, in the emotional nature and tendencies of various persons. Emotions, like physical actions or intellectual processes, become habitual by repetition. And habit renders all physical or mental actions easy of repetition. Each time one manifests anger, the deeper the mental path is made, and the easier it is to travel that path the next time. In the same way each time that anger is conquered and inhibited, the easier will it be to restrain it the next time. In the same way desirable habits of emotion and expression may be formed.
Another point in the cultivation, training, and restraint of the emotions is that which has to do with the control of the ideas which we allow to come into the mind. Ideative habits may be formed—are formed, in fact, by the majority of persons. We may cultivate the habit of looking on the bright side of things; of looking for the best in those we meet; of expecting the best things instead of the worst. By resolutely refusing to give welcome to ideas calculated to arouse certain emotions, feelings, passions, desires, sentiments, or similar mental states, we may do much to prevent the arousing of the emotion itself. Emotions usually are called forth by some idea, and if we shut out the idea we may prevent the emotional feeling from appearing. In this connection the universal rule of psychology may be applied: A mental state may be inhibited or restrained by turning the attention to the opposite mental state.
The control of the attention is really the control of every mental state.
We may use the will in the direction of the control of the attention—the development and direction of voluntary attention—and thus actually control every phase of mental activity. The will is nearest to the ego, or central being of man, and the attention is the chief tool and instrument of the will. This fact cannot be repeated too often. If it is impressed upon the mind it will prove to be useful and valuable in many emergencies of mental life. He who controls his attention controls his mind, and in controlling his mind controls himself.
CHAPTER XII.
The Instinctive Emotions.
MANY attempts to classify the emotions have been made by the psychologists, but the best authorities hold that beyond the purpose of ordinary convenience in considering the subject any classification is scientifically useless by reason of its incompleteness. As James cleverly puts it: "Any classification of the emotions is seen to be as true and as natural as any other, if it only serves some purpose." The difficulty attending the attempted classification arises from the fact that every emotion is more or less complex, and is made up of various feelings and shades of emotional excitement. Each emotion blends into others. Just as a few elements of matter may be grouped into hundreds of thousands of combinations, so the elements of feeling may be grouped into thousands of shades of emotion. It is said that the two elements of carbon and hydrogen form combinations resulting in five thousand varieties of material substance, "from anthracite to marsh gas, from black coke to colorless naphtha." The same thing may be said of the emotional combinations formed from two principal elements of feeling. Moreover, the close distinction between sensation and feeling on the one hand, and between feeling and emotion on the other, serves to further complicate the task.
For the purposes of our consideration, let us divide the emotions into five general classes, as follows: (1) Instinctive emotions, (2) social emotions, (3) religious emotions, (4) æsthetic emotions, (5) intellectual emotions. We shall now consider each of the above five classes in turn.
The Instinctive Emotions.
Instinct is defined as "unconscious, involuntary, or unreasoning prompting to any action," or "the natural unreasoning impulse by which an animal is guided to the performance of any action, without thought of improving the method." An authority says: "Instinct is a natural impulse leading animals, even prior to all experience, to perform certain actions tending to the welfare of the individual or the perpetuation of the species, apparently without understanding the object at which they may be supposed to aim, or deliberating as to the best methods to employ. In many cases, as in the construction of the cells of the bee, there is a perfection about the result which reasoning man could not have equaled, except by an application of the higher mathematics to direct the operations carried out. Mr. Darwin considers that animals, in time past as now, have varied in their mental qualities, and that those variations are inherited. Instincts also vary slightly in a state of nature. This being so, natural selection can ultimately bring them to a high degree of perfection."