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6

The conquering of one strong feeling by exciting another, was designated by Thomas Chalmers, the expulsive power of a new affection,' and was much descanted on by him as an instrumentality of moral improvement. When a wrong taste was to be combated, he recommended the process of displacing it by the culture of something higher and better; as in substituting for the excitement of the theatre, or the alehouse, intellectual and other attractions.

Without the assistance of a new emotion, we may subdue or modify a present feeling, by carrying the attention away from all the thoughts or trains of ideas that cluster about it, and give it support. If we have strength of motive enough for diverting the mind from the thoughts of an alarming danger to some entirely different subject, the state of terror will subside.

The command of the thoughts requisite for such diversions is a high and uncommon gift or attainment, one of the most distinguishing examples of force of will, or of power of motive. There is a limit to the control thus exercised; no amount of stimulus will so change the current of ideas as to make joy at once supervene upon a shock of depression. Still, by a not unattainable strength of motive, and the assistance of habit, one can so far restrain the outbursts of emotion, as to make some approach to equanimity of life.

9. The reciprocal case-the power of the Feelings to command the Thoughts-is partly of the nature of Will, partly independent of the will.

When under a pleasurable feeling, we cling to all the thoughts, images, and recollections that chime in with, and sustain it-as in a fit of affection, of self-complacency, or of revenge-the case is one of volition pure and simple. By the direct operation of the fundamental power of self-conservation, every activity bringing pleasure is maintained and increased; and the exercise of attention, whether upon the things of sense or upon the stream of thought, is included in the principle. So, on the obverse side, a painful feeling ought to banish all the objects and ideas that tend to cherish it, just as we should remove a hot iron or a stinging nettle from the naked foot; and this, too, happens to a great extent: a selfcomplacent man banishes from his mind all the incidents that discord with his pretensions; an engrossed lover will not entertain the thought of obstacles and inevitable separation. In both these cases, the law of the will is fairly and strictly

exemplified. And if there were no other influence at work, if the feelings had no other mode of operating, we should find ourselves always detaining thoughts, according as they give us pleasure, and turning our back upon such as produce pain, with an energy corresponding to the pain.

But we have formerly remarked, and must presently notice still more particularly, that the feelings have another property, the property of detaining every idea in alliance with them, whether pleasurable or painful, in proportion to their intensity; so that states of excitement, both painful and neutral, cause thoughts and images to persist in the mind by a power apart from the proper course of the will. A disgusting spectacle cannot be at once banished from the recollection, merely because it gives pain; if the will were the only power in the case, the object would be discarded and forgotten with promptitude. But the very fact that it has caused an intense or strong feeling gives it a persistence, in spite of the will. So any powerful shock, characterized neither by pleasure nor by pain, detains the mind upon the cause of it for a considerable time, and engrains it as a durable recollection, not because the shock was pleasurable, but merely because it was strong. The natural course of the will is pursued at the same time; it cooperates in the detention of the pleasurable, and in reducing the persistence of the painful; but it is not the sole or the dominant condition in either.

CHAPTER IV.

MOTIVES, OR ENDS.

1. FROM the nature or definition of Will, pure and proper, the Motives, or Ends of action, are our Pleasures and Pains.

In the Feelings, as formerly laid out, if the enumeration be complete, there ought to be found all the ultimate motive or ends of human action. The pleasures and pains of the various Senses (with the Muscular feelings), and of the Emotions, embracing our whole susceptibility to happiness or misery,-are, in the last resort, the stimulants of our

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activity, the objects of pursuit and avoidance. The actual presence of any one of the list of pleasures, set forth under the different departments of Feelings, urges to action for its continuance; the presence of any one of the included pains is a signal to action for its abatement. The final classification of Motives, therefore, is the classification of pleasurable and painful feelings.

If we were to recapitulate what has been gone over, under the Senses and the Emotions, we should refer to the pleasures of Muscular Exercise and Repose, and the pains of Fatigue and of Restrained action; the great variety of pleasurable and painful susceptibilities connected with Organic Life-including such powerful solicitations as Thirst, and Hunger, and the whole catalogue of painful Diseases, with the reactionary condition named Health; the numerous stimulations, pleasurable and painful, of the Five Senses-Tastes, Colours, Touches, Sounds, Sights; the long array of the Special Emotions, containing potent charms and dread aversionsNovelty, Liberty, Tender and Sexual Emotion, Self-complacency and Approbation, with their opposites; the elation of Power and the depression of Impotence and Littleness, the Interest of Plot and Pursuit, the attractions of Knowledge, and the variegated excitements of Fine Art.

2. The elementary pleasures and pains incite us to action, when only in prospect; which implies an ideal persistence approaching to the power of actuality.

The property of intellectual or ideal retention belongs more or less to all the feelings of the mind; and has been usually adverted to in the description of each. The pain of over-fatigue is remembered after the occasion, and has a power to deter from the repetition of the actual state.

The circumstances regulating the ideal persistence of pleasures and pains, so as to give them an efficacy as motives, are principally these:

(1) Their mere Strength, or Degree. It is a law of our intellectual nature that, other things being the same, the more vivid the present consciousness, the more it will persist or be remembered. This applies to pleasures, to pains, and to neutral excitement. A strong pleasure is better remembered than a weak; a greater pain is employed in punishment, because a less, being insufficiently remembered, is ineffectual to deter from crime. Our labours are directed, in the first place, to the causes of our great pleasures and our great pains, be

cause these are more tenaciously held in the memory, and less liable to be overborne by the pressure of the actual. The acute sensual pleasures, affection, praise, power, æsthetic charm, are strongly worked for, because strongly felt, and strongly remembered; the more intense pains of disease, privation, disgrace, have an abiding efficacy because of their strength.

(2) Continuance and Repetition. The longer a pleasure is continued, and the oftener it is repeated, the better is it retained in absence as a motive to the will. It is the same with emotional states as it is with intellectual-with pain as with language, iteration gives intellectual persistence. A single attack of acute pain does not leave the intense precautionary motive generated by a series of attacks. Age and experience acquire moral wisdom, as well as intellectual; strength of motive as well as extent and clearness of intellectual vision. After repeated failures, we give up a chase, in spite of its allurements; not merely because our hopes are weakened, but also because our recollection is strengthened, by the repetition. Pleasures seldom tasted may not take their proper rank with us, in our habitual pursuits; we do not work for them in proportion to what we should actually gain by their fruition.

It necessarily happens that distance of time allows the memory of pleasure and pain to fade into imbecility of motive. A pleasure long past is deprived of its ideal enticement; a pain of old date has lost its volitional sting.

(3) Intellectual Rank. The feelings have a natural scale of intellectual persistency, commencing from the organic or physical sensibilities, and rising to the higher senses, and the more refined emotions. The sensations of hearing and sight; the pleasures of tender feeling, of complacency, of intellect, of Fine Art; the pains of grief and of remorse,-are in their nature more abiding as motives than muscular exercise, or occasional indigestion.

(4) Special Endowment for the memory of Pleasure and Pain. It is a fact that some minds are constituted by nature more retentive of pleasures and pains than others; just as there are differences in the memory for language or for spectacle. A superior degree of prudence, under circumstances in other respects the same, is resolvable into this fact. No one is unmoved by a present delight, or a present suffering; but when the reality is vanished, the recollection will be stronger in one man than in another-that is, will be more powerful to cope with the new and present urgencies that

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put to the proof our memory given motives. The pains of incautious living are, in some minds, blotted out as soon as they are past; in others, they are retained with almost undiminished force. Both Prudence, and the Power of Sympathy with others, presuppose the tenacious memory for pleasures and pains; in other words, they are fully accounted for by assuming that speciality. Virtue, although not Knowledge, as Sokrates maintained, reposes on a property allied to Intellect, a mode of our Retentiveness, the subject matter being, not the intellectual elements commonly recognized, but pleasures and pains.

It is not easy to refer this special mode of Retentiveness to any local endowment, as we connect the memory for colour with a great development of the optical sensibility. Most probably, the power is allied to the Subjectivity of the character, the tendency to dwell upon subject states, as opposed to the engrossment of objectivity.

Prudential forethought and precaution in special things may be best referred to the greater strength and repetition of the feelings; as when a man is careful of his substance and not of his reputation; or the converse. On whatever subjects we feel most acutely, we best remember our feelings, and yield to them as motives of pursuit and avoidance. It is unnecessary to invoke, for such differences, a general retentiveness for pleasures and pains.

(5) In the effective recollection of feelings, for the purposes of the will, we are aided by collateral associations. Any strong pleasure gives impressiveness to all the acts and sensations that concurred with it; and these having their own independent persistency, as actions or as object states, aid in recovering the pleasure. Every one remembers the spot, and the occupation of the moment, when some joyful news was communicated. The patient in a surgical operation retains mentally the indelible stamp of the room and the surgeon's preparations. One part of the complex experience, so impressed, buoys up the rest.

It is scarcely necessary to add that the motive power of a feeling of recent occurrence partakes of the effectiveness of the actuality.

3. We direct our labours to many things that, though only of the nature of Means, attain by association all the force of our ultimate ends of pursuit. Such are Money, Bodily Strength, Knowledge, Formalities, and Virtues.