all homogeneous. But a passion, a feeling, an emotion, most frequently comprehends very various elements; firstly, physiological phenomena, variable according to organization, temperament, sex, etc., but which nevertheless play a preponderating part, and afterwards a condition of pleasure or pain, which is, properly speaking, the affective element; finally, an idea, a notion; for the sensible phenomenon cannot be absolutely separated and detached from all knowledge; a pain envelops the idea of that which causes it, an emotion implies the knowledge of its object. The ideal of psychology would evidently be to be able to explain all sentiments by a double method of synthesis and analysis; to be able to trace back a complex emotion to one more simple, and thus to arrive gradually at an irreducible fact; or, on the contrary, to start from the simplest affective phenomena, and to show how, by addition, aggregates of more and more complex emotions are found, and thus theoretically to reconstitute the reality. But we are very far from that ideal. The fundamental irreducible emotions are not yet even determined. Mr. Bain gives nine. We shall see hereafter what this classification is, and what may be thought of it. Mr. Herbert Spencer, who has been especially occupied with the question of method, takes the point of view of comparative psychology. He wishes to have the most general emotions determined; in the first place, those which are common to all animals; secondly, those which are common to us and to the inferior races; then those which are proper to us, and the order of their evolution. Our author, exclusively occupied with the human point of view, has chiefly sought to show how the complex emotions come by association from the simple emotions. The method then remains the same, and the doctrine of association is also at the bottom of the study of the feelings. The mode of exposition is clear, lucid, simple,—perhaps simple to excess, which is very near inexactness; for, though clearness and simplicity are eminently philosophical sentiments, when we see that an author replies to a complex question by a precise formula, and pretends to embrace all phenomena, and to clear up all obscurities, it is well to be on our guard against some errors.

An exposition of the physiological conditions of the sentiments and the emotions is wanting in this work. We also look in vain

for a study of the appetites and the instincts, and the chapter on the Will suffers accordingly. In our opinion these deficiencies are partly explained by the epoch at which the book appeared. Later psychologists have largely supplemented it.

II.

The phenomena of thought, says the author, have long been divided into two classes: intellectual faculties, and active faculties. In the first, sensations and ideas are considered as simply existing; in the second, they are considered as exciting to action.

We have seen that those of the first class may be formed into more or less complex groups, and that they succeed each other, following certain laws. Those of the second class are equally capable of being formed into groups, and of succeeding each other, following certain laws. So far, then, there is an agreement between the two classes of phenomena. It remains for us now to seek the differences proper to the last.1

All our sensations are agreeable, disagreeable, or indifferent. We desire to prolong the first; to put an end to the second; as to the third, we do not seek either to prolong or to abridge them. The author limits himself to saying that the indifferent sensations are probably the most numerous, without studying them.

Pleasure and pain, these are the two primitive facts. But the facts are causes, and these causes are of two sorts: proximate and distant. The bitter medicine which I swallow is the immediate or proximate cause of my sensation of disgust: the sentence of the judge is the distant cause of the execution of a criminal.

This is not all. We have seen that all sensations may be preserved and reproduced by the mind, and that these mental reproductions of sensations are called ideas. So every sensation of pleasure or of pain may be reproduced by the mind, and thus ideas of pleasure and pain be formed.

An idea of pleasure or of pain is a very clear condition of

1 Vol. ii. chap. xvi.

consciousness, familiar to us all. But the idea of a pleasure is not a pleasure, and the idea of a pain is not a pain. The idea of burning one's hand does not cause pain, the idea of eating sugar does not cause pleasure. The idea of a pleasure is called desire, the idea of a pain is called aversion. Agreeable or disagreeable sensations, and the ideas of those sensations, are not only actual. They may be related to the past by memory, to the future by anticipation. We know the mechanism of memory. As for the anticipation of the future, it consists in the same series of associations, with this difference, that in the memory the association of states of consciousness which converts the idea into memory goes from the consequent to the antecedent, that is to say, backwards; whereas, in the case of anticipation, association goes from the antecedent to the consequent, that is to say, forwards.'

When an agreeable sensation is conceived of as future, but without one's being certain of it, this state of consciousness is called hope; if one is certain of it, it is called joy. When a disagreeable sensation is conceived of as future, but uncertain, that state of consciousness is called fear; if it is certain, it is called sorrow. An agreeable sensation, or the idea of that sensation, joined to the idea of the cause which produces it, engenders affection or love for that cause. A disagreeable sensation, joined to the idea of its cause, engenders antipathy or hatred for that

The causes of our pleasures and of our pains are, as we have already seen, proximate or remote. According to the author, the immediate causes are much the less interesting. This apparent paradox is the necessary result of one of the most general of the laws of our nature; those immediate causes never having a very extensive field of operations, the idea of them is associated with only a limited number of pleasures or pains. Compare,

1 Vol. ii. chap. xx.

2 Love is nothing but joy accompanied by the idea of an exterior cause. Hate is nothing but sadness accompanied by the idea of an exterior cause. Spinoza, Ethics, iii. prop. 13. Compare the Third Book of the Ethics with Mill's Analysis, props. 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, and Appendix to Book III.

for example, an immediate cause of pleasure, food, with a remote cause, money, and you will see that the latter plays a preponderating part, because it is an instrument calculated to procure for us almost every pleasure. 'When the idea of one object is associated with a hundred times more pleasure than another idea, it is generally a hundred times more pleasant.' Thus the author confines himself almost entirely to these remote causes, which he ranges under three heads :—

1. Riches, power, dignity, and their contraries.

2. Our fellows: relatives, friends, fellow-citizens, etc. 3. Objects which are known as beautiful and sublime. These remote causes of our pleasures and our pains may be called egoistical causes, social causes, and æsthetic causes. us examine them.

Let

One remarkable thing is, first of all, to be noticed: the three above-named great causes of our pleasure agree in this, that they are all the means of procuring for us the services of our fellow-creatures, and themselves contribute to our pleasures in hardly any other way. It is obvious from this remark, that the services of our fellow-creatures are the great cause of all our pleasures; since wealth, power, and dignity, which appear to most people to sum up the means of human happiness, are nothing more than means of procuring those services. This is a fact of the highest importance, both in morals and in philosophy.1

I. The author easily shows that wealth is a means of procuring the services of others, by remunerating them; that power is a means of bending them to submission through hope or fear that dignities procure for us their respect, not only in outward appearance, but as manifested by their actions.2

It is, in the first place, however, to be observed, that wealth, power, and dignity afford, perhaps, the most remarkable of all examples of that extraordinary case of association where the means to an end, means valuable to us solely on account of this end, not only engross more of our attention than the end itself, but actually supplant it in our affections.

1 Mill's Analysis, vol. ii. p. 207.

2 Ibid. p. 215.

;

How few men seem to be at all concerned about their fellowcreatures! How completely are the lives of most men absorbed in the pursuit of wealth and ambition! With how many men does the love of family, of country, of mankind, appear completely impotent when opposed to their love of wealth, or of power! This is an effect of misguided association, which requires the greatest attention in education and morals.

2. Wealth, power, and dignity being the source of such powerful affections to our fellow-men, it would be surprising if our fellows themselves were not a source of affections to us. They are a cause of various pleasures, whether individually or in groups. Friendship, Kindness, Family, Country, Party, Humanity, such are the six somewhat confused titles under which the author classes them. The object of his analysis is to show that our strongest sentiments are aggregates, and that hence is their strength; that they are formed by juxtaposition, or, as it is better expressed, by the fusion of the simple sentiments; that affection being the result of a pleasure, a profound affection results from a great sum of pleasures experienced. In order to understand. this doctrine more clearly, suppose an unknown person to render you a small service, he causes you a pleasure, and the idea of this pleasure makes the unknown person an object of affection to you an affection as slight as the pleasure caused. But if you come to know this man better, so that his mind, his heart, his society, his confidence, all become to you the cause of so many pleasures, and that these are repeated during many years, a strong affection will be produced, the result of a crowd of sentiments of affection, which are themselves the result of a crowd of sentiments of pleasure. Everything is thus explained in final

analysis by association.

Let us now see how the author accounts for one of our most general sentiments, the love of parents for children.1

In the first place, it is well known that the pleasures and pains of others affect us; that is to say, associate themselves with the ideas of our own pleasures and pains. This phenomenon has

1 Vol. ii. ch. xxi. section 2.