336 ZOOLOGICAL PHILOSOPHY 



Everybody is acquainted with these kinds of involuntary move- 

 ments, for everybody has experienced the Hke ; and they are only 

 noticed because they are extreme and sudden. But we pay no attention 

 to the fact that everything, which affects us, stirs our emotions pro- 

 portionally, that is to say, stirs to some extent our inner feeling. 



We are moved by the sight of a precipice, of a tragic scene, either 

 real or on the stage or even on a picture, etc., etc. : and where is the 

 power of a fine piece of music well executed, if not in producing emotions 

 of our inner feeling? Consider again the joy or sorrow that we suddenly 

 feel on hearing good or bad news about something that interests us : 

 what is it but the emotion of that inner feeling, which is very difficult 

 to master on the spot ? 



I have several times seen pieces of music played on the piano by a 

 young lady who was deaf and dumb : her playing was far from 

 brilhant and yet it was passable ; she kept good time, and I perceived 

 that her entire personality was stirred by regular movements of her 

 inner feeling. 



I gathered from this that the inner feeling in this young person 

 took the place of the organ of hearing, which was of no use. Her 

 music-master too told me that he had practised her in keeping time 

 by measured signs, and I soon became convinced that these signs had 

 stirred within her the feehng in question ; hence I inferred that what 

 we attribute entirely to the highly trained and delicate ears of good 

 musicians belongs rather to their inner feeling, which from the first 

 bar is stirred by the kind of movement necessary for the performance 

 of a piece. 



Our habits, temperament, and even education, modify this faculty 

 of undergoing emotion ; so that in some individuals it is very weak 

 while in others it is very strong. 



A distinction should be drawn between the emotions aroused by the 

 sensation of external objects and those which come from ideas, thoughts, 

 or acts of our intellect ; the former constitute 'physical sensibility, 

 whereas the latter characterise the moral sensibility, that we shall now 

 turn to consider. 



Moral Sensibility. 



Moral sensibility is very different from the physical sensibihty that 

 I have already mentioned ; the former is only excited by ideas and 

 thoughts which move our inner feeling, while the latter only arises 

 from impressions produced on our senses ; for these can likewise stir 

 our inner feehng. 



The seat of moral sensibihty has been wrongly supposed to be in the 

 heart, on the ground that the functions of that viscus are more or less 



