14: MOKALS AND MOEAL SENTIMENTS. 



by streams, by cascades, by rocks, by precipices, by moxmtains, by 

 clouds, are aroused together. Along with the sensations immediate 

 ly received, there are partially excited the myriads of sensations that 

 have been in times past received from objects such as those pre 

 sented ; further, there are partially excited tfre various incidental 

 feelings that were experienced on all these countless past occasions; 

 and there are probably also excited certain deeper, but now vague, 

 combinations of states, that were organized in the race during bar 

 barous times, when its pleasurable activities were chiefly among the 

 woods and waters. And out of all these excitations, some of them 

 actual, but most of them nascent, is composed the emotion which a 

 fine landscape produces in us.&quot; 



It is, I think, amply manifest that the processes here 

 indicated are not to be taken as intellectual processes 

 not as processes in which recognized relations between 

 pleasures and their antecedents, or intelligent adaptations 

 of means to ends, form the dominant elements. The state 

 of mind produced by an aggregate of picturesque objects 

 is not one resolvable into propositions. The sentiment 

 does not contain within itself any consciousness of causes 

 and consequences of happiness. The vague recollections 

 of other beautiful scenes and other delightful days which 

 it dimly rouses, are not aroused because of any rational 

 coordinations of ideas that have been formed in by-gone 

 days. Mr. Hutton, however, has assumed that in the 

 genesis of moral feelings as due to inherited experiences 

 of the pleasures and pains arising from certain modes of 

 conduct, I am speaking of reasoned-out experiences 

 experiences consciously accumulated and generalized. He 

 altogether overlooks the fact that the genesis of emotions 

 is distinguished from the genesis of ideas in this : that 

 whereas the ideas are composed of elements that are 

 simple, definitely related, and (in the case of general 

 ideas) constantly related, emotions are composed of enor 

 mously complex aggregates of elements which are never 



