1C MOKALS AND MOKAL SENTIMENTS. 



The cawing of a rook is not in itself an agreeable sound 

 musically considered, it is very much the contrary. 

 Yet the cawing of rooks usually produces in people very 

 pleasurable feelings feelings which most of them suppose 

 to result from the quality of the sound itself. Only the 

 few who are given to self-analysis are aware that the 

 cawing of rooks is agreeable to them because it has been 

 connected with countless of their greatest gratifications 

 with the gathering of wild-flowers in childhood ; with 

 Saturday-afternoon excursions in school-boy days ; with 

 midsummer holidays in the country, when books were 

 thrown aside, and lessons were replaced by games and 

 adventures in the fields ; with fresh, sunny mornings in 

 after-years, when a walking-excursion was an immense 

 relief from toil. As it is, this sound, though not causally 

 related to all these multitudinous and varied past delights, 

 but only often associated with them, can no more be 

 heard without rousing a dim consciousness of these de 

 lights, than the voice of an old friend unexpectedly coming 

 into the house can be heard without suddenly raising a 

 wave of that feeling that has resulted from the pleasures 

 of past companionship. If we are to understand the 

 genesis of emotions, either in the individual or in the 

 race, we must take account of this all-important process. 

 Mr. Hutton, however, apparently overlooking it, and not 

 having reminded himself, by referring to the &quot; Principles 

 of Psychology,&quot; that I insist upon it, represents my hy 

 pothesis to be that a certain sentiment results from the 

 consolidation of intellectual conclusions ! He speaks of 

 me as believing that &quot; what seems to us now the neces 

 sary intuitions and a priori assumptions of human 

 nature, are likely to prove, when scientifically analyzed, 

 nothing but a similar conglomeration of our ancestors 

 l&amp;gt;est observations and most useful empirical rules&quot; He 



