300 BAIN ON THE EMOTIONS AND THE WILL. 



Thus, in the very jDrocess of arranging the emotions 

 into grades, beginning with those involved in the lowest 

 forms of conscious activity and end with those peculiar to 

 the adult civilized man, the way is opened for that ultimate 

 analysis which alone can lead us to the true science of the 

 matter. For when we find both that there exist in a man 

 feeUngs which do not exist in a child, and that the Euro- 

 pean is characterized by some sentiments which are wholly 

 or in a great part absent fi'om the savage — when we see 

 that, besides the new emotions that arise spontaneously as 

 the individual becomes completely organized, there are new 

 emotions making their appearance in the more advanced 

 divisions of our race ; we are led to ask — How are new 

 emotions generated ? The lowest savages have not even 

 the ideas of justice or mercy : they have neither words for 

 them nor can they be made to conceive them ; and the man- 

 ifestation of them by Europeans they ascribe to fear or 

 cunning. There are aesthetic emotions common among 

 ourselves, that are scarcely in any degree experienced by 

 some inferior races ; as, for instance, those produced by 

 music. To which instances may be added the less marked 

 but more numerous contrasts that exist between civilized 

 races in the degrees of their several emotions. And if it 

 is manifest, both that all the emotions are capable of being 

 permanently modified in the course of successive genera- 

 tions, and that what must be classed as new emotions may 

 be brought into existence ; then it follows that nothing like 

 a true conception of the emotions is to be obtained, until we 

 understand how they are evolved. 



Comparative psychology, while it raises this inquiry, 

 prepares the way for answering it. When observing the 

 differences between races, we can scarcely fiiil to observe 

 also how these differences correspond with differences in their 

 conditions of existence, and therefore in their daily experi- 

 ences. Xote the contrast between the circumstances and be- 



