AN ATTEMPT AT A NEW THEORY OF HUMAN EMOTIONS. 103 



temperature was 14°. 3 below zero, the wind was blowing more than 

 33 miles an hour, with heavy falling and drifting snow. The tem- 

 perature afterwards fell to 20.''8 below zero, but at that time the gale 

 had subsided. 



he accompanying table is a general abstract of the meteorological 

 observations made at the Magnetic Observatory, Toronto, during the 

 year 1861. 



AN ATTEMPT AT A NEW THEORY OF HUMAN 

 EMOTIONS. 



BY WILLIAM HINCKS, F.L.S., ETC., 



PE0FE8S0E 0» SATURAT. HISTOET, UNIVEESITT COIiEOE, TOEONTO. 



In a paper laid before the Canadian Institute on a former occasion, 

 {Journal, Vol. IV., p. 396), I offered some explanation and defence of 

 the Sensationalist Philosophy in relation to the human mind and its 

 operations, which, altogether rejecting innate ideas and instinctive 

 forms of thought, regards the first sensation as the commencement of 

 its enquiries, and endeavours to ascertain the connection of mental 

 states with the physical frame, and the laws according to which they 

 combine and succeed one another. The grand fundamental law, 

 called the law of association, is considered as sufficient to explain all 

 the various intellectual states of which our nature is susceptible ; and, 

 according to Hartley, this law depends on physical sympathy between 

 different portions of nervous matter acted upon simultaneously or in 

 immediate succession. Assuming that the law of association has been 

 well expounded by Hartley Brown and James Mill, and that Hartley 

 has given, to say the least, an intelligible and highly probable expla- 

 nation of its origin, I now propose to extend the application of the 

 same principle so as to offer a consistent and rational explanation of 

 the emotional part of our nature, of the real difference between intel- 

 lectual states and emotions, and of the common relation between the 

 various passions to which our nature is subject. 



Writers on the emotions, passions, or active powers, have often given 

 a long list of what they suppose to be different and independent sim- 

 ple mental states, incapable of definition, and only to be known by 



