104 AN ATTEMPT AT A NEW THEORY OF HUMAN EMOTIONS. 



being experienced or by observing their eflfects, but perceived to have 

 Buch a general resemblance as properly to be referred to one class. 

 These they have classified in what seemed to them a convenient 

 manner with a view to considering their influences on our condition, 

 and their moral qualities. Others have endeavoured by analysis to 

 lessen the number of primary passions or emotions, shewing how 

 different names really express the same emotion excited under some- 

 what different circumstances. "With these I agree so entirely that I 

 would carry out their principle to the utmost by admitting only an 

 emotion belonging to pleasure and one belonging to pain, and defining 

 all the others by naming one of these, and pointing to the kind of 

 objects or the condition of things around us in which the peculiar 

 form appears. Such analytical view of the nature and relations of 

 the various emotions would form no unimportant part of a treatise on 

 this branch of the philosophy of mind, but need not be examined in 

 detail in the present connection. There is a very general agreement 

 among philosophers that emotions, passions, or active powers differ 

 essentially in nature from intellectual states, and are felt to have some- 

 thing common to them all as a class, in whatever degree they may 

 differ from each other. This is not indeed a universal sentiment, for 

 both Hartley and James Mill suppose that by due regard to the 

 character of our sensations as pleasurable and painful, and a proper 

 application of the law of association, all the varieties of emotions 

 may be fully explained. I cannot help thinking, however, that the 

 general feeling of those who reflect on the subject is that there is a 

 real well marked difference between intellectual states and emotions, 

 and fully admitting that this difference depends on pleasure and pain 

 as actual sensations, or as ideas intermingling with sensations, I 

 think it desirable, if possible, to ascertain the exact nature and causes 

 of the phenomena. All sensations are commonly said to be pleasur- 

 able, painful, or indifferent. The truth seems to be, that every sen- 

 sation, if not too intense — ^in which case it becomes painful — is 

 naturally, before it has been affected by frequent repetition, a source 

 of pleasure. Those which we describe as indifferent are such as we 

 have frequent occasion to experience, which causes them to be familiar, 

 and as are not now impressed with any peculiar vividness. The sensa- 

 tion which causes pleasure is either novel or unusually vivid, and if 

 its vividness be in excess it becomes a pain. Thus pleasures repeated 

 become indifferent, scarcely receiving from the mind any notice,. 



