AN ATTEMPT AT A NEW THEORY OF HUMAN EMOTIONS 105 



whilst a pleasurable sensation increased in intensity becomes painful, 

 and a pain moderated may fall within the limits of pleasure. If we 

 fix our attention on any single distinct pleasurable sensation, we shall 

 observe that as it increases in intensity it is no longer confined to the 

 nerve or organ in which it is excited, but by the inherent sympathy of 

 like parts of our frame, diffuses itself so as to produce a general feel- 

 ing of pleasure, a state distinguishable from, though dependent upon, 

 the single pleasurable sensation. It is manifest that according to the 

 supposed physical origin of the law of association in coexistent or 

 immediately successive states acquiring sympathetic power each to 

 revive the other, that ideas of pleasures and pains would be revived 

 like any other past states, and that they would be equally revived in their 

 diffused state as if they had remained perfectly simple. All those states, 

 then, which are called the active powers, or the passions, but which I 

 prefer describing as a general name by the term emotions, are, I con- 

 ceive, correctly described as diffused pleasures or pains, present, or their 

 ideas revived by association, and arising in various circumstances and in 

 connection with various objects. The peculiar characteristic feeling 

 which has caused most philosophers and mankind generally to distin- 

 guish these from purely intellectual states, consists in sympathetically 

 difiiised pleasure or pain, and consequently has a physical origin in close 

 relation to that of the law of association itself. There is really only one 

 pleasurable and one painful emotion, both arising in the same way ; 

 but it is highly convenient to have a number of names, inconsiderately 

 regarded as implying the essential distinctness of the states, for the 

 primary emotions separately excited by the presence or anticipation 

 of various good and evil, or mingled together, as I believe them to be 

 in some important instances. Thus the idea of any object or condi- 

 tion regarded as a cause of pleasure is attended by pleasing emotions 

 which, if the object or condition be not immediately attainable, is 

 mingled with painful emotions occasioned by privation of it, and this 

 mixture constitutes desire. In the same way every other emotion 

 respecting an unattainable good, whether as entirely beyond our own 

 reach, or as possessed by another whilst we are deprived of it, is 

 really of a mixed character. We can hardly be said to have any dis- 

 tinctive name applicable to those simple emotions of pleasure and 

 pain, which are the elements of all this class of mental states, no 

 doubt because, excepting in philosophical discussions, we have no 

 occasion to make them the subject of discourse except when the 



