62 HABIT AND INTELLIGENCE. [chap. 



that my view of the subject is in some degree opposed to 

 the view held by what may now be regarded as the reigning 

 school of British philosophy. 

 Emotions But there are feelings or capacities for pleasurable and 

 by^associa- Painful emotion which are beyond all doubt generated by 

 tion- the action of the laws of association or mental habit. The 



Associa- law of what be called the association of feelings, as dis- 

 feeUngs tinguished from and parallel to the association of ideas, is 

 this, — that whatever has become associated in experience 

 with pleasurable or painful feelings, itself becomes the 

 occasion of pleasurable or painful feelings. Thus the sight 

 of a place where we have endured sorrow may become the 

 cause of a feeling of mental pain, or the converse. The 

 Love of most remarkable instance of this is the love of money. 

 Money is not a desirable thing in itself; it is desirable 

 only on account of the desirable things that can be had 

 not a by its means. It is consequently impossible that the love 

 fedTng^ of money can be a primary feeling. The love of food and, 

 as I believe, the love of life, of kindred, and of at least 

 some forms of beauty, are primary feelings, not du^e to 

 association with any others, but having their roots directly 

 in life. The love of money, on the contrary, is a secondary 

 emotion, produced by association with the thought of the 

 desirable things which it is able to purchase. But once it 

 is formed, it is exactly like a primary emotion ; and many 

 men spend their lives in storing it up as if it were de- 

 sirable for its own sake, without a thought of its doing 

 any real good either to themselves or to any one else. It 

 may have is quite probable that the love of money has become an 

 hereditarv l^^reditary characteristic in at least some classes of society 

 • among the civilized races of men ; and if so, though it is 

 a secondary emotion for the race, it is practically a primary 

 one for the individual. 

 Emotions The seat of the emotions is, of course, not in the nerves of 

 se^aTin the scnsation, but in those of consciousness. This is true alike 

 nerves of of the secondary emotions, which are generated by asso- 

 ness. ciation, and of those which I believe to be primary, or, in 



other words, directly traceable to our nature as living 

 beings, such as the love of kindred. 



