Affect

“ After sensations and images, we have to name among the phenomena of consciousness, the whole series of affective states—our pleasures and our pains, our joys and our griefs, our sentiments, our emotions, and our passions. ”

“ It is the external motive power, just as Affection is the internal motive power,—the body, of which Affection is the soul. Without earnestness, all our other powers come to naught, and we live in vain ”

“ And Affections.—​And it is not only the same desires; all people, everywhere, have the same affections and passions which act in the same way under similar provocation: joy and grief, love and resentment, benevolence, sympathy, fear, and much else, are common to all of us. So, too, of conscience, the sense of duty. ”

“ And in that day shall be discovered every inward working of every human soul: every appetite, passion, inclination, affection, with the various combinations of them, with every temper and disposition that constitute the whole complex character of each individual. ”

“ You will see that the mental power you most wish to train and augment is distinguishable enough even in the commonest affairs of life. Take a case of feeling. Some object—no matter what—kindles an emotion within you—anger, wish affection, pursuit, dislike, avoidance—and you feel strongly impelled to take action thereupon. ”

“ The commonest objection which the doctrine there laid down runs up against is drawn from the existence of our ‘affections.’ In our pleasures and pains, our loves and fears and angers, in the beauty, comicality, importance or preciousness of certain objects and situations, we have, I am told by many critics, a great realm of experience intuitively recognized as spiritual, made, and felt to be made, of consciousness exclusively, and different in nature from the space-filling kind of being which is enjoyed by physical objects. ”

“ The more closely I scrutinise my states, the more persuaded I become, that whatever moods, affections, and passions I have, are in very truth constituted by, and made up of, those bodily changes we ordinarily call their expression or consequence ”

“ There is a new impetus given by it to the powers of thought and affection, inducing them to a different activity, and deciding what tendencies are henceforth to take the lead in the action of the mind; whether the soul is to spread its wings for a higher flight than it has hitherto ventured, or to sit with closed pinions, content to be of the earth, earthy. ”

“ This inward principle is capable not only of thinking, but of love, desire, hope, joy; hatred, fear, sorrow, anger, and a whole train of inward emotions, which are commonly called passions or affections. ”

“ So shall we come to look at the world with new eyes. It shall answer the endless inquiry of the intellect,—What is truth? and of the affections,—What is good? by yielding itself passive to the educated Will. ”

“ and what actions are the most excellent? Those, certainly, which most powerfully appeal to the great primary human affections: to those elementary feelings which subsist permanently in the race, and which are independent of time. These feelings are permanent and the same; that which interests them is permanent and the same also. ”

“ There are also parts of the brain for the sentimental part of our nature, or the affections, at the head of which stand the moral feelings of benevolence, conscientiousness, and veneration. Through these, man stands in relation to himself, his fellow-men, the external world, and his God ”

“ Let it however be observed, in passing, that, as the moral elements of our nature, upon the sound condition of which happiness or misery turns, are, or ought to be, paramount, so do they, when in a healthy state, impart an equable activity to the rational faculties. The affections have a reciprocity with the reason, and with the imagination, which, indeed, is often severed by unfavourable influences, but which, if cherished in early life, may always be enhanced. ”

“ The presence of our fellow-creatures affects our senses, and our senses give us the knowledge of their presence; which hath different kinds of influence upon us—love, joy, sorrow, restraint, encouragement, reverence. ”

“ It is by the interest and importance that experiences have for us, by the emotions they excite, and the purposes they subserve, by their affective values, in short, that their consecution in our several conscious streams, as ‘thoughts’ of ours, is mainly ruled. ”

“ Kindness and warm affection, clearness of moral vision, and purity of heart, with a lively relish for quiet intellectual pleasures, for society and books adapted to refine, improve and elevate, were among the characteristics common to them all. ”

“ Their ACTIONS give birth to a set of Associations of the greatest importance, which remain to be considered under a Head by themselves. What the Affections are, which are generated by the association of our pains and pleasures, with the STATES of our Fellow-creatures, taken individually, or in groups, we have recently examined. ”

“ The actions thus produced arise out of the mental emotions formerly treated of,—the desires, and the affections.—We desire an object, or we experience one of the affections;—the next mental act, according to the regular course of a reflecting mind, is proposing to ourselves the question,—shall we gratify the desire,—shall we exercise the affection. ”

“ The emotions may be awakened by natural objects, by sound, by the products of the imagination, by the combinations of the intellect, and by certain manifestations of the affections and moral character. ”

“ The effect of the indulgence of this human affection is a certain cordial exhilaration. In poetry, and in common speech, the emotions of benevolence and complacency which are felt toward others, are likened to the material effects of fire ”

“ The main things which seem to me important on their own account, and not merely as means to other things, are: knowledge, art, instinctive happiness, and relations of friendship or affection. ”

“ These general features of the passions being stated, let us make a brief sketch of the principal passions.
It may be said that our passions pass through three distinct states; they are at first natural and unavoidable affections of the mind: inclinations, tendencies; they become next violent and unruly movements: these are the passions properly so-called; they become habits and embodied in the character, and take the name of qualities and defects, virtues and vices. ”

“ Affection first says in presence of an object, imperfectly presented in experience, not only that there shall be further experience completing and fulfilling this meaning, but also that there shall be in this further experience such unity as constitutes an unique object. ”

“ But as our explanation will be more brief than one broken in upon by words of wonder, regret, and affection, we will proceed to it; holding that explanation, like advice, should be of all convenient shortness. ”

“ In what manner they are affected by the forces of nature—its influences of gentleness and peace or its vast pageants of beauty and terror—those words denote; and also those words indicate the action, upon their responsive spirits, of the passions that agitate the human heart. ”

“ To see helpless infancy stretching out her hands, and pouring out her cries in testimony of dependence, without any powers to alarm jealousy, or any guilt to alienate affection, must surely awaken tenderness in every human mind; and tenderness once excited will be hourly increased by the natural contagion of felicity, by the repercussion of communicated pleasure, by the consciousness of the dignity of benefaction. ”

“ An exterior motive may have a sufficient stress and cogency to call forth into energetic action some appetite, desire, or affection previously dormant or feeble, thus to repress the activity of those which before held sway, and so to produce a fundamental change in the character. ”

“ The feelings of our heart, the agitation of our passions, the vehemence of our affections, dissipate all its conclusions, and reduce the profound philosopher to a mere plebeian. ”

“ And in this have I long believed that my power consists; in sympathy, and that part of the imagination which relates to sentiment and contemplation. I am formed, if for anything not in common with the herd of mankind, to apprehend minute and remote distinctions of feeling, whether relative to external nature or the living beings which surround us, and to communicate the conceptions which result from considering either the moral or the material universe as a whole. ”

“ My course of study had led me to believe, that all mental and moral feelings and qualities, whether of a good or of a bad kind, were the results of association; that we love one thing, and hate another, take pleasure in one sort of action or contemplation, and pain in another sort, through the clinging of pleasurable or painful ideas to those things, from the effect of education or of experience. ”

“ The distinction between wise use and misuse lies in whether disintegrating or creative thoughts, with their correspondingly energizing or depressing [Pg 41] emotions or feelings, are allowed to hold sway in consciousness.
Energizing Emotions
When we speak of energizing emotions or feelings we mean love, courage, brightness, earnestness, cheer, enthusiasm. When we speak of depressing emotions or feelings we mean doubt, fear, worry, gloom.
No elements are more essential to a successful business or a successful life than the right kind of emotional elements. ”

“ As we lay all the stress on the nature of an act, as seen in the light of consciousness, what does it signify to tell us that another thing, which possesses no such nature, may be efficiently caused? All such illustrations overlook the essential difference between action and passion, between doing and suffering. ”

“ The growth of intellection and self-consciousness reacts powerfully upon the emotional and active side of mind. To Conduct. describe the various sources of feeling and of desire that thus arise—aesthetic, social and religious sentiments, pride, ambition, selfishness, sympathy, &c.—is beyond the scope of systematic psychology, and certainly quite beyond the limits of an article like the present. But at least a general résumé of the characteristics of activity on this highest or rational level is indispensable. ”

“ The intellectual faculties are wakeful, questioning, mistrustful; the emotions are blind, hopeful, confiding; the one reasoning, exacting, demonstrating; the other, believing, inspiring, devout. The intellect sees, the emotions feel; and, though these functions may blend, the one can never supersede the other.
The quality of the emotional faculties is represented by Benevolence, Sympathy, Joy, Hope, Confidence, Gratitude, Love, and Devotion, all of which are the very antitheses of the attributes of animal feeling, described as Melancholy, Fear, Anger, Hate, Malevolence, and Despair. ”

“ The reasoning we have developed rests, in a word, on the confusion between a pleasant thought and the thought of a pleasure; between an idea of an objective act or event, contemplation of which is pleasant, and of which I desire the realization, and the idea of myself as the subject of a feeling of satisfaction which is to be. ”

“ The tension of those mutually antagonistic impulses which make balance, and so unity, and so the conditions for loss of sense of self, clears the way for tasting the full savor of pleasure in bright color, flowing line, exquisite tone-sequence, moving thought. ”

“ So in these depths of the soul's life the arrangements and re-arrangements of units go on, while on the surface the results appear from moment to moment in sensations keen or dull, in perceptions clear or vague, in judgments wise or foolish, in memories gay or sad, in sordid or lofty trains of thought, in gusts of anger or thrills of love. ”

“ This association constitutes what we call the feeling, or notion, or sentiment, or idea (for it goes by all those names) , of Praiseworthiness, and Blameworthiness.56 The anticipation, in the one case, is delightful; in the other painful. The association 299 exists in different men, in all possible degrees of strength. In some men it exists in so great a degree of strength, that not only, the pleasure of immediate praise, the pain of immediate blame, but every other feeling of their nature, is subdued by it. ”

“ Say what you like, to get its joy, to breathe its peace, to face its truth, one must return with a clear conscience. All this may seem to you sheer sentimentalism; and indeed very few of us have the will or the capacity to look consciously under the surface of familiar emotions. ”

“ The pleasant feeling which is to result from an act may be presented in imagination, and thought of as the end to be reached; or the thought of myself to be pleased as much as possible generally, and here by such means and in such a way, may be the end which I take as the principle and motive of my action. ”

“ When we are struck by the generosity or baseness of an action, or feel the influence of character, or experience the pleasure of harmonious or the pain of discordant relations, our consciousness is in no way concerned with matter. ”

“ The manner in laughter, in tears, in irony, in indignations and enthusiasms, in judgments—and even in love. The manner in which, as in the features and character of a human face, the inner truth is foreshadowed for those who know how to look at their kind. ”

“ Here we see emotion at its proper work; the movement of desire passing over at once into the act of concentration, the gathering up of all the powers of the self into a state of determined attention, which is the business of the Will. ”