Human emotion

“ Their persons, therefore, their interests, their passions, their pains and pleasures must strike upon us in a lively manner, and produce an emotion similar to the original one; since a lively idea is easily converted into an impression. ”

“ Having explained the nature of an emotion and mentioned several causes by which it is produced, we proceed to an observation of considerable importance in the science of human nature, that some emotions are accompanied with desire, and that others, after a short existence, pass away without producing desire of any sort. The emotion raised by a fine landscape or a magnificent building, vanisheth generally without attaching our hearts to the object ”

“ The superior and truly human forms of emotion are reducible to four principal groups: the religious, moral, æsthetic, and intellectual sentiments. Although the somatic characters accompanying each of these will be noted with the greatest care in the second part of this work, it will be necessary, even at present, to enumerate the principal in advance. We must more especially be on our guard against the common error which insists in seeking emotion 99where nothing remains of it save a mere survival and shadow. ”

“ For the world is—allow us the homely figure—the human being turned inside out. All that moves in the mind is symbolized in Nature. Or, to use another more philosophical, and certainly not less poetic figure, the world is a sensuous analysis of humanity, and hence an inexhaustible wardrobe for the clothing of human thought. Take any word expressive of emotion—take the word emotion itself—and you will find that its primary meaning is of the outer world. In the swaying of the woods, in the unrest of the “wavy plain,” the imagination saw the picture of a well-known condition of the human mind; ”

“ to prove that above royalties, above revolutions, above earthly questions, there is the immense emotion of the human soul? ”

“ This was simply the sense of success—the most agreeable emotion of the human heart. ”

“ THE FIRST and the simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind, is Curiosity. ”

“ 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. ”

“ What, then, is the nature of this emotional appeal which surpasses so much in intimacy, pleasure, and power the appeal to the intellect? It is the keystone of the inward nature, that which binds all together in the arch of life. Emotion has some ground, some incitement which calls it forth; and it responds with most energy to beauty. ”

“ Their actions, when they are not of that sort, which seizes our admiration, or catches the affections, are not otherwise considered by us, than as they are sensible indications of the internal sentiment and disposition. Our intimate consciousness of the several turns and windings of our nature, makes us attend to these pictures of human life with an incredible curiosity. ”

“ The altruistic feelings (social and moral emotions) having a practical value, and being reckoned among the conditions of human existence, it is much easier to fix the moment of their partial or total decay. ”

“ All those to whom I looked up, were of opinion that the pleasure of sympathy with human beings, and the feelings which made the good of others, and especially of mankind on a large scale, the object of existence, were the greatest and surest sources of happiness. ”

“ These sentiments, which are born within us, slumbering as it were in our nature, ready to be awakened into action immediately they are roused by hint of corresponding circumstances, are drawn out of the whole of previous human existence. ”

“ But, while reason and judgment teach us to control the expression of certain feelings, they urge that this control be exercised in transforming those feelings into helpful ones and giving them an adequate outlet. Such a substitution has been suggested above. Let us not forget that nothing in existence is of personal value until it gives some one an emotion; that feeling is the beauty of life; that living, without the happy, wholesome affective glow, would not be worth the effort; that beauty and strength and sweetness of feeling make for a worthy self. ”

“ Since it is admitted that these are typical emotions, and, on the other hand, the observation of human life shows us numerous emotional states, with their individual varieties and gradations, their transformations in the course of ages, how has this multiplicity been produced? ”

“ 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. ”

“ In like manner the five grateful passions, love, desire, hope, joy, and pleasing recollection, all enhance one another; as do the five ungrateful ones, hatred, aversion, fear, grief, and displeasing recollection. And the whole ten, taken together, comprehend, as appears to me, all the general passions of human nature. ”

“ The second order introduces the sympathetic emotions. They are evoked on sight of the sufferings or emotional states of others. If we see a woman insulted, we are filled with indignation; and this emotion has a sympathetic origin. The third order comprises the complex feelings known as sentiments. They have reference to certain qualities of objects or activities of individuals which inspire admiration or disapprobation. They are abstract in their nature, and belong to the conceptual sphere. Such are love of truth, beauty, virtue, liberty, justice. ”

“ Take out, then, from any such emotion, what Imagination, and Love, and Sympathy have supplied, and leave only what the Moral Spirit recognises of Moral Will in the act, and you will find that much of that dazzling and splendid Beauty which produced the transport of loving admiration is removed. ”

“ We go out from the sway of this imagined world, more sensitive to life, more accessible to emotion, more likely and more capable, when the occasion arises, to feel rightly, and to carry that feeling out into an act. In all literature the knowledge gained objectively, whether of action or emotion, is a preparation for life; but this intimate experience of emotion in connection with an imagined world is a more vital preparation, and enters more directly, easily, and effectually into men's bosoms. ”

“ But there still remains, inside, so to speak, of these astonishing facts, a whole range of intimate personal phenomena, of emotion, of relationship, of mental or spiritual conceptions, such as beauty, affection, righteousness, which seem to be an even nearer concern, even more vital to our happiness than the vast laws of which it is possible for men to be so unconscious, that centuries have rolled past without their being investigated. ”

“ In the sphere of ethics that which awakens the most pleasant feeling is consequently to be esteemed as the greatest good. Emotional reactions are classified as pleasant or gentle, harsh, and mean. The end of pleasant emotion is pleasure ”

“ Rest on the human faces that pass by,
Each with its gay or busy interest:
And then I muse upon their lot, and read
Many a lesson in their changeful cast,
And so grow kind of heart, as if the sight
Of human beings were humanity. ”

“ At the moment of beginning the study of the composite emotions which have had the most brilliant career, and played the most important part in human life, it will be well to indicate the course which will be followed, once for all. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Deluded by this advocate of a specious loyalty to taste, men tie themselves to first thoughts and raw emotions as though these were more essentially their own than thoughts cleared and polished by reflection, or emotion chastened by considerate expression. ”

“ The emotion owes its strength to its suddenness and intensity; but it soon exhausts itself, and the sentiment with which it clashed remains dominant. It is a sign of moral progress when the sentiment completely controls and organises the emotions and desires of life in accordance with its own end. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the last chapter we saw that impulses and desires are developed from the instinctive level of human behaviour, and enter into man's comprehensive aims, purposes, and ambitions. In the present chapter we shall consider, as a parallel evolution, the growth of man's emotions, which, instinctive in their origin, become developed and systematised into comprehensive sentiments which may govern his whole life. Emotions and sentiments are important elements in character for many reasons, but particularly because they bear with them an immediate sense of worth or value. ”

“ When we look closely and deeply at the world about us,—whether at this ordered world of nature, moving steadily in its unbroken and majestic course, or at the external aspect of grandeur and loveliness, or at the drama in which all men are actors, as it is disclosed to insight and sympathy, or at the inner world of each one's personal experience,—do we not find ourselves in the perpetual presence of Goodness, Order, Beauty, Love? ”

“ The pleasures of regularity, propriety, convenience, compose the emotion raised by a fine building.
If external properties make a being or thing agreeable, we have reason to expect the same effect from those which are internal; and accordingly power, discernment,{48} wit, mildness, sympathy, courage, benevolence, render the possessor agreeable in a high degree. So soon as these qualities are perceived in any person, we instantaneously feel pleasant emotions, without the slightest act of reflection or of attention to consequences. ”

“ There is nothing which more instantly associates with itself the ideas of our own Pleasures, and Pains, 217 than the idea of the Pleasures and Pains of another of our Fellow-creatures. The expositions already afforded sufficiently indicate the source of this association, which exerts a powerful and salutary influence in human life. ”

“ The forms and conventionalities of society, the habits of the age in which we live, the force of education, habit, example, may, in very many cases, check the outward show of feeling, and in some, perhaps, wear down to nothing the reality. But still how many a bitter heart-ache lies concealed beneath the polished brow and smiling lip; how many a bright aspiration, how many a tender hope, how many a passionate throb, hides itself from the eyes of others--from the foreigners of the heart--under an aspect of gay merriment or of cold indifference. ”

“ Life is complex in its expression, involving more than percipience, namely desire, emotion, will, and feeling. ”

“ They reckon up several sorts of pleasures, which they call true ones; some belong to the body, and others to the mind. The pleasures of the mind lie in knowledge, and in that delight which the contemplation of truth carries with it; to which they add the joyful reflections on a well- spent life, and the assured hopes of a future happiness. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The expression of emotion, as also the power of interpreting such expression, must become greater as the impelling cause to concealment found in lack of sympathy, disappears. When conditions require any class of activities to be relatively great, there will arise a relatively great pleasure [Pg 59] accompanying that class of activities; the scope for altruistic activities will not exceed the desire for altruistic satisfaction. ”

“ Thus, entering into sympathy with their situations and states, we reproduce them in ourselves. In our tones, attitudes, gestures, and expressions of countenance, we unconsciously look, act, and seem like them. ”

“ 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 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. ”