Page:An introduction to ethics.djvu/85

 described, it is easy for us to recognise them and admit that they are separate emotions. But our difficulty is that when we actually experience emotions, they often seem hopelessly confused and jumbled. Take, for example, the emotional condition of a small boy who is being caned, or that of a girl who is saying good-bye to her brother "off to the Front." The small boy is probably not aware of his emotions as emotions; and while the girl will recognise her state as an emotional one, she will make no effort to distinguish one emotion from another within that complex state. But, of course, that does not mean that the complex emotional state cannot be analysed. This is obvious if we compare our sensations in looking at a complex colour-scheme. Take, for example, our colour-sensations during the final scene of a gorgeously-dressed pantomime. The variously-coloured dresses and scenery, with all their subtle and delicate shades and tinges, blend into one complex colour-scheme. We enjoy the complex sensation we have as we observe the scene, and we do not usually try to analyse it. But, of course, the colour-scheme can be analysed. It would be quite possible to pick out all the minute shades which blend harmoniously in the whole, and quite possible also to reduce them all to the primary colours out of which they had been compounded.

Precisely the same thing is true of our complex emotional states. It is possible to analyse them. If we examine the emotional state of the boy who is being caned, we may find the emotion of anger (at himself for getting into the scrape, at the master