Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/90

 ME. MERCIEE'S CLASSIFICATION OF FEELINGS. 79 Hate, Fear, Terror, would be better called Fear of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd degree ; Suspicion, Apprehension, Hope, would be better as three degrees of Apprehension ; Mortification, mentioned twice, Defeat, Despair, as four degrees of Defeat. Other similar cases might be shown, but these will serve to illustrate my meaning. The adoption of this plan of naming would further facilitate the avoidance of unsuitable names. Hate is very unsuitable for the 1st degree of Fear, being at least as much akin to Anger, and moreover no mere transitory feeling, but a settled affection or disposition to irascible feeling of peculiar character. Suspicion, too, is properly a feeling that arises not so much from the un- certainty of a cognition in regard to a noxious agent as from a belief in the cunning and secrecy of its attack. And what shall we say to Hope as aroused by the uncertainty of the cognition of an overwhelming noxious agent? Several other names in Table iii. alone seem ill-chosen as Eesignation, Courage, Morti- fication, Meekness, Eesentment, Contempt, Scorn. Again, some Feelings are misplaced, of which the worst case is that of Eeligion (MiND XXXVII. 17), classed amongst feelings corresponding with interactions neither conservative nor destruc- tive, as genus 4 "the relation of the organism to the unknown". Surely this is following Mr. Spencer where he is least to be followed. Even granting the soundness of his argument in First Principles, Part i,, it must still be remembered that feelings respond not to facts but to cognitions, and that the religious object has very rarely hitherto been cognised as unknown. The place of Eeligion seems to be amongst the first order of Social-con- servative emotions of Table i. (p. 4) ; where in fact we find Piety, though in what exact sense is uncertain. The religious cognition has indeed rarely been of an agent steadily beneficent to the community (as Mr. Mercier makes the object of Piety to be), but rather of one whom it was important to keep so as much as possible. But that the feeling is of a social nature is shown by its being reached apparently only at a certain stage of social growth, by its rites, by its contagiousness, by early gods being often (if not always) ancestors or kings, by the differentiation of social sections to maintain public worship, and by its being in general a supplement of law : though in its later growths it may aid in reforming law, as in our Puritan rebellion, when ' men of religion ' beat the ' men of honour ' ; which, I think, by a sense of the unknown they would hardly have accomplished. Such reflections suggest that the view of Martyrdom (p. 12), as a sense that public reprobation is undeserved, must be inadequate : has it not rather been hitherto a sense of ' the perfect witness of all- judging Jove ' ? As to the connexion of Eeligion with Art, which Mr. Mercier points to in justification of his classing, that is only to a small extent directly psychological, chiefly historical ; priest- hoods having alone had in early times the culture, wealth and leisure requisite for elaborate Art.