Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/338

 326 CHARLES MEBCIER : classification the condition, namely, that the groups shall mutually exclude one another as to carry within themselves their own condemnation. Adopting, as I do, Mr. H. Spencer's Principles of Psychology as a profound and masterly exposition of the origin and nature of the normal mind, I must yet dissent from his classification of feelings, on the same ground as I dissented from his simi- larly-founded classification of cognitions (MiND XXX. 260) ; and in the former case my disagreement with Mr. Spencer is much more complete and thorough than in the latter. In the classification of cognitions, while dividing the primary groups upon another principle, I was able to accept the degree of representativeness as demarcating the secondary groups from one another ; but in the case of the feelings, this principle appears to me altogether inappropriate as a basis of classifying even the minor clusters. Without denying that the classification of feelings according to their degree of representativeness indicates in a vague and general manner certain real differences of composition, it yet appears to me, not only that the arrangement so made is too vague to be of any real service not only that it fails to discriminate between widely-unlike feelings and fails to group together feelings that are closely allied but that it is founded on a basis which totally ignores a fundamental principle of Mr. Spencer's own system of psychology. That the principle of representativeness permeates every feeling and varies in each class of feelings, I freely admit ; but it does not therefore follow that it forms an adequate basis for classification, any more than it follows that the variations in character of the vessels of a tree form an adequate basis of classifying its parts, because they permeate throughout and vary in each part. That Mr. Spencer's groups " are but indefinitely distinguish- able " he candidly admits, and this indefiniteness would by no means of itself invalidate his arrangement, if it could be shown that the things he classifies are correspondingly indefinite in their limitation. But are they ? Is the feeling of Anger so indefinitely distinguishable from the feeling of Love ; the feeling of Terror so indefinitely distinguishable from the feeling of Triumph ; the feeling of Blueness from that of Warmth ; the feeling of Beauty from that of Indigna- tion ; that they must all be accumulated together within the same class, and no attempt be made to regroup them in minor clusters within the class ? So startling a result may well arouse suspicion that Mr. Spencer's classification is invalid a suspicion which develops into assurance when the investigation is pressed home, and when the consequences