Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/348

 336 CHAELES MEECIER: relation between the organism and the environment, and this mode of expression will often be used hereafter, but it must be borne in mind that the relation is always a rela- tion of interaction, past, future, or possible, and that it is this element of activity that alone arouses feeling. The feelings of cognition, for instance, which have already been referred to, may properly be regarded as the state in the organism which corresponds with the relation between two such interactions. Considered in the light of the principle of Evolution, there are two classes of interactions between the organism and the environment which stand out pre-eminently before all others in their importance and in their antiquity. These are the interactions which primarily affect the conservation of the organism, and those which primarily affect the per- petuation of the race. Of course every interaction between the organism and the environment must necessarily affect to some extent, however slightly, its conservation, and must affect in some degree, however remote, its ability or tendency to perpetuate the race ; but we speak here of interactions only as they primarily subserve or oppose these two great ends. Compared with the interactions that affect these two great and primordial ends all others are but of yesterday, although even the following group dates from a period long prior to that at which the race attained to the dignity of humanity. There is little doubt that, long before our ances- tors had reached the organisation and status of Man, they lived gregariously, so that for a period which may not include a large section of the whole life of the race, but which is intrinsically very great, each individual organism has been subject, as a member of a community, to a number of inter- actions affecting the common welfare ; of which some are concerned with the environment of the community, and others are concerned with the community itself, regarded as a special (the social) environment of the individual. From interactions that concern the welfare of the organism in common with that of other individuals to those that concern other individuals only is not a long step ; and through this class of interactions we pass to those that are neither con- servative nor destructive, a somewhat heterogeneous group, comprising all the residue of interactions that are not in- cluded in previous classes. Finally there is a class of feelings the feelings of Cognition which correspond with a rela- tion between interactions. Classed upon this method, the main groups of feeling will therefore be six in number,