Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/521

 II. A CLASSIFICATION OF FEELINGS. BY CHAKLES MERCIER, M.B. n. CLOSELY allied to the Antagonistic feelings, 1 and blending with them on their common frontier, is a group (Genus 2) which I have called the feelings of Repugnance, and which are distinguished from the preceding genus by a small but decided difference in the character of the circumstance in the en- vironment with which they correspond. In the case of the Antagonistic feelings this circumstance is an actively noxious agent, that is to say, an agent whose action would be noxious if applied to the organism, and which is credited with the ability to gain access to the organism, or at any rate to at- tempt to do so. In the present genus the latter quality is wanting. It is still believed that the agent would be noxious ; it may be intensely noxious, if applied to the organism ; but it has 110 power of itself to gain access to the organism. The element of accessibility, so important in the preceding genus, is absent, and this difference divides the one group from the other. We have already seen that in the circum- stances arousing Antagonistic feelings the element of acces- sibility is of prime importance. We may, therefore, expect the class of feelings from whose evoking circumstances this element is absent, to exhibit a well-marked difference. On the other hand, since there is every degree of accessibility, from none to a maximum, we may expect the feelings of this group to graduate into those of the previous one. When a circumstance in the environment is passively noxious in the sense here used, it is obvious that it cannot act upon the organism, and its noxiousness cannot be exeited unless and until the organism spontaneously approaches and uses or meddles with it. From this it follows that, when there is reaction on the part of the organism, this reaction takes the form either of avoidance or of ejecting the noxious circumstance from the environment. Obviously circum- stances thus characterised, although they are antagonistic to the conservation of the organism, are so in a far less 1 Forming Genus 1 of the Order of " Self-conservative Environmentally - initiated Emotions" CLASS I., Sub-class I., Order II., in our classification (see MDTD XXXV.). 35