Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/524

 512 CHAELES MEKCIEE : Where the circumstance in the environment is passively noxious and its power, without being overwhelming, is yet superior, in so much that the organism cannot abolish it, then the feeling of Abhorrence is aroused. Such circumstances are not common, and the feeling is therefore not well charac- terised. As in the case of Horror the noxiousness may be cognised only when it is exerted towards others, and such cases are found in the Abhorrence with which a refined nature regards a bull-fight, or a prize-fight, or a father unmercifully punishing a child. An example of the feeling aroused by a noxiousness which is passive but more directly concerns the organism is seen in the Abhorrence with which a drunken husband is regarded by a refined woman. Agents of inferior power that are passively noxious will not commonly arouse any feeling at all. If I tread upon a sharp stone or run a thorn into my flesh, there arises of course the sensation of pain from the wound, but the cir- cumstance in the environment the stone or the branch does not, I think, arouse any emotion sufficiently definite to receive a name. An environmental circumstance which is noxious to taste is of necessity passively noxious, since we taste only those things that we voluntarily put into our mouths ; when the operation is complete there is the unpleasant Sensation of distaste. But when the thing is not yet tasted, but stands in such a relation to the organism as to arouse a cognition of the process of tasting, then the feeling is of Emotional order, and where the thing is cognised as noxious, the emo- tion is one of Disgust. If it is cognised as excessively noxious the emotion is one of Loathing. That this is the true nature of these feelings does not, I think, since the writings of Darwin, require a laboured demonstration. The connexion between the feelings of Disgust and Loathing on the one hand, and Abhorrence and Horror on the other, is indicated no less by the similarity in the charac- ter of the circumstances which arouse them, than by the fact that they are all associated with nausea, and when pushed to excess, with actual vomiting. Genus 3. The feelings which correspond with the relation to the organism of a beneficent environmental circumstance, are, as in the case where the circumstance is noxious, divisible according to the character of the circumstance as active or passive. The feeling aroused by an agent which is beneficent actively, that is to say, by gifts or services rendered to the organism, differs from the feeling aroused by a circumstance