Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/526

 514 CHAELES MEECIEB : follows, therefore, that the feeling of Liking, and its intenser form Affection, do not arise under such circumstances. Of course it is possible, and it is very frequent, to like a person who renders us services, but this feeling, although it is commonly mingled with the feeling of Gratitude, is yet quite distinguishable from it. Doubtless in the case of a much-loved person, with whom many gifts and services have been interchanged, the volume of kindly feeling that is at length generated does not admit of separation into parts, so much being scored to Gratitude and so much to Liking ; but it is not in the complex cases that an explanation is first to be sought. Whatever laws are found to rule the simple cases rule also, we may be cer- tain, the cases that are formed by compounding of the simple cases, although in the latter their operation may be so dis- guised by mutual interference as to be unrecognisable. Further, it must be admitted that a feeling that begins as Gratitude may, and often does, merge into Liking ; but it is easy to see how this may occur without invalidating the distinction here made. Suppose the case of a child that receives a gift and feels Gratitude towards the donor and pleasure in the gift. The next visit of the donor will, ac- cording to a well-known psychological law, arouse in a faint form the pleasurable feelings originated by the reception of the gift. The donation is repeated, and again the gratitude and the pleasure are aroused. On the next visit these feelings will again arise faintly, but more vividly than on the former occasion, and with each repetition the pleasure aroused by the mere presence of the donor will be augmented. When the pleasurable feeling so aroused becomes appreciable in amount independently of the Gratitude it is termed Liking ; and such a feeling obviously satisfies the definition I have given, for it is the feeling aroused by the mere presence of a beneficent agent and not directly by the circumstance of gifts or services rendered. The distinctness of the two feelings is well seen in the fact that a service may be rendered to us by a person whom we do not like, and may arouse its cor- responding feeling of Gratitude without the antipathetic feeling of Dislike being by any means abolished. An example occurs when we receive gifts of the white-elephant character from a kindly-intentioned bore. We do not like the donor. We may feel an actual repugnance to him. He is a nuisance, and his gift is a burden ; but at the same time we cannot help feeling some Gratitude towards him. Or take the case of a stern undemonstrative man who lavishes gifts upon a lad who dreads him. The lad is never at ease in his pre-