Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/527

 A CLASSIFICATION OF FEELINGS, II. 515 sence, dreads the sound of his footsteps, longs for his de- parture, has no shred of liking for him, but yet is deeply grateful to him and would go through fire and water to serve him. On the other hand, liking may exist quite apart from gratitude. We all like Falstaff ; and I suppose most of us can reckon among his acquaintances at least one 'rip,' to whom we have certainly no feeling of gratitude, but whom we say we cannot help liking. From these considerations it appears that Gratitude and Liking or Affection, however closely they may become en- tangled in some cases, are quite separate in their origin ; and since the former is always aroused by gifts or services rendered, and since such circumstances, if they arouse any feeling at all, arouse that of Gratitude, it follows that the feelings of Liking and Affection must correspond with some other relation of the environmental agent to the organism. This relation I have stated to be that of an agent which is passively beneficent or beneficent by its mere presence. The question is, how can an agent be beneficent in this sense ? Only, it is evident, by affording or increasing the conditions for the exercise of some activity on the part of the organism. All cases of Liking will, I think, if examined be found to answer this description. One man likes the country, another the town. Why ? Because the country affords that one and the town this one the most favourable conditions for exercising his activities. If I like a quill-pen better than a steel-pen it is because the former is easier to write with offers more favourable conditions to activity. If one man likes as a companion a good listener and another an amusing talker, it is because the proneness to activity in the first is greater in speech, and in the other in other operations, and hence the amount of activity facilitated is greater when the first gets an opportunity to speak and the second an opportunity to listen. If I like this picture better than that, it is because, as will appear when the .^Esthetic feelings are considered, this one requires less exertion on niy part to appreciate than the other in other words, the activit}' required of me is more facilitated. The term ' activity ' is here used in a larger sense than that of energy expended by the organism. Per- haps the expression ' exercise of the faculties ' would be in some respects better, but its connotation appears to me less definite. Apart from these instances, which of course do not cover the whole field, and which allow therefore of the retort that in other cases of Liking the nature of the relation with which the feeling corresponds is different, there remains the comprehensive argument that this relation is the only