Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/528

 516 CHAELES MEECIEE : one possible. For if the agent is beneficent to the organism and its beneficence does not take the form of actively ren- dering gifts or services, what other form is possible ? Mani- festly the only other way in which beneficence ca.n be shown is by affording opportunity for the exercise of some activity of the organism. It may be said that if an agent does facilitate our activities this itself is rendering us a service, and that the feeling of Liking is placed out of court, or ren- dered merely a variety of Gratitude. But there is a differ- ence. If any activity is checked by some condition or the want of some condition in the environment, so that a definite desire results, then the removal or supply (as the case may be) of the condition, is recognised as a service rendered, and Gratitude is felt ; but if the beneficent agent merely facili- tates the exercise of an activity whose disuse has not reached the point of desire, the feeling aroused is not Gratitude but Liking. Clearly, however, the difference is one of degree, and concerns not indeed the degrees of beneficence of the agent, but degrees in the conditions of the organism. Hence we find that, when an activity has less means of ex- pression than usual, any agent which affords these means is looked on not only with Liking but with a certain amount of Gratitude. For instance, we say that we like a friend to come and sit with us. But if we have been cut off from social intercourse by sickness we are grateful to him for the same action. Lastly, since Liking corresponds with the re- lation to the organism of an agent which facilitates the exercise of its activities, the volume of the feeling will vary with the amount and number of the activities that are facilitated, and its intensity with the degree in which their conditions are afforded by the agent in question. Hence powerful Affection for a house long dwelt in ; hence too, the feeling of Liking with which the least patriotic people view their native shore after experience of the labour of conversing in foreign tongues. Hence also the Liking with which we regard an old friend, the. representation of him calling up by association the vague remembrance of innumerable oc- casions of social activities facilitated. The distinction that I have drawn between Reverence and Devotion as corresponding with a relation to agents that are active and passive respectively, is not, it must be freely ad- mitted, one that is commonly present in the minds of those who use the terms, but I submit that it expresses a real difference in feeling, and that these two terms which are floating in common use to express vaguely any feeling that lies about the region here defined, may legitimately be taken