Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/539

 A CLASSIFICATION OF FEELINGS, II. 527 TABLE IX. I. Sub-cl. II. : Self-conservative Emotions, Organisnially-initiated. Genus 6 : Feelings corresponding with the relation of Exertion to Effect. Feelings of Power. r insignificant. Power. Exertion, compared with Effect, is cognised as I slight. Ease. considerable. Difficulty, overwhelming. Impotence. Some comment upon this Table is rendered necessary by e fact that the terms used in naming these feelings are not always employed in the same sense. The feeling of Power, I have said, arises when the Exertion necessary to produce a given effect is cognised as insignificant in comparison with the Effect produced. Hence this emotion will, if this state- ment is correct, arise on the occasion of a single experience of this nature. But the emotion of Power, as ordinarily understood, is not, I think, that which corresponds with an isolated experience of this nature, but is the feeling of capa- bility in general the feeling which corresponds with a cog- nised ability to bring about not this or that particular effect, but great effects generally. Such a cognition can, it is obvious, only come into being by the combination of numerous particular cognitions ; and, similarly, the general feeling results from the aggregation of many particular feel- ings of the same nature. Each such cognition normally gained by an actual experience of power exerted and effect produced is accompanied by a minor degree of the feeling that we call Power, and the outcome of many such ex- periences will be a feeling abstracted from any particular experience, more frequently rising into consciousness, more decided and more voluminous, which will be the feeling that more usually goes by this name. Of all occasions on which an effect is produced on the environment, those will be attended with the most insignificant amount of exertion on the part of the organism which are produced vicariously, that is to say, by others acting under the orders of the indi- vidual in whom the feeling occurs. In this way very great effects requiring the co-operation of numbers of men may be produced by an amount of exertion that is not only relatively but absolutely insignificant by a word, a sign, a look. On such occasions the feeling of Power attains its maximum of intensity, and so great is the accession which