Page:Philosophical Review Volume 7.djvu/401

387 following passage is that of epistemology, the emphasis given to the higher feelings accompanying cognition, renders it pertinent here: "It is often assumed, even by those who do not accept the identification of the entire life of feeling with the changing quanta of the pleasure-pain series, that cognition is especially devoid of feeling, if not actually antagonistic to feeling. But an act of cognition is the fullest expression of the fact of mental life. When I know, then I am—full of life, full-orbed in my being, "all in it" as it were, and as at no other time. But if the 'I' that am now come to the fullest realization of my Self in the act of cognition, am essentially a being of feeling, as well as a thinking and willing subject of states, then how can this act of cognition itself be constituted otherwise than as a feeling-full affair? And how can a large variety and profound depth of feeling be separable from any act of cognition, not to say the contrary, or contradictory of any such act?" And how, it may be added, is the cognitive act evaluated except in this feeling as satisfying or dissatisfying? Knowledge can never be regarded as an end in itself in any other sense than as thus directly ministering to the happiness of the knower. Elsewhere its place is that of means, not end. Only on the view of the relation of cognition and feeling presented above, does Aristotle's ideal life of contemplation appear intelligible or tolerable. Otherwise it remains, colorless and cold—mere graue Theorie.

It is also to be remembered that to feeling belongs the evaluation of those experiences of a moral and æsthetic order to which mankind in its best estate has always attached a unique value. To the ' meek,' to the 'poor in spirit,' and even to the 'persecuted for righteousness' sake,' is promised happiness—a good of sensibility—despite all of the outward infelicities which, to the superficial observer, might seem to render the possession of any good of feeling impossible. We read, too, of one "who for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross and dispised the shame." And if such joy be regarded as that in which