Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/86

FEELING AND EMOTION. 75 account for such instances as these. In Table ii. the grand division is according to agent and event, but in low forms of psychical life there is no such thing as event all is animate. In this and other Tables it is evident that Mr. Mercier has taken on the whole a statical rather than an evolutionary point of view. The classification is primarily logical and descriptive rather than genetic. Again feelings which are nearly akin in essence and expression are separated ; as, for example, it is to be doubted whether Terror, Horror and Dread should be respectively as- signed to different genera. It may be a question how far a natural-history classification can be applied to psychological matters. If it be the true method, we must apply it throughout to all forms of consciousness, and if, as we have contended, feeling as feeling is only pain and pleasure, is pure subjectivity, but is differentiated through knowledge and will, then the classification of the emotions is dependent on the classification of the cognitions and the volitions. We are not inclined to accept Hamilton's classification formed on this principle, because it is not evolutionary. Knowledge is mingled with most of the feelings as treated by Mr. Mercier, and his method of classifying by object of feelings emphasises this ; but, however valuable and suggestive, his classification remains faulty in content, method and form. It is faulty in content primarily because it does not have regard to psychological classification as a whole, without considering which it is as impossible to come at satisfactory results as if we should attempt to classify vertebrates by themselves. As all animals constitute a kingdom, the whole of which must be kept in mind by the classifier, so states of con- sciousness constitute such a whole, such a unit, that the classifier must attack all psychological states in order to form a satisfactory classification of any one group, as emotion. The method also does not make sufficient use of comparative psychology. The nearest approach to a truly evolutionary form in classification is, perhaps, that modification of Prof. Huxley's, which Mr. Spencer sketches in his Biology. Mr. Mercier's classification, as it lies, is linear, but the Tables, the author insists, must be combined in imagina- tion into a tree-like form. Just what this form is, it is rather difficult to carry in mind, and it is to be hoped that Mr. Mercier will sketch it out in full. We may illustrate roughly our notion of what a classification of the Emotions might be in this manner. PAIN FEAK. Fear (proper) Terror- Alarm. Horror. Dread.