Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/342

330 CHAELES MEECIEE : While the merit of abandoning the subjective standpoint and of classifying the feelings with some reference to external circumstances, belongs unquestionably to Prof. Bain, yet he admits these circumstances not so much as a fundamental factor of classification as for incidental and collateral pur- poses, and his classification makes no attempt at detailed completeness. With his customary philosophical candour, Prof. Bain admits the imperfection of his arrangement, and goes on to express the opinion that the difficulty of expound- ing the Emotions in a strict order of sequence is permanent and insuperable. " Begin where we will," he says, "as we can only take one source at a time, we must anticipate what is to follow. The only thing to be done is to recognise the fact, and also its consequence, namely, that there is no one absolutely preferable arrangement." In so far as this con- clusion refers to an arrangement in serial order, it is no doubt necessary and inevitable. But what is the obvious implication ? That since a serial arrangement is impossible therefore no arrangement is possible ? Surely not. Two generations ago, the same permanent and insuperable diffi- culty was experienced, by the botanists and by the zoologists of that day, in the serial arrangement of vegetable and animal forms. So long as they stood still and kicked against the pricks, so long did science stand still with them, and when the impracticable character of such an arrangement was recognised and admitted, the first step was taken in the circumvention of the difficulty and towards a classification, non-serial indeed, but based upon fundamental likeness and differences, and in accordance with genealogical affinities. And similarly we may hope, nay, we may sanguinely expect, that the recognition, thus formally declared by Prof. Bain, of the impossibility of arranging the feelings in linear sequence, heralds the abandonment of all attempt at such an arrangement, and the construction of a classification according to those fundamental properties which they have acquired from the source and in the process of their develop- ment. That such a classification alone can express the true relations of the feelings to one another, is demonstrated by reason and enforced by analogy ; and that our knowledge is ripe for the attempt is sufficiently indicated by Prof. Bain's declaration. From what has been said it will be already apparent, that the classification of feelings that is here proposed, is founded, not on any distinctions between the qualities of feelings as subjectively viewed an aspect to which belong such dis- tinctions as those between Appetites, Desires, and Affections