Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/355

A CLASSIFICATION OF FEELINGS. 343 while its power of inflicting harm, should it gain access to the organism, is cognised very indefinitely but still very vividly as considerable, the astonishing rapidity of its move- ments proves it to possess a power of gaining access to the beholder which is far beyond her ability to prevent or avoid ; and thus the degree of noxiousness, which may be regarded as the product of these two factors, is maintained at a very high estimate by the magnitude of the one factor, notwith- standing the moderate value to be attached to the other. As thus defined, the power of the agent is cognised as over- whelming compared with that of the organism, and the doctrine holds good. Take another instance of the feeling of Terror the feeling experienced by a child on entering a dark room. There is nothing in the room that can harm the child no agent in the environment to arouse the feeling. Can the formula be said to apply to such a case ? Assuredly it can. True, the room is in reality empty of ought but harmless furniture, but it is peopled thick with terrible things by the child's imagination ; and it is the agent that is cognised, not the agent that actually exists, that arouses the feeling. More- over the child's accessibility to the agents is cognised as a maximum. It cannot see, but it imagines itself as seen, and in comparison with its own helplessness to avoid its unseen foes, their power is conceived as overwhelming. The relative power of the noxious agent to inflict injury, in comparison with that of the organism to avoid it or to nullify it by counteraction, is of course not precisely mea- surable. Nor is precise measurement any condition of the feeling. Between agents that, in comparison with the organism are overwhelmingly powerful, and those whose power is by the same standard insignificant, there is an infinite number of degrees, and although the power of any given agent can never be precisely estimated, it is assigned to some more or less definite position in the scale, and the feeling that it arouses occupies a corresponding position. The scale may be broadly divided into five regions. There are agents whose power to inflict harm is cognised as ap- proximately equal to the power of the organism to avoid or counteract them. Above these are those agents whose power is cognised as superior to that of the organism ; which again admit of division according as the superiority of their power is cognised as moderate or as altogether overwhelming. Below the middle point of the scale are those agents whose power is cognised as inferior to that of the organism, and these again are redivided according as they are moderately inferior or insignificant. With these five degrees of difference