Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/341

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A CLASSIFICATION OF FEELINGS. 329 fication of cognitions, is not opposed to any definite state- ment that he has made with regard to them ; but this is because he gives no direct exposition of the nature of feeling. He does not specifically state of Feeling, as he states of Intelligence, that it is a feature in, or a portion of, the cor- respondence between the organism and its environment. He does, however, allege that " the several grades of mind and its component faculties are phases in the correspondence and factors of the correspondence," and again he speaks of " all mental phenomena " as incidents in the correspondence expressions which must be held to include feelings. Apart however from any formal admission, no one who is familiar with Mr. Spencer's Principles of Psychology can doubt for a moment that Feeling as well as Intelligence is to be considered as "a phase in, or a factor of, the corres- pondence " between the organism and its environment. If Feeling and Thought grow from a common root and are inseparably involved, as Mr. Spencer shows them to be ; and if in their development they become more and more closely interconnected, until at last they are well-nigh indis- tinguishable, as may be maintained ; and if Intelligence, one of these two co-ordinate factors, is expressible in terms of the correspondence between the organism and its environ- ment, then Feeling, the other co-ordinate factor, must be similarly expressible. If Life in general, and if Mental Life in particular, can be expressed in terms of the correspondence, then, since the whole includes the part, each and every factor of Mental Life can be so expressed. That one such factor can be so expressed, Mr. Spencer argues at great length and with irresistible force. That the other factor can be similarly expressed is my contention. Mr. Spencer's treatment of this subject is the more re- markable, since Prof. Bain had already published an arrange- ment of feelings, in which, without any acceptance of Mr. Spencer's views, he yet formally takes account of external circumstances, not indeed in a definition or enunciation of feeling, but as determining the arrangement of feelings. So that we have this remarkable state of things that Mr. Spencer, the chief exponent of a Eealism, which, if " trans- figoired," is rather more than less stringent and widely applicable than the old Realism, classifies feelings from a standpoint mainly subjective ; while Prof. Bain, w r ho repudi- ates Mr. Spencer's system, is driven by stress of logical emergency to adopt in practice his fundamental principle, and to arrange the feelings with reference to the external circumstances with which they correspond.