CHAPTER XIV. THE SENSIBILITIES: THE CONSTITUTION OF MAN AS SUSCEPTIBLE OF MOTIVES AND EMOTIONS. 62. Definition and Classification. THUS far I have been examining the intellectual constitution of man. As the result of these investigations we have reached the conclusion that man is capable of empirical, rationalistic or noetic, and theological science; that these are grades of knowledge necessary in attaining knowledge of all that may be known of anything; that they are reciprocally dependent and necessarily in harmony; that in theology all science finds its completeness, its unity and its consummation; and that the denial of the reality of theological knowledge involves the denial of the reality of all knowledge. I proceed now to consider the constitution of man as susceptible of motives and emotions, that is, the Feelings or Sensibilities. I. The Sensibility is man's constitutional capacity of motives and emotions. The motives and emotions themselves are called Sensibilities or Feelings. The feelings which are impulses to action are called motives. The emotions are simple joy or sorrow, pleasure or pain, which do not impel to action. If I may use a figure derived from mechanics, motives are dynamic, moving the man to action; emotions are static conditions in which the man simply enjoys or sorrows, feels pleasure or pain. For example, hunger, which is the appetite for food, is a motive to get food and eat it; the pleasure of eating it and of the satisfaction of the appetite is an emotion. The same distinction pertains to all the sensibilities. II. The sensibilities are of two classes, the Natural or Psychical, and the Rational. The Rational Sensibilities presuppose the exercise of the Intuitive Reason. They pertain to the fundamental realities or ideas of Reason: Truth, Right or Law, Ideal Perfection, the Good estimated by reason as of true worth, and the Absolute Being or God. Motives and emotions of this class are impossible in a being not endowed with the intuitive Reason. The Natural or Psychical Sensibilities do not imply the exercise of in tuitive reason, but are possible to irrational sentient beings. They are common to man and the brutes. All of them may probably be found in the higher orders of brutes. Both classes of sensibilities are constitutional in man, and arise spon. taneously and involuntarily when the appropriate object and occasion are present. III. Among the natural sensibilities are the following: I. The instincts, or impulses without intelligence to do what intelligence, if it existed, would require. Such is the impulse of a newborn lamb or babe to suck; or of a young fish-hawk striking a fish, doing what to intelligence would require the calculation of distance, of refraction of light, and of the motion of the hawk and the fish. 2. The impulse to exertion with no object ulterior to the exertion of the faculties and the counter impulse to rest. The impulse to exertion impels children to skip and jump, and to constant intellectual activity. It is the impulse to play. Play is exertion of the faculties with no end ulterior to the exertion itself; and the exertion gives pleasure because it is the satisfaction of a natural impulse. Work, on the contrary, is the exertion of the faculties for some end ulterior to the exertion, whether the exertion itself is agreeable or not. Riddles, puzzles, conundrums, chess, and similar games of skill are intellectual play. This is sometimes called the Radical impulse. It is this in our constitution which makes constant employment necessary, and afflicts us with ennui when we have nothing to do. It is this which makes men dissatisfied with positions in which they cannot put all their faculties into exercise and find full scope for all their energies. It is this which prevents men from stopping business when they have accumulated wealth, and impels them to new enterprises and new risks. When this impulse is weak in a young man, we say he has no ambition, no enterprise. Much that is commonly ascribed to covetousness, or selfish ambition, or other sinister motives, may often be more truly ascribed to this radical impulse. It becomes complicated with other motives, but it always remains one of the deepest and most constant springs of human action. 3. Appetite and desires: as hunger and thirst, the desire of society, of power, of esteem, of property, of knowledge. A desire always implies uneasiness in a sense of want, and an impulse to exertion to get the object desired. Joy in getting the object and sorrow in missing it, are consequent on the desire of the object and would be impossible without it. 4. Natural affection; altruistic natural sensibilities, terminating on another and not on self. Desire is a sense of want impelling the person to get something for himself; affection is a sense of fullness impelling him to impart something to another. Natural affections are of two kinds: affections of affinity or sympa thetic affections, as parental, filial and conjugal love, compassion for the distressed, love of country, and the like; affections of antipathy or repellent affections, as anger, revenge, fear, and antipathies of race. All these are common to man and the higher orders of brutes. The Moral, pertaining to the Right; The Esthetic, pertaining to the ideally perfect; The Teleological, pertaining to the Good which reason adjudges to be worthy of the pursuit and enjoyment of rational beings; The Religious, pertaining to Absolute being or God. These have been noticed sufficiently for my purpose in discussing the fundamental ideas of Reason. 63. The Desire of Happiness as a Motive. According to this analysis, happiness or enjoyment is a static condition and is not a motive to action. When a man is happy, his happiness does not of itself move him to seek something else; on the contrary, he is disposed to rest in his happiness. We have seen, however, that the desire of happiness may be a motive to action; when a man abstracts enjoyment from its sources, conditions and consequences, and compares simply enjoyment and suffering, he naturally desires the former rather than the latter. This motive, however, involving such a process of abstraction, cannot be a frequent motive of human action. The common motives are the instincts, desires and affections, the physical and rational impulses which terminate on specific objects. We see, then, from a new point of view how exceedingly far from truth is the assertion, already disproved, that the desire of happiness is the ultimate motive of all moral action. We may also notice here an important fact that so far as the desire of enjoyment does supplant other motives and become the ruling motive of action, it becomes morbid and hurtful. And this the whole history of the world verifies. This is the very characteristic of a period of luxury and effeminacy; people make the most diligent study of ways to enjoy themselves. They live for that end. And while debasing themselves, they miss the enjoyment. Apicius could not sleep because the rose-leaves lay too thickly on him. From the same source come the selfishness and sensitiveness of excessive refinement and delicacy. So in æsthetics, when persons begin to seek enjoyment, they cease to admire the beauty and miss the enjoyment. One who walks abroad scenehunting, does not find nor enjoy the beauty of nature; and great galleries are a weariness to him who is seeking enjoyment instead of sincerely admiring beauty. When enjoyment, which is legitimately the consequent of following some motive, itself supplants the motive, it becomes a morbid and dangerous desire of excitement. For example, one has an appetite for food and he enjoys eating. Suppose now that his mind fixes on the pleasure of eating and he desires that, instead of desiring food; then he becomes an epicure, a gourmand; he devises ways to increase and prolong the pleasure of eating, even to the disgusting device of the Romans— vomere post coenam. And thus he spoils his enjoyment. Similar is the result of the use of alcoholic drinks. The drinker ceases to enjoy the drink; he seeks the excitement. Similar is the mental intoxication of excessive novel-reading. Similar is the result in the religious life, when one no longer seeks God and lives to serve men, but seeks the exhilaration of religious enjoyment. And the result, in all these most diverse and yet similar cases, is to deaden the sensibilities, to benumb the capacity of enjoyment and to create a necessity for more highly-spiced condiments, for more sensational stories-and sermons-and to destroy the susceptibility to the joys of common life. 64. Feeling a Source of Knowledge. The feelings are a source of knowledge in the following particulars: Feeling is always conscious feeling. A pain or pleasure of which the person is unconscious would not be a pain or pleasure; it would not be a feeling. In this sense feeling is a kind of knowing. Man has knowledge of objects through feeling. In sensation man perceives the outward object; in sorrow man is conscious of himself as sorrowing. So when God's Spirit works in the human spirit, in the spiritual motives and emotions man may know God; and thus that may be "spiritually discerned" which is "foolishness" to "the natural man." Feelings may be a source of knowledge by our inferring their cause or object. An instinct indicates a corresponding reality. A young bird's instinct to fly indicates the possibility of flying; a rabbit's instinctive timidity indicates the reality of danger; a sinner's spontaneous fear of judgment indicates the reality of moral law and government. They are also motives interesting us in seeking knowledge. And on the feelings, candor and impartiality in the investigation of facts and truth depend. CHAPTER XV. THE WILL. 65. Definition. I. THE will is the power of a person, in the light of reason and with susceptibility to the influence of rational motives, to determine the ends or objects to which he will direct his energy, and the exertion of his energy with reference to the determined end or object. II. The will is a person's power of self-determination. It is his power of determining the exercise of his own causal efficiency or energy. He can determine the object or end to which he will direct it; he can exert it or call it into action when he will; he can refrain from exerting it when he will. He has power of self-direction, self-exertion and self-restraint. This power is the will. Its function is to determine the exercise of power. Its acts are determinations. We call it the power of self-determination. 1. The determinations of the will are of two kinds-Choice and Volition. In choice a person determines the object or end to which he will direct his energies. In volition a person exerts his energies or calls them into action; or he refuses to do so. Volition is a determination because a person exerts his energies or refrains from exerting them at will. He determines whether to exert them or not. The motor force of a stone, on the contrary, is not exerted by the stone, but is communicated to it. Choice is self-direction. Volition is self-exertion or self-restraint. Both are self-determinations. 2. The will must be distinguished from the causal efficiency or power whose action the will determines. Every determination of will presupposes that the person is constitutionally endowed with causal efficiency or potency. The existence of power or efficiency is essential to the very conception of a will. If there is no power to be exerted and directed, there can be no will to exert and direct it. But causal efficiency is not a distinctive peculiarity of will. Material objects have causal efficiency. They, however, cannot direct it, nor exert or refrain from exerting it of themselves. Electricity is a power. But it cannot |