Note note 44 — ANALYSIS OF THE PHENOMENA OF THE HUMAN MIND James Mill

44 As carrying out the principle of association, in the domain of the Feelings, the foregoing chapters, from XIX. onwards, are unexceptionable and cogent. As furnishing the complete account of the Benevolent and Malevolent Affections, and of the Sympathies or disinterested impulses, they are defective. Indeed, the whole subject of the Emotions is placed by the author upon a too narrow basis. Any theory that looks solely to the circumstance of pleasure and pain, (important as that is) fails to grapple with all the facts. For example, there is no account rendered of the very familiar emotion of Wonder.

That the Emotions are all compounded of elements of Sense (in the widest comprehension, that is, with Muscularity included) may be maintained on good grounds. Nevertheless, in order to a satisfactory analysis of even the commoner emotions, such as Tenderness, there is wanted a more exhaustive detail of the pleasures and pains of sense than is furnished in the present work.

A few remarks on the generic example of the Tender Feeling, on which the author has expended the greatest part of his illustration, will show the method to be pursued. It is a case where certain primary sensibilities, correctly ranked under Sensation, together with the associating principle, seem to account for the whole of the phenomenon. In such a case as Wonder, the explanation involves an additional element.

The pleasures of Tender Feeling, or Love and the Affections, are no doubt, as remarked in the text, in a considerable part associations with other pleasures, such as nourishment. An animal and a child would contract a pleasurable association with the person that brings them their food, or ministers to their bodily wants. Still, there is something different from this in Tenderness or Love. The fact essential to the state is the gratification from the acts of caressing, fondling, and embracing; a pleasure that has its independent sources in the human and animal sensibilities, and does not need the association with being fed and cared for, although enhanced and stimulated by that association. Even apart from the powerful element of sexuality, there is a great mass of pleasurable animal feeling awakened in the loving embrace of two individuals of the warm-blooded species. We may instance, among these, the pleasures of Touch in the soft warm contact; the muscular pleasures co-operating; the organic feelings connected with secretions stimulated in the act, of which the lachrymal is the prominent but not the solitary case; the peculiar sensibility of the pharynx, which is probably the sign of a less acute but more extended influence in the alimentary canal generally; to all which, is to be added, in women, the genial secretion of the breasts, going on incessantly, although more profuse in nursing mothers. The coalition of these tactile, muscular, and organic sensibilities, is the pleasure of love by itself, or as it might be felt between two living sentient creatures, in no other way the givers or receivers of benefits. Nor does this exhaust the circle. The eye, and the ear, and even the smell, may be also included. The visible aspects of living beings are often highly agreeable from the first, and become so to a farther extent by association with the tactile and organic pleasures. Similarly, the ear may be charmed with the sounds emitted by another human being or animal, and may also form associations with the still more potent pleasures above named. Once more, the odour of one animal may be intrinsically sweet to another animal; while here too, associations may be added.

The pleasure of Tender feeling must therefore be pronounced to have an independent standing in the sentient framework, although susceptible of being analysed into the primary pleasures of the senses, together with the influence of association. All the affections derive the chief part of their strength from this complex source. For, although the acts of fondling and caressing are not universally practised between every two persons that have a mutual affection, or are so only in the very limited form of the shake of the hand, yet there is an echo of these, and a stimulus to the organic accompaniments, in the sight of each other, in the sounds of the voice, and in the more intellectual forms of indicating attachment. It can be proved that the two higher senses enter deeply into the tender emotion, (as they do into the Beautiful). The well-known Dr. Kitto, who was stone-deaf, in describing his experience, states that, as regarded his pleasures, the loss that affected him most was his inability to hear the voices of his children. It is evident that the same remark, as to the mutilation of an organ of tender feeling, is applicable to the blind. The pathos of the lines in Paradise Lost contains this implication.—B.