Note 418 — Chapter XXV · [395]

Those feelings which Prof. Bain calls 'emotions of relativity,' excitement of novelty, wonder, rapture of freedom, sense of power, hardly survive any repetition of the experience. But as the text goes on to explain, and as Goethe as quoted by Prof. Höffding says, this is because "the soul is inwardly grown larger without knowing it, and can no longer be filled by that first sensation. The man thinks that he has lost, but really he has gained. What he has lost in rapture, he has gained in inward growth." "It is," as Prof. Höffding himself adds, in a beautiful figure of speech, "with our virgin feelings, as with the first breath drawn by the new-born child, in which the lung expands itself so that it can never be emptied to the same degree again. No later breath can feel just like that first one." On this whole subject of emotional blunting, compare Höffding's Psychologie, vi. E., and Bain's Emotions and Will, chapter iv. of the first part.