The Heart

At the point now reached we make the transition from one great part of Psychology to another — from what used to be called the Intellectual or Cognitive Powers to what used to be called the Active and Moral Powers. The distinction will be remembered, which was drawn in an earlier lecture, between knowing and doing. Knowledge and conduct have often been spoken of as between them exhausting human life; but, it was pointed out, there is a third kind of human consciousness in which these two meet — namely, feeling. And on this meeting depend great issues; because, on the one hand, it is knowledge which excites feeling, and, on the other hand, it is feeling which produces action. Feeling used to be reckoned among the active powers; but it differs

* The distinction between the Cognitive and Motive Powers goes back as far as Aristotle.

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widely not only from knowledge but from conduct.’

There will be remembered also what was said, in the same lecture, about the two systems of nerves — the sensory, conveying messages from the outside world to the brain, and the motor, conveying messages from the brain to the external world. These two systems of nerves may be compared to a double set of telegraph-wires; but, in order to make the comparison adequate, you would require to have a telegraph-wire of a pattern never seen — a wire aware of the purport of the messages it is conveying and, therefore, swelling and glowing when conveying a message of joy and becoming solid and rigid when conveying a message of sorrow; though, strictly speaking, it is not the substance of the nerve itself that is thus affected, but the surrounding tissues, and that by forces coming in the opposite direction. When messages are being flashed along the wires of the nerves, not only

1 How vast are the fields of human experience covered by the Cognitive Powers will be realised if a remark of Bacon be recalled, that memory produces history, imagination poetry, and reason philosophy. But the scope of the Active Powers may be brought home to the intelligence if, in the same way, we connect with the heart religion, with the will jurisprudence, and with the conscience ethics.

is information supplied at head-quarters, but there is created along the course of the message, and especially in the brain, a tumult or excitement corresponding with the character of the message transmitted. Thus, suppose one were unfortunate enough to be the witness of a barbarous murder, not only would the nerve-wires convey to the brain the facts of the crime, but at the same moment there would arise within the frame a tumultuous sense of horror and indignation, which, it is easy to perceive, would be something additional to mere knowledge. Or suppose an orator, in the presence of a multitude, is characterizing a tyrannical government; he conveys, by the motions of his lungs and throat and by the use of language, certain details of information; but the effect which he produces is not entirely due to this: it is by the passion visible in his eyes and by the pathos trembling in his voice that the multitude is moved; and here again, it will be perceived, there is something additional to the mere facts.

It is, however, when the effects of the same information on the hearts of different persons are considered that the difference between knowing and feeling is most manifest. Suppose, for instance, that in the morning papers there were announced the sudden death of a well-known man in a foreign land: while the mere fact made known to every reader would be the same, the impression produced on the woman who thereby was made aware that she was a widow might be in violent contrast with that made on someone who had never had any intercourse with the deceased but knew himself to be the dead man’s heir; and there might be other readers for other reasons nearly as differently affected by the news.

This extra thing, which accompanies our knowing and willing, and which forms the third side of the triangle of our inner life, goes under many names: it is called feeling, emotion, affection, passion, sentiment — terms between which it is not very easy to discriminate — but the most comprehensive term is “the heart,” when this is used, in its popular sense and in such phrases as “head and heart,” as a general name for all feelings whatever, i

As there seems to be in the brain no organ which is the physiological substrate of feeling, mechanical philosophy finds great difficulty in including feeling at all in the cycle of causation; but the gigantic part played by feeling in the production of history, both personal and social, is one of the strong points of a spiritual philosophy. Compare the remarks on Subjective or Hedonic Selection in McDougall, “Physiological Psyphology,” pp. 157 ff.

Feelings have an almost infinite range and variety. They may consist of the gentlest wavelets, or they may toss the internal ocean into tempest. Some of them are easily identified by their bodily effects; for feeling, though properly belonging to the mind, overflows into the body and produces changes in its appearance. Thus, grief is associated with tears, amusement with laughter, happiness with smiles; horror is expressed by rigidity of the frame and dilatation of the eyes, contempt by the curling of the lip, and so on. The eye and the mouth especially have an almost infinite capacity for expressing shades of feeling. Yet many feelings reside more deeply in the mind, and betray their existence but little by bodily effects.

I am not sure that I have ever seen a complete list of all possible feelings; but many attempts have been made to classify the more important of them.

Thus, in a work by President McCosh, entitled ‘’The Motive Powers,” they have been divided into those relating to the past, those relating to the present, and those relating to the future. Feelings relating to the past are such as remorse and gratitude; feelings relating to the present are such as love and joy; and feelings relating to the future are such as hope and foreboding. This, however, is not a division of any great significance; and there are feelings which may be referred to any of these three classes. Terror, for example, may relate either to past, present, or future.

Another division of far more consequence is that into feelings of pleasure and of pain. This is a very old division, and it has played even too great a part in the thinking of the world on the subject, many taking for granted that it is exhaustive. It may be questioned, however, whether all feelings can be included in such a twofold division. There may be feelings, as Bain, for example, contends, which are neutral, causing neither pleasure nor pain. But undoubtedly most feelings can be classed under one or other of these categories; indeed, pleasure and pain themselves consist in the experience of certain feelings; and herein lies the importance of this division — that we delight to have pleasurable feelings and dislike to have painful ones. Hence, when we have had a pleasurable feeling once, we seek to repeat it, and, when we have once had a painful feeling, we try subsequently to avoid it, as well as the causes by which it has been occasioned. Many philosophers have not scrupled to teach that this is the key to the whole of human existence: what people are incessantly doing is, these say, seeking for pleasurable emotions and endeavouring to avoid painful ones. I do not believe this — at least not in this bald and exclusive form — but undoubtedly we put our finger here on one of the pulses of the machine.

There is a third division of feeling, to which I attach more importance still — into simple and elaborate. The simplest feelings of all may be called animal, and they are such as arise from the body — hunger and thirst, heat and cold, and the like. These belong to all human beings and reach back into the earliest childhood. Then, there are feelings a little higher, in which mind is a little more involved, such as pride, envy, anger. These also reach far back, a child being capable of manifesting anger at an extremely early age; so, it can exhibit pride and envy; in short, whatever feelings relate exclusively to self show themselves very early. A child is the centre of the world to itself, and it expects all the rest of the world to minister to it. As long as this expectation is fulfilled, it manifests gratification of various kinds, but, when it is disappointed, it can exhibit very strong feeling indeed. Beyond this, again, there is a higher stage; and to reach it a long step is required; this is the stage of sympathy. If childhood is self-centred, youth is distinguished by the outgoing of the heart towards others. At the transition from childhood to young manhood or maidenhood, there passes over human nature a change which has been compared to that which takes place in the Alps in the early year when, the breath of spring creeping up the peaks, the grasp of winter is relaxed on snowdrift and glacier, and, away down on the plains of Holland and Italy, the rivers go brimming to the sea, dififusing beauty and fruitfulness along their course. In youth it is as natural to give and communicate as it is at other seasons to grasp and retain; and this is the opportunity of escaping from selfishness and emerging into the life of sympathy and affection. This expansion of the heart may go on, till it embraces not only individuals but far wider circles, and grows into the passion of patriotism or the enthusiasm of humanity. Yet there is a still higher stage to be mentioned: those who have studied this subject most deeply usually place at the summit of the development of feeling three sentiments which do much, where they appear, to dignify humanity — the love of truth, the sense of beauty and the sentiment of duty.

These divisions will help to indicate the wide range of this subject, which includes such distinct and widely separate feelings as vanity and humility, rapture and melancholy, pity and jealousy, vengeance and contentment, scorn and patience, and many more.

It is probable that different persons are born with different capabilities of feeling, just as they come into the world with different intellectual capacities. We speak of certain persons as being thin-skinned or as having their nerves too near the surface; because by the slightest causes their feeUngs can be set in agitation. It is no rare thing to meet a man — though oftener perhaps it is a woman — who might be described as a bundle of nerves. Other persons are at the opposite extreme: they are difficult to move; jokes which convulse others with laughter cannot elicit from them a smile; and occurrences which throw others into transports leave them cool and composed. These differences characterize not only individuals, but whole races and nations. Thus, to the French or the Irish would be ascribed the peculiarity of being easily moved, and to the Dutchman or the Englishman the reverse. But, whatever differences may belong by nature to individuals or peoples, feeling, like the other powers of the mind, is to a large extent a matter of training. It is acknowledged by all that the intellect must be trained: whatever may be its native capacity, it cannot dispense with the discipline of the school or the culture derivable from reading. And, in the same way, many of the finest feelings slumber, unless they be called forth by the appropriate education. In many, for example, the sense of beauty slumbers: when they stand in presence of the fairest landscapes, they are unmoved; when they listen to classical music, they are only ennuyed; and they have no desire to see the masterpieces of art. As, however, such limitations denote not only the narrowing of the horizon but the absence of access to some of the purest and most satisfying pleasures of life, it is worthy of inquiry in what ways the culture and discipline of the feelings can be carried out.

First: the growth of feeling ought to proceed pari passu with the growth of the other two sides of the mind — namely, thought and will. Only in this way can a complete and well-balanced manhood be obtained. If feeling be allowed to develop without the guidance of thought or the control of will, a character weak and hysterical will be the result. There are people in whom feeling has been allowed to become completely preponderant. Such a character was, for example, the late Walter Savage Land or, whose life consisted of a series of explosions of temper and a chronic display of whim and caprice. Persons of this composition are a source of never-ceasing ierplexity and solicitude to those whose lot it is to live with them, and their career may end in the lunatic asylum. They have lost control of themselves, and the motives suggested by reason have not power to stop them.^ Not infrequently, indeed, their own eyes are open all the time; so that they see with perfect clearness the precipice to which they are posting; yet, when the opportunity of renewing the feeling arises, they are unable to resist. In such over-mastering feeling there resides a certain splendour or magnificence, which is deceptive. It gives the person experiencing it a sense of power and superiority: he thinks he is at the summit of enjoyment, in the region inhabited by the geniuses and the exceptional spirits of humanity; and ordinary existence seems to lie far beneath his feet. This, however, is only illusion: there is no real strength where

“A person, no matter how highly educated otherwise, is a neural monster if he has not inhibition.” Fkaser Harris, “Nerves “.

thought, conscience and will are excluded. Nevertheless, it can deceive others as well as the victim himself; for persons in whom feeling is predominant are capable of exhibiting excessive affection, and they are profuse in the external demonstrations of the same. By these the unwary are taken-in; for they do not know that what their professed lovers are enjoying is not the person loved, but the luxury of their own emotion. Eternal constancy is sworn; but the enjoyment would be quite the same whoever were the object of their passion. True love, on the contrary, may be penurious in expression; it strikes inwards more than outwards; it smoulders at the centre rather than sparkles on the surface; it is controlled by modesty and good sense; but it can be relied upon in the time of need, and it lasts forever.

A second rule is, that the higher feeling is to be preferred to the lower. It has been already proved that there is a scale of feelings in worth and dignity. The lowest are those directly connected with the body, such as the satisfaction of hunger and thirst, and the highest are sentiments like the love of truth, the love of beauty, the love of duty. In the annals of academic life there are many stories of students who have lived for years on the humblest fare, as far as the appetites of the body are concerned, in order that they might gratify the passion for knowledge; and the rising of the soul with which such tales are listened to is an eloquent testimony to the superiority of the latter feeling. If, on the contrary, there be circles in which the highest enjoyment is that supplied by food and wine, while the taste for letters and art is unknown, such society, however lavish its wealth, would be looked down upon by all good judges as degraded. In like manner, the feelings which have self for their centre require, as a rule, repression, while those into which the element of sympathy with others enters are to be developed. Among the selfish feelings are pride, envy, jealousy and the like; and it requires no argument to prove that these need to be severely checked; or that pity, benevolence, public spirit, and other feelings into which regard for others enters are generally far too weak and require careful cultivation.^ From this posi-

Nietzsche, no doubt, and his followers make themselves conspicuous by turning the moral world upside down and setting not only the magnificence and magnanimity of the Greek, but even the violence and ferocity of the savage, above the humility and the holiness of the Christian. But surely Christian Apologetic has an easy task when it has totion it is easy to see how much truth or falsehood is contained in the statement, often made by the cynical, that every human being follows the feeling, whatever it be, that gives to himself most pleasure and avoids that which gives him pain. In a sense this may be true; but, if a man takes more pleasure in doing what he believes to be for the welfare of others than in what benefits himself, he must have arrived at this height of attainment by a long course of victory over himself; and it is idle to place him and the selfish man, who obeys his own first impulse, on a par by the argument that each

prove that sympathy is better than selfishness, and gentleness more to be admired than arrogance. There may be circumstances in European civilisation at the present time which impart a certain usefulness to the words of one who preaches at the pitch of his voice that the conclusions reached by his own intellect are more valuable than those of all the intellects that have ever peopled the earth before him, just as, in the wake of the Puritan Revolution, Hobbes obtained a hearing for the very similar doctrines of his *’ Leviathan “; but every thinker knows that, if the thoughts of all who have preceded him have been folly and nonsense, his own are destined beforehand to the same futility; for he is only human. No doubt to err is human; but it is far less likely that the whole human race, striving throughout the ages to know and to do the right, has altogether missed the way than that one thinker and his disciples have formed an overweening estimate of his originality.

obeys his own strongest bias. The highest illustration of this triumph of the higher over the lower is seen in the martyr, who has so far subdued all the lower desires as to be able to sacrifice life itself in the interests of an ideal end. The last rule may be given in the words of Scripture: “Set your afifection on things above, not on things on the earth “. Feelings are good or bad according to the objects on which they rest. For example, one man’s heart is set on wealth; his whole being is absorbed in pursuing it; and he grudges no time or pains in compassing his end. Another man has exactly the same devotion to the public good and exhausts his powers on this object in exactly the same way. But we do not place these two men on the same level. One young man has a friend for whom he cherishes an admiration only short of idolatry; and, his friend being noble and pure, the connexion has a refining influence; another has the same devotion to one who is worthless and whose example leads astray; but we do not place these two on the same level. Now, there are two competitors for our feelings, characterized by St. Paul as “things above” and “things on the earth “; the feelings which go out in these two directions may be the same; but they become different on account of the objects to which they are directed. Religion may be said to consist in the putting forth on the things above of the same feelings which we naturally put forth on the things that are on the earth. For instance, all men dread fire, but some men dread the fire that shall never be quenched; all men desire happiness, but some men desire blessedness; all men love their fellow-creatures, but some men love the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost.

It is well known what place is given in Scripture to faith, hope and love. What are these? They are three feelings; and they are the three master-feelings — the tap-roots among the innumerable roots and rootlets of feeling in our nature. These tap-roots must be sunk somewhere; and the soil in which they are embedded will determine the character of the man. When they are rooted in Christ, the man is a Christian. There are few reflections more pathetic than that in our nature there may be lying possibilities unused and faculties undeveloped which might be copious sources of both happiness and usefulness. Perhaps, indeed, there may be in all possibilities which, in this life at least, are providentially prevented from developing naturally and fully; but it is sad when these possibilities remain unrealised through our own fault. No man can be a man in the fullest sense of the word if his nature be shut against the influence of the things that are above: in that case there are possibilities of expansion and excellence lying in him waste and barren; and these are the noblest possibilities of all. No woman can attain to perfect womanliness unless her heart has opened to the softening and refining influence of the love of Christ. We may miss many things in this world and yet not have lived in vain; but the secret and the glory of life are missed altogether if the gateways which admit the influence of the Eternal have never been opened.^

When the Age of Rationalism, the very name of which suggests that its characteristic was the

Strong, in his excellent work entitled “Christian Ethics,” draws attention to one great contrast between Ancient and Christian Ethics. This is, that, in Ancient Ethics, emotion was distrusted; reason, the intellectual faculty, being alone credited with the power of forming character. Hope, for example, was spoken of as an ebullition of enthusiasm, not unlike intoxication, which could only be good if reason held it steadily in hand. Christianity, on the contrary, trusts emotion; in fact, it makes the goodness which it aims at producing consist to a large extent in emotion — especially in the three emotions of faith, hope and love.

idolatry of reason, was reaching the stage of exhaustion, Schleiermacher startled the theological world with the thesis, that the essence of religion consists in feeling — the feeling of absolute dependence on the Infinite. In Christ, he taught, this had existed perfectly and permanently, but in other men it can be attained only through union with Him. Years before, however, the same doctrine had secured expression in the United States at the mouth of Jonathan Edwards, who, at the very outset of his great work on the Religious Affections, lays down and defends the proposition that ‘’ true religion, in great part, consists in holy affections “— that is, in feelings. And, at the same time in England, the Wesleys and the other apostles of the Evangelical Revival were bringing about, in the experience of tens of thousands, a crisis the commonest symptom of which was the transition from one state of feeling to another — from the deepest depression, due to conviction of sin, to ecstasy, caused by apprehending Christ as the soul’s wisdom and righteousness, sanctification and redemption. Since that time there has been no disposition anywhere to underestimate the place of feeling in religion, but rather perhaps a tendency to exaggerate it; although it may not seem easy to do the latter, when we recall St. Paul’s summing-up of the essence of Christianity in a long list of feelings: “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suSering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, self-control,” and especially when we recall our Lord’s own statement that the first of all the commandments is to love the Lord thy God with all the heart and with all the soul, with all the strength and with all the mind, and that the second is like unto it, to love one’s neighbour as oneself. It is an echo of this sentiment when the poet declares:

The heart’s aye
The part aye

That mak’s us richt or wrang.

There have been centuries in the history of Christianity, and there have been quarters in the Christian Church, in which a pagan suspicion of religious feeling has prevailed, good men recognising the influence of the Spirit of God on the saints far less in the modification of their feelings than in *’ enlightening their minds in the knowledge of Christ and renewing their wills “. Even at the present day many are suspicious of feeling when it assumes the form of a movement in the crowd or extends as a contagion from one community to another. But Christianity took its rise in the enthusiasm of multitudes on the Day of Pentecost, and it has lost something of its native genius if it does not know how to utilise and control popular ferments. The aesthetical may not be religious; but religion, when it is mature, produces the sesthetical. In nature the masculine and the feminine are always found together, and utility and beauty are united, as when fruits are not only wholesome for food but pleasant in odour and colour. While the expansion of the reason and the steeling of the will may be the substance of sanctification, feeling is its form; and it is principally in the development of the gracious qualities of the heart that we recognise that irresistible something which we designate the beauty of holiness.