These Limitations do not impair the Primary Distinctions of Morality, The Primary Distinctions of Morality never effaced from the Human LECTURES ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE HUMAN MIND. LECTURE LIII. 1. IMMEDIATE EMOTIONS, WHICH DO NOT NECESSARILY INVOLVE ANY MORAL FEELING, CONTINUED.-II. WONDER AT WHAT IS NEW AND STRANGE-UNEASY LANGUOR WHEN THE SAME UNVARIED FEELINGS HAVE LONG CONTINUED.-III. ON BEAUTY AND ITS REVERSE. In my last Lecture, gentlemen, I entered on the consideration of our Emotions; and after stating the small number of elementary feelings to which they seem to admit of being reduced, and the reasons which led me to prefer the consideration of them in the complex state in which they usually exist, I proceeded to arrange these complex varieties of them, in three divisions, according to the relation which they bear to time, as immediate, retrospective, prospective. There are certain emotions which arise or continue in our mind, without referring to any particular object or time, such as cheerfulness or melancholy; or which regard their objects simply as existing, without involving, necessarily, any notion of time whatever, such as wonder, or our feelings of beauty or sublimity;-these I denominate immediate. There are certain others which regard their objects as past, and which cannot exist without this notion of the past, such as remorse, or revenge, or gratitude; these I denominate retrospective emotions. There are certain others, which regard their objects as future, such as the whole tribe of our desires;-these I denominate prospective emotions. It was to the first of these divisions, of course, that I proceeded in the first place; and since man, in the most important light in which we can consider him, is a social being, united by his emotions with whatever he can love or pity, or respect or adore, these and other moral emotions seemed to form a very proper subdivision of this particular order, as distinct from the emotions of the same order in which no moral feeling is involved. The immediate emotions, in which no moral feeling is involved, and which admit, therefore, of being arranged apart, we found to be the following— cheerfulness, melancholy, our wonder at what is new or unexpected, and that emotion of languid uneasiness, which arises from the long continuance of the same objects, or of objects so nearly similar, as scarcely to afford the refreshment of variety,-our feeling of beauty, and the emotion opposite to that VOL. II. 2 of beauty, the emotion excited by objects which we term sublime, and the emotion almost opposite to this, excited by objects which we term ludicrous. I proceeded, accordingly, to consider these in their order; and in my last Lecture, offered some remarks on the first two in the series-cheerfulness and melancholy, that are obviously mere forms of two of the elementary feelings mentioned by me. I now then proceed to the consideration of the next in our arrangement-our feeling of wonder at what is new and strange, and of uneasy languor, when the same unvaried feelings have long continued. Long before we are capable of philosophizing on the different states of our mind, in different circumstances, or even of preserving any distinct memory of these states, for subsequent speculations on their nature, we have already become familiar with many of the most important successions of events in that part of the physical universe, with which we are immediately connected, so that it is impossible for us to form any conjecture which can be said to approach to certainty, as to the positive nature of our primary feelings, when these successions of events were first observed by us. It seems most probable, however, that the feeling of wonder, which now attends any striking event that is unexpected by us, would not arise in the infant mind, on the occurrence of events, all of which might be regarded as equally new to it; since wonder implies not the mere feeling of novelty, but the knowledge of some other circumstances which were expected to occur, and is therefore, I conceive, inconsistent with absolute ignorance. At present, with the experience which we have acquired of the order of physical changes, the situation of the mind is very different, on the occurrence of any seeming irregularity. The phenomena of nature are conceived by us, not as separate events, but as uniformly consequent in certain series. We, therefore, do not only see the present, but seeing the present, we expect the future. When the circumstances, which we observe in any case, are very similar to the circumstances formerly observed by us, we anticipate the future with confidence,-when the circumstances are considered different, but have many strong similarities to the past, we make the same anticipation, but not with confidence, and if the event should prove to be different from the event anticipated by us, we treasure it up, for regulating our future anticipations in similar circumstances; but we do this without any emotion of astonishment at the new event itself. It is when we have anticipated with confidence, and our anticipation has been disappointed by some unexpected result, that the astonishment arises, and arises always with greater or less vividness of feeling, according to the strength of that belief, which the expectation involved. When new and striking objects occur, therefore, in any of the physical trains of events, or when familiar objects occur to us, in situations in which we are far from expecting to find them, a certain emotion arises, to which we give the name of astonishment, or surprise, or wonder, but which, whatever the name may be, is truly the same state of mind,—at least, as an emotion, the same;—though different names may be given, with distinctive propriety, to this one emotion,-when combined or not combined with a process of rapid intellectual inquiry, or with other feelings of the same class. When the emotion arises simply, for instance, it may be termed, and is more commonly termed, surprise ;-when the surprise thus excited by the unexpected occurrence, leads us to dwell upon the object which excited it, and to consider, in our mind, what the circumstances may have been, which |