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CHAPTER IV. - DYNAMICS OF THE FEELINGS.

Lesson 80 - 1. Offices of the several classes of feeling - p.355

1. WE have spoken of the three classes of feelings; the physical, the intellectual, and the spiritual. We wish now to see them more collectively in their relations to each other in the formation of character and the control of action. The first class spring immediately from physical conditions, and, including incidental occasions of pleasure, have primary reference to physical well-being. At points they transcend this object. Taste, touch, smell, are means of simple, intellectual distinctions; yet, it remains true, that the senses which are the avenues of feeling, the appetites, the sensations indicating special physical conditions, all have primary reference to health, to guiding action in nourishing and maintaining the vigor of the body. Even here, it can hardly be said, that "All pleasure arises from the free play of our faculties and capacities; and all pain from their compulsory repression, or compulsory activity." Much less is this generalization of Hamilton's applicable to the remaining classes of emotion.

It is the unhealthy and the healthy action, the unwholesome repression and the wholesome repression, that give pain and pleasure respectively, if not at once, as an ultimate consequence. Pain enters frequently to arrest action, and not as the consequence of arrested action. Mere activity, voluntary though it may be, does not necessarily give the conditions of enjoyment; these must depend on its relations to health. Neither does repressed exertion, involuntary