Imatges de pàgina
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It

tendency; yet with a conservative tendency of its own.
does not seem to be developed from joy, rather to be a definite
form of one of the changes to which impulses are subject,
pp. 468-471.-Anxiety a development of our later fears. As
we are apt to fear lest the end desired may not be accomplished,
-when the desire is sufficiently important,--so from this
fear interacting with hope, anxiety may be developed. Des-
pondency, disappointment, and despair probably differentiations
of sorrow, pp. 472-476.

Is despair of any service to desire? It evokes courage, energy and
resolution even in cowards, and these necessary in desperate
situations, pp. 491-495.-The suicidal impulse, which it evokes
in certain cases, shown to be instrumental to its end,—as
union in death, or escape from suffering, pp. 496-497.-The
study of our less important desires shows that they are not

That the specific emotions of desire have certain intimate relations
among themselves, so that a change which one undergoes
involves change in another, pp. 504-508.

THE

FOUNDATIONS OF CHARACTER

INTRODUCTION

I

WHOEVER will consider the treatises on the science of Mind that have appeared up to recent times, will be able to judge how much or how little they have accomplished toward the foundation of a science of Character. The processes of perception and thought, of feeling and will, have been detached from the forces of character at their base. We have what purports to be a science of these processes; while that which alone directs and organises them is left out of account as if it had no importance. Yet we find in the text-books a small and subordinate place allotted to the emotions which, rightly conceived, are among these forces; but too often, as William James complained in his time, they are treated in such a way as to deprive them of the living interest which they have in the drama and the novel.

If we are to have a complete science of the mind, this will include a science of character as the most important part of it; and if we are to make any approach to such a science, it would seem that we must begin by a study of the fundamental emotions and of the instincts connected with them. But we have to conceive of the problem as essentially dynamical. The emotions are forces, and we have to study them as such. Our analysis must not be preoccupied by their constituent feelings and sensations, and it is here that they

B

are little capable of scientific treatment, because these constituents are so elusive and variable,—but must be directed to show what are their main tendencies, what biological value they have at first, and what value for the higher ends of character afterwards. Once we grasp this problem clearly, the other problems of their varying sensations, the degree of bodily disturbance accompanying them, their description and classification, will fall into a proper and subordinate place.

As the study of the emotions should be directed in the first place to the discovery and analysis of their tendencies, so this seems to be the only way of advance to the more complicated problems of character; for we cannot attain to any clear conception of how the whole works before we understand how the parts work. The common problems of characterthe problems of the growth and decline of nations; the ennobling and degradation of individuals; the changes through which character passes from childhood to youth, from youth to manhood and old-age,—these are so complicated that they confuse the mind, and we abandon all attempt to solve them, except such as are popular and unscientific. We have then first to investigate the forces at the base of character, and the part they play in the general economy of the mind.

The solution of this problem presupposes that we can profitably study the emotions dynamically, and that for this purpose we can sufficiently isolate them from one another and from the character as a whole. It is well for us to understand some of the difficulties of this first and indispensable task. In a strict sense we can never isolate the emotions. Each is bound up with others. Each subsists and works in a mental environment in which it is liable to be interfered with by the rest. Nor do these forces keep themselves, like human beings in the social environment, always distinct. On the contrary, they frequently become blended together, and often what we feel is a confused emotion which we cannot identify.

In consequence of this confusion and interference, we are liable to attribute to one emotion tendencies that belong to

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