THE SENSIBILITIES. PRELIMINARY TOPICS. CHAPTER 1 NATURE, DIFFICULTY, AND IMPORTANCE OF THIS Previous Analysis. — In entering upon the investiga tion of a new department of our science, it may be well to recur, for a moment, to the analysis and classification of the powers of the mind which has been already given in the introduction to the present volume. The faculties of the mind were divided in that analysis, it will be remembered, into three grand departments, the Intellect, the Sensibilities, and the Will; the first comprising the various powers of thinking and knowing, the second of feeling, the third of willing. The first of these main divisions has been already discussed in the preceding pages. Upon the second we now enter. Difference of the two Departments. This department of mental activity differs from the former, as feeling differs from thinking. The distinction is broad and obvious. No one can mistake it who knows any thing of his own mental operations. Every one knows the difference, though not every one may be able to explain it, or tell precisely in what it consists. But whether able to define our meaning or not, we are perfectly conscious that to think and to feel are dif ferent acts, and involve entirely different states of mind. The common language of life recognizes the distinction, alike that of the educated and of the uneducated, the peasant and the man of science. The literature of the world recog nizes it. Relation of the two. As regards the relation of the two departments to each other, the intellect properly precedes the sensibility. The latter implies the former, and depends upon it. There can be no feeling — I speak, of course, of mental feeling, and not of mere physical sensation without previous cognizance of some object, in view of which the feeling is awakened. Affection always implies an object of affection, desire, an object of desire; and the object is first apprehended by the intellect before the emotion is awakened in the mind.. When we love, we love something, when we desire, we desire something, when we fear, or hope, or hate, there is always some object, more or less clearly defined, that awakens these feelings, and in proportion to the clearness and vividness of the intellectual conception or perception of the object, will be the strength of the feeling. Strength of Feelings as related to Strength of Intellect.The range and power of the sensibilities, then, in other words, the mind's capacity of feeling, depends essentially upon the range and vigor of the intellectual powers. Within certain limits, the one varies as the other. The man of strong and vigorous mind is capable of stronger emotion than the man of dwarfed and puny intellect. Milton, Cromwell, Napoleon, Webster, surpassed other men, not more in clearness and strength of intellectual perception, than in energy of feeling. In this, indeed, lay, in no small degree, the secret of their superior power. In the most eloquent passages of the great orators of ancient or modern times, it is not so much the irresistible cogency and unrelenting grasp of the terrible logic, that holds our attention, and casts its spell over us, as it is the burning indignation that exposes the sophistries, and tears to shreds the fallacies of an oppo nent, and sweeps all argument and all opposition before it |