Related to Henry Maudsley, The Physiology and Pathology of the Mind. 1867.
Description:

Chapter VI: ‘The Emotions’

‘As long as the ideas or mental states are not adequately organized in correspondence with the individual’s external relations, more or less feeling will attend their excitation; they will, in fact, be more or less emotional. When the equilibrium between the subjective and objective is duly established, there is no passion, and there is but little emotion.’ (129)

‘It has been sufficiently evident, up to the present point, that the condition of the nervous centres is of the greatest consequence in respect of the formation of the so-called mental faculties, and the manifestation of their functions; it will now be seen that this condition is of still more manifest consequence in regard to the phenomena of the emotions.’ (129)

‘different persons are very differently affected by one and the same object’ (130)

‘So much is this the case that we are in the constant habit of distinguishing men be the difference of their emotional disposition, or of the temper of their minds’ (e.g. ‘courageous’, ‘irritable’, etc) (130)

'One of the earliest symptoms of an oncoming insanity, and one that is almost universally present as the expression of a commencing deterioration, howsoever caused, of the nervous centres, is an emotional disturbance, upon which follows more or less perversion of judgement. ‘It is feeling, or the affective life, that reveals the deep essential nature of the man.’ (130)

‘As the organic germ does, under circumstances favourable to its inherent developmental impulse, incorporate matter from without, exhibiting its gratification, so to speak, by its growth, and, under unfavourable conditions, does not assimilate, but manifests its suffering or passion by its decay; so likewise does the ganglionic nerve-cell of the hemispheres testify by a pleasant emotion to the furtherance of its development, and declares in a painful feeling of discomfort the restriction or injury which it suffers from an unfavourable stimulus .’ (130)

‘It is necessary to bear in mind that a stimulus, which in moderation gives rise to a pleasant idea or rather emotion, will, when too prolonged or too powerful, produce discomfort or pain, and consequent efforts to escape from it. There is then a desire to shun the stimulus, like as one altogether noxious is shunned; the desire becoming the motive or the spring of action. The impulse in such a case is described as desire, because there is consciousness of it; but it is without a doubt the equivalent in a higher organic element of that effort which the lowest animal organism exhibits, without consciousness, in getting away from an injurious stimulus. In both cases there is, in truth, the manifestation of the so-called self-conservative impulse which is immanent in all living organic elements – an impulse or instinct, which, whatever deeper facts or intimate composition it connotes, is the essential condition of its existence as organic element.’ (131)

‘There is no difference [...] between appetite and desire, except in so far as the latter implies consciousness; desire is self-conscious appetite.’ (131)

‘there is an exact correspondence with that attraction, impulse, or striving or organic element toward a favourable stimulus manifested throughout nature, and the necessary correlate of which is a repulsion of what is unfavourable. Because the affinity is exhibited in vital structure, we are prone, when observing it, to transfer our own states of consciousness to the organic element, and, therefore, to represent it on all occasions as striving, by means of a self-conservative impulse or instinct, for the stimulus favourable to its growth.’ (131-132)

‘The striving after a pleasing impression, or the effort to avoid a painful one, is at bottom a physical consequence of the nature of the ganglionic cell in its relation to a certain stimulus; and the reaction or desire becomes the motive of a general action on the part of the individual for the purpose of satisfying a want, or of shunning an ill.’ (132)

‘When the force of a stimulus is exactly adapted to the necessities of the organic element, then are the circumstances most favourable to the development of the latter; and a steady growth of it fails not to testify to the complete harmony of the relations. Or, adopting the language proper in such case to the highest relations of man, there is equilibrium between the subjective and the objective, and no passion: there is neither painful feeling with consequent desire to avoid suffering, nor is there a feeling of insufficient satisfaction with consequent desire to increase or continue an enjoyment; but a steady assimilation, promoting the evolution of idea, goes favourably on: intellectual development is then most favoured.’ (133-134)

‘Conception and desire do, therefore, stand in a sort of opposition to one another, although in every mental act they co-exist in greater or less relative degree; in every conception there is, or has once been, as previously said, some feeling; and again, every distinct desire there is a conception of something desired.’ (134)

‘May we not then justly affirm, as we clearly perceive, that the intellectual life does not supply the motive, or impulse, to action; that the understanding, or reason, is not commonly the cause of our outward actions, but that desires are?’ (134)

‘In fact, the power of the understanding is inhibitory, and is exhibited rather in the hindrance of passion-prompted action, and in the guidance of our impulses, than in the instigation of conduct’... (134)

‘As there are two elements which go to the production of an emotion – namely, the organic element and the external stimulus – it is plain that the character of the emotional result will not be determined only by the nature of the stimulus, but will depend greatly also upon the condition of the organic element. The equilibrium between the individual and his surroundings may, in fact, be disturbed by a subjective modification, or an internal commotion, as well as by an unwonted impression from without.’ (134-135)

‘When some bodily derangement has affected the condition of the cells of the cerebral ganglia, either directly or by a reflex or sympathetic action, then an idea arising is accompanied with certain emotional qualities, though it is an idea which, in health, is commonly indifferent; just as when a morbid state of an organ of sense, or of its sensory ganglion, renders painful an impression which in health would be indifferent or even agreeable.’ (135)

‘It plainly amounts to the same thing, whether an excessive stimulus acts upon the nervous element when in a stable and healthy state, and produces suffering; or whether a natural stimulus acts upon it when in an enfeebled or unstable condition, and similarly gives rise to suffering: in both cases, there is, physically speaking, a disturbance of the equilibrium of the nervous element, or a resolution of it into lower but more stable compounds; or, psychologically speaking, there is, in both cases, an idea excited which is attended with painful emotional qualities – an idea unfavourable to individual expansion.’ (135)

‘The greater the disturbance of nervous element, however produced, the more unstable is its state; and an instability of nervous element, implying, as it does, a susceptibility to rapid molecular or chemical retrograde metamorphosis, furnishes the most favourable conditions for the production of emotion, passion, or commotion, as the term was of old. It is easy to perceive, then, how it is that great emotion is exceedingly exhausting – for the same reason, in fact, that repeated electrical discharges by the gymnotus or torpedo produce exhaustion; it is easy to perceive, also, that whatever cause, moral or physical, works an exhausting or depressing effect upon an individual, inclines him to become emotional.’ (135-136)

‘It is, in reality, the specific character of the idea which determines the specific character of the emotion; and accordingly emotions are as many and as various as ideas.’ (136)

‘As there are subjective sensations, so also are there subjective emotional states.’ (137)

‘The hemispherical spheres are confessedly not sensitive to pain; still they have a sensibility of their own to ideas, and the sensibility which thus declares the manner of their affection is what we call emotional. And as there may be a hyperæsthesia or an anæsthesia of sense, so also there may be a hyperæsthesia or an anæsthesia of ideas. Certainly there do not appear to be satisfactory grounds either in psychology or physiology for supposing the nervous centres of emotion to be distinct from those of idea.’ (137)

‘As we justly speak of the tone of the spinal cord, by the variations of which its reactions are so much affected, so we may fairly also speak of a psychical tone, the tone of the supreme nervous centres, the variations of which so greatly affect the character of the mental states that supervene. And as it appeared when treating of the spinal cord that, apart from its original nature and accidental causes of disturbance, the tone of it, was determined by the totality of impressions made upon it, and of motor reactions thereto, which had been organized in its constitution as faculties; so with regard to the supreme centres of our mental life, from the residua of past thoughts, feelings, and actions, which have been organized as mental faculties, there results a certain psychical tone in each individual.’ (137)

‘This is the basis of the individual’s conception of the ego’...which ‘undergoes gradual change of the individual’s relations as life proceeds.’ (137)

‘It is most necessary clearly to realize how much, not the cerebral centres only, but the whole system of bodily nerves, are concerned in the phenomena of the emotional life.’ (139)

‘It has now been sufficiently demonstrated, by observation and experiment, that the cerebro-spinal system does exercise an influence over the ganglia immediately concerned in the phenomena of the organic life; and it is quite in accordance with physiological observation, therefore, to admit that the commotion in the nervous element of the supreme centres, which an emotion implies, will affect the nervous centres of the organic life, and through them the organic movements, or the more intimate processes of nutrition.’ (139)

‘When we put ourselves in the attitude that any passion naturally occasions, it is most certain that we acquire in some degree that passion. In fact, as we complete our intellectual activity by the participation of the sensory centres, thereby rendering our abstract ideas definite through a sensory representation of them, so in our emotional life any particular passion is rendered stronger and more distinct by the existence of those bodily states which is naturally produces, and which in turn, when otherwise produced, tend to engender it.’ (140)

The ancients, and common people today, often locate(d) the passions ‘in the organs of the organic life’ (140-141)

‘But although there was the just acknowledgement of a truth in this view, it was only part of a truth; for, in the first place, not the organs of the organic life only, but those also of the animal life, are concerned in the expression and production of passion; and in the second place, the feeling of the passion unquestionably takes place in the brain. It is the display of it organic sympathies. Consequently, it is found that, as the effect of the depressing passion is felt by the victim of a local idiosyncrasy in his weak organ, so inversely the effect of a weak or diseased organ is felt in the brain by an irritability or disposition to passion, a disturbance of the psychical tone. The phenomena of insanity will furnish the best illustrations of this sympathetic interaction.’ (141)

On the difference between passions and emotions:

‘It may be thought, perhaps, that it would not be amiss if something were now said of the difference between passion and emotion, inasmuch as the terms have hitherto been used almost indifferently. This, however, is scarcely necessary in dealing only with their general nature, which is fundamentally the same; every so-called emotion, when carried to a certain pitch, becomes a veritable passion. If it were thought well to distinguish them in a special analysis of the particular emotions, as it doubtless would be, the ground for distinction would be in the egoistic or altruistic character of them – names by which Comte distinguishes respectively those feelings which have entire reference to self and those which have entire reference to the good of others. Spinoza, whose admirable account of the passions has never yet been surpassed, and certainly will not easily be surpassed, only recognizes three primitive passions, on the basis of which all others are founded – joy, sorrow, and desire.’ (141)

Related to Samuel Alexander, Space, Time, and Deity (II Vols.). 1920.
Description:

'The metaphysical notion of a reality which is the whole world in its endeavour towards a new and higher empirical  quality than the highest we know is verified by the religious sentiment itself. Various emotions enter into the full constitution of the religious sentiment — fear, admiration, self-abasement — but its distinctive constituent is the feeling of our going out towards something not ourselves and greater and higher than ourselves, with which we are in communion; a feeling whose object is not that of any oFthese subsidiary or suggesting emotions, nor of any combination of them. Like the other sentiments, it is fed from many sources, but it gathers around some distinctive constituent as its primary nucleus. The nucleus of the sentiment of love is the tender emotion, around which gather in a system which is dominated by that emotion all manner of other emotions — fear for the safety of what is loved, anger against those who injure it, joy in its success, depression at its misfortunes. Even in the aesthetic, moral, and logical sentiments there is a dominating and distinctive passion — the passion for production, the passion of sociality, and the passion of curiosity. Without this distinctive element, a sentiment would be a mere composite without its peculiar flavour.

Moreover, it is this distinctive religious appetite, comparable to the appetite for food or drink, which though it does not make its object discovers it. Here too the religious sentiment is in line with the other emotional tendencies. We do not first learn to know the objects to which we respond, but in responding to objects we discover the properties which they possess.' (373-374)

Related to W.B. Carpenter, Principles of Mental Physiology, 6 eds. (New York and London, 1874-1888).
Description:

From 1874 edition:

Chapter VII. Of the Emotions

‘Although, as we have seen, there are various forms of Emotional sensibility which are directly called into activity by Sense-perceptions, yet those Emotional states of Mind which directly or indirectly determine a great part of our conduct, belong to the level of the Ideational consciousness; being, in fact, the result of the attachment of the feelings of pleasure and pain, and of other forms of emotional sensibility, to certain classes of ideas. Thus the Cerebrum and the Sensorium would seem jointly concerned in their production; for whilst the Cerebral hemispheres furnish the ideational part of the material, the Sensory ganglia not only give us the consciousness of their result, but invest that result with the peculiar feeling which renders it capable of actively influencing our conduct as a motive power.’ (316)

‘the association of any kind of emotional sensibility of which pleasure and pain afford the simplest type, with any idea, or class of ideas, gives to it an Emotional character; so that emotional states are not by any means limited within the categories under which Psychologists have attempted to range them, – these being, for the most part, generic terms, which comprehend certain groups of ideas bearing more or less similarity to each other, but not by any means including all possible combinations.’ (318)

‘It may also be remarked, in this place, that that the impossibility of classing all the Emotional states of mind under a limited number of categories constitutes a most serious and fundamental objection to any system which professes to mark-out in the Cerebrum distinct seats for the animal propensities, moral feelings, &c.’ (318)

‘By those who regard the Propensities, Moral Feelings, &c., as simple states of mind, it is usually said that their indulgence or exercise is attended with pleasure, and the restraint of them with pain. But, if the view here taken to be correct, is the very co-existence of pleasurable or painful feelings with the idea of a given object, that causes desire or aversion as regards that object; since the mind instinctively pursues what is pleasurable, and avoids what is painful. And thus, according to the readiness with which these different classes of Ideas are excited in different minds (partly depending upon original constitution, and partly upon the habitual direction of the thoughts), and to the respective degrees in which they respectively call-forth the different kinds of Emotional sensibility(as to which there is obviously an inherent difference amongst individuals, analogous to that which exists with regard to the feelings of pleasure or pain excited by external sensations, – sights, sounds, tastes, odours, or contacts), will be the tendency of the mind to entertain them, the frequency with which they will present themselves before the mental view, and the influence they will exert in the determination of our conduct.’ (318-319)

‘All these facts point, therefore, to the conclusion, that whether the elementary states of Emotional sensibility associate themselves with Sensations, with Perceptions, or with Ideas, they are simple modes of consciousness, the organic seat of which must be in the Sensorial centres; and this corresponds well with the character of the purely Emotional movements which, as we have seen, are closely allied to the Sensori-motor in the directness with which they respond to stimuli that excite them.’ (320-321)

‘That the Emotional and Volitional movements differ as to their primal sources, is obvious, not merely from the fact that they are frequently in antagonism with each other, – the Will endeavouring to restrain the Emotional impulse, and either succeeding in doing so, or being vanquished by the superior force of the latter, – but also from the curious fact which Pathological observation has brought to light, that muscles which will still act in obedience to emotional impulses, may be paralysed to volitional, and vice versa.’ (321)

‘The emotions are concerned in Man, however, in many actions, which are in themselves strictly voluntary. Unless they be so strongly excited as to get the better of the Will, they do not operate downwards upon the Automatic centres, but upwards upon the Cerebral; supplying the motives by which the course of thought and of action is habitually determined.’ (322)

'just as the man who commits murder in a state of drunken frenzy is responsible for his irresponsibility, so is the suicide or the murderess, in so far as she has habitually neglected to control the wayward feelings whose strong excitement has impelled her to the commission of her crime. It not unfrequently occurs, moreover, that a delusion of the intellect (constituting what is commonly known as Monomania) has had its source in a disordered state of the feelings, which have represented every occurrence in a wrongful light to the mind of the individual. All such conditions are of extreme interest, when compared with those which are met-with amongst Idiots, and in animals enjoying a much lower degree of intelligence: for the result is much the same in whatever way the balance between the feelings and the rational will (which is so beautifully adjusted in the well-ordered mind of Man) is disturbed; whether by a diminution of the Volitional control, or by an undue exaltation of the Emotions and Passions.’ (323-324)

‘This double mode of action of the Emotions – downwards through the nerve-trunks upon the Muscular apparatus, and also upon many of the Organic functions, – and upwards upon those Cerebral actions which give rise to the higher states of Mental consciousness, – affords a satisfactory explanation of a fact which is practically familiar to most observers of Human nature; namely, that violent excitement of the Feelings most speedily subsides, when these unrestrainedly expend themselves (so to speak) in their natural expressions.’ (324)

'it is well known that the depressing emotions are often worked-off by a fit of crying and sobbing; and the “relief of tears” seems manifestly due to the expenditure of the pent-up nerve-force, in the production of an increased secretion. It is noticed in this case, too, that the absence of any such external manifestations of the depressing emotions, gives them much greater influence upon the course of thought, and upon the bodily state of the individual. Those who really “die of grief”, are not those who are loud and vehement in their lamentations, for their sorrow is commonly transient, however vehement and sincere while it lasts; but there are those who have either designedly repressed any such manifestations, or who have experienced no tendency to their display; and their deep-seated sorrow seems to exert the same kind of anti-vital influence upon Organic functions, that is exercised more violently by “shock”; producing their entire cessation without any structural lesion.’ (p. 326)

‘The influence of Emotional excitement may operate on the Muscles, however, not only in giving-rise to the movements which it directly calls forth, but also in affecting the power of the Will over the muscular system, by intensifying or weakening its action. For there can be no doubt that, under the strong influence of one class of feelings, the Will can effect results such as the individual would scarcely even attempt in his calmer moments; whilst the influence of another class of feelings is exercised in precisely the opposite direction, weakening or even paralysing the force which was previously in full activity.’ (327)

[NB: these notes were initially added to the description of Carpenter's Principles by Asa Jannson]

Related to William Kingdon Clifford, Lectures and Essays (2 Vols.). London, 1879.
Description:

'Cosmic Emotion' (Vol. II), pp. 253-285:

 

'By a cosmic emotion - the phrase is Mr. Henry Sidgwick's - I mean an emotion which is felt in regard to the universe or sum of things, viewed as a cosmos or order. There are two kinds of cosmic emotion one having  reference to the Macrocosm or universe surrounding and containing us, the other relating to the Microcosm or universe of our own souls. When we try to put together the most general conceptions that we can form about the great aggregate of events that are always going on, to strike a sort of balance among the feelings which these events produce in us, and to add to these the feeling of vastness associated with an attempt to represent the whole of existence, then we experience a cosmic emotion of the first kind... If, on the other hand, we consider the totality of our own actions and of the feelings that go with them or spring out of them, if we frame the highest possible generalization to express the character of those which we call good, and if we contemplate this with the feeling of vastness which belongs to that which concerns all things that all men do, we shall experience a cosmic emotion of the second kind.' (253-254)

 

'The character of the emotion with which men contemplate the world, the temper in which they stand in the presence of the immensities and the eternities, must depend first of all on what they think the world is. The theory of the universe, the view of things, prevalent at any time and place, will rouse appropriate feelings in those who contemplate it; not the same in all, for temperament varies with the individual, and the same facts stir differently different souls, yet so that, on the whole, the character of cosmic emotion depends on the nature of cosmic ideas.

When, therefore, the inevitable progress of knowledge has changed the prevalent cosmic ideas, so that the world as we know it is not the world which our fathers knew, the oldest cosmic emotions are no longer found to fit.' (254-255)

 

'We always know a little more than our imaginations have thoroughly pictured. To some minds there is hope and renewing of youth in the sense that the last word is not yet spoken, that greater mysteries yet lie behind the veil... But others see in the clearer and wider vision that approaches them the end of all beauty and joy in the earth; because their old feelings are not suited to the new learning, they think that learning can stir no feelings at all.' (255-256)

 

'Whatever conception... we can form of the external cosmos must be regarded as only provisional and not final, as waiting revision when we shall have pushed the bounds of our knowledge further away into time and space. It must always, therefore, have a character of incompleteness about it, a want, a stretching out for something better to come, the expectation of a further lesson from the universal teacher, Experience...

But again, this incompleteness does not belong to our conception of the external cosmos alone, but to that of the internal cosmos also. Human nature is fluent, it is constantly though slowly changing, and the universe of human action is changing also. Whatever general conception we may form of good actions and bad ones, we must regard it as quite valid only for ourselves ; the next generation will have a slightly modified form of it, but not the same thing. The Kantian universality is no longer possible. No maxim can be valid at all times and places for all rational beings ; a maxim valid for us can only be valid for such portions of the human race as are practically identical with ourselves.' (269-270)

 

'So far our cosmic conception is external. Starting with organic action, as that which has affected the evolution of life and all the works of life, we have found it to have the character of freedom, or action from within, and in the case of the social organism we have seen that freedom is the organic action of society as such, which is what we call the Republic. The Republic is the visible embodiment and personification of freedom in its highest external type.

But the Republic is itself still further personified, in a way that leads us back with new light to the conception of the internal cosmos. The practice of band-work, or comradeship, the organic action of society, has so moulded the nature of man as to create in it two specially human faculties the conscience and the intellect... Conscience and reason form an inner core in the human mind, having an origin and a nature distinct from the merely animal passions and perceptions ; they constitute the soul or spirit of man, the universal part in every one of us. In these are bound up, embalmed and embodied, all the struggles and searchings of spirit of the countless generations which have made us what we are. Action which arises out of that inner core, which is prompted by conscience and guided by reason, is free in the highest sense of all; this at last is good in the ethical sense. And yet, when we act with this most perfect freedom, it may be said that it is not we that act, but Man that worketh in us.' (283-284)