CHAPTER III.

THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF EMOTION.
The preceding chapter led up to the suggestion that Emotions are forms of Desire. In the interplay of the Self and the Not-Self arises individual consciousness, or life with its three aspects, viz., cognitions, desires and actions ; and Emotions belong to the department of the second. This suggestion will be expanded somewhat in the present chapter.
It should be noticed that there is a subtle, but radical difference between the oriental siowfof1' philosopher's view of the nature of mind— Emotion and that taken by the western western"1* Philos°Pher> especially since the time views. of Kant. Generally speaking, the
latter view divides mental functions into three kinds : (1) Intellect or Cognition, (2) Feeling or Emotion, and (3) Will or Volition and Desire ; it includes desire with if not exactly in volition ; it regards Emotions, such as anger, terror, love, etc., as distinct from desires, and as
22 SCIENCE OF THE EMOTIONS.
kinds rather than as consequences of the feelings of Pleasure and Pain ; and it holds the distinction between volition and action to be something very definite.
The oriental philosopher, on the other hand, appears to regard all these vrttayah (' ways of existing,' moods, functions, psychoses), which are usually called Emotions in western philosophy, as Desires. His classification of the phenomena of consciousness is into (I) Cognition— J n a na m ; (2) Desire— I c h c h h a ; and (3) Action— K r i y a «trat SIRlfcT, 5^fa» 3cT?f | " Man knows, desires, and endeavors," i.e., acts.1
It may seem awkward at first sight to say that
4 action ' is a mental function. In order The men- to compare the two views it is neces- action. sary to accept the western use of the
word ' mind J as covering the three fundamental aspects or modes of the self, as being,, in fact, equivalent to ' individualised conscious- ness. ' The exact significance and proper use to be severally assigned to the words ( mind ' and
1 This is the Nyaya phraseology. In the Sahkhya-Yoga prakasha or prakhya, sthiti, and k r i y a or p r a v r 1 1 i are the words used (e.g., throughout the Vyasa- Bhashya in Yoga) for, jnana,kriya and i c h c h h a respectively. In Indian systems of philosophy, it simply goes without saying that all three are possible only by means of a body, a material organism, gross or subtle, physical or superphysical.
THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF EMOTION. 23
1 consciousness ' are as yet matters of discussion. But using the word l mind ' generally as it is used in western psychology, the eastern psychologist substitutes ' action ' for 4 volition ' in the three- fold division, and ' desire ' for ' emotion.' To him thought is a further and complex development of cognition, emotion of desire, and industry of action; while volition he would regard either as the active ' sub-division of cognition or thought, or as the ' cognitive ' sub-division of action or occupation. When we say that action, i.e., physical action, is a mental function, we mean that the inner nature of action is essentially a function of consciousness, that the living physical body is something which is a part of consciousness, indeed, it may be said, is itself an expression of consciousness. Just as no western psychologist hesitates to say that cognition is unmistakably mental, though it is possible only by means of the sensory organs to begin with, and has for object always material things in the ultimate analysis ; just as to him desire is something mental, though possible only in a material body, and for material objects, also, in the ultimate analysis ; so to the Indian philosopher action too is mental, though using a material body to bring about material changes in the final analysis.
Briefly, then, the distinction between volition and action is not made in the East as it is made in the West. Prayatna, endeavor, is one of the attributes of the mind with the Naiyayika
24 SCIENCE OF THE EMOTIONS.
philosopher, as is volition with the occidental. But prayatna means more than volition : it is effort, not only in imagination, but in actual action. Those western psychologists who are inclined to take the view that volition is only the strongest desire, or the resultant of all desires at any particular moment, that it is desire pass- ing into action, come very close to the Indian view. *
It may be noted that the Indian three-fold
classification of the phenomena of
properf or consciousness as stated above takes no
Pleasure account of the ' Feelings of Pleasure
and Pain,' whereas the western
classification includes them, though vaguely. The
reason for this may partially appear from the
1 Schopenhauer uses the word ' Will ' in the sense of 'Desire. ' The Indian view seems to be now beginning to find vogue in the west. G. F. Stout, in recent times, mentions as one among other views, that emotions belong to the cona- tive consciousness, as being tendencies to do something ; Manual of Psychology, p. 63, p. 284, etseq. Hoff ding's views seem to tend in the same direction ; Outlines of Psychology, chs. iv and vi. The scheme of classification agreed upon by an international committee of psychologists at a conference held in Paris during the International Congress of 1900 speaks of Cognition ; Affection (Feeling and Emotion) ; Conation and Movement (Volition, Effort, Will) : See Baldwin's Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology, Vol. II. {dub. 1902) Article on the word Psychology.
THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF EMOTION, 25
discussion which will be entered into later as to the nature of Pleasure or Pain.1
But the following statement — though scarcely likely to convey much meaning at this stage — may be made as being rather needed here, and also in the hope of giving a clue to the full explanation in connection with the later discussion.
That reason appears to be that l Pleasure ' and 4 Pain ' are degrees of the self, rather than forms or aspects of it. It may be said, by somewhat stretching the use of words, that they are connect- ed with the ' measure,' the ' bulk ' of the self, rather than with its ' form '; and as such they pervade and overhang all the life of the self and its manifestation in the three forms or aspects of cognition, desire, and action.
Perhaps the following considerations may explain how the western view as to the nature of Emotions came to prevail.
Every one of the Emotions is either pleasur- able or painful. The two aspects of Emotion in this general fact, viz., of Emotion as Emotion, and of Emotion as pleasurable or painful, are not usually or carefully discriminated in ordinary life, and attention has not been sufficiently directed to the distinction existing between them. Nor,
1 Ch. ix. (b) infra. James Ward points out in the article on Psychology, (Encyclopedia Britannica} how the word Feeling is used loosely for many things, amongst them (a) Emotions and (b) Feelings proper, or Pleasure and Pain.
26 SCIENCE OF THE EMOTIONS.
indeed, does there appear to have been made any systematic or successful attempt to class the Emotions exhaustively and truly under the two heads of Pleasurable and Painful.1 Even this would probably have given a clue to the true nature of Emotion. What is generally and broadly observed is that particular situations in life arouse particular Emotions, Pleasurable or Painful. The truth here is that the Emotions are
Preliminary desires either to perpetuate a situation Definition ... , .. .r
of Emotion. « pleasurable, or to escape out of it if
painful ; and the prospective fulfilment of the desire or the defeat thereof, in expectation and imagination, gives the foretaste of the correspond- ing Pleasure or Pain, and makes the pleasurable- ness or painfulness of the total mood. The Emotion thus begins in, and looks back to, a feeling of positive Pleasure or Pain, and looks forward to, and ends in, a possible Pleasure or Pain. These various elements are, however, blended together in ordinary consciousness so closely that, unless a distinction is deliberately looked for, it easily escapes notice, and each
1 E. B. Titchener, An Outline of Psychology, (1902\ch. ix. p. 231, says there are two kinds or classes " of Emotion : the pleasurable and the unpleasurable." But thereafter he pursues other lines of thought and as to classification, says (p. 232) : " All that can be done at present is to indicate one or two of the ways in which classification has been tried... ...but with no final result."
THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF EMOTION- 27
Emotion comes, as it has come, to be regarded as something unanalysable and sui generis.
But it should be noted closely and carefully that the Desire-Emotion specialised by the immediately surrounding circumstances of the particular situation is one thing, and the Pleasure or Pain specialised by its correspondence with such Desire- Emotion is another thing.
The later parts of the book may, perhaps,, succeed in throwing more light upon this point, and make it plainer.
The above brief examination of the difference between the two views of the nature of Emotion, and how it came to arise, gives the clue to the proper classification of the varieties of Emotion ; for on the Indian view it becomes possible and permissible to analyse and thereby classify Desire- Emotions.
The precise meanings of Desire and Cognition and Action ; how the one consciousness of the individual self breaks up into problems. these forms and why ; what the precise relation is between Desire on the one hand and Pleasure and Pain on the other ; how the two, (i) Desire, and (ii) Pleasure and Pain, can be characterised with reference to each other in such a manner as to avoid definition in a circle ; which precedes and which succeeds in the first instance, or whether there is no such first instance,, and it is impossible to trace an ultimate precedence
28 SCIENCE OF THE EMOTIONS.
and succession, as in the case of the seed and the plant — these are questions which are not. hope- less, but should find treatment and solution in the Metaphysic of the Self and the Not-Self, of Space, and Time, and Motion.1
For our present purpose let us assume as the starting-point for our study, after the primary0 foregoing cursory discussion, that Emo- sub-divi- tions are Desires, and that the two Swipe' elementary Desires sire : (i) the Desire Emotion, to unite with an object that causes and H°JI P1easure ; and (») the Desire to separate from an object which causes Pain ; in other words, Attraction and Repulsion, Like and Dislike, Love and Hate, or any other pair of names that may seem best.
i Many of these have now been attempted in The Science of Peace, ch. xv., and endless sub-divisions into triplets, by mutual reflexion and re-reflexion are referred to therein. But pleasure, pain and peace are not derived systematically there, having been left over for treatment in a projected sequel to that work. In the meanwhile, it may be stated here, tentatively, that as cognition, desire and action arise in the Jiva out of the coming together of the Self and the Not-Self, so there also arise in it by correspondence with its objective side or material body, (i) an ' activity,' mobility, occupation, or character, (ii) a ' quality, ' or mentality, or intellect, and (iii) a ' substance, ' .or changing degree and bulk, or humor, temperament, or tone. These will be found > on examination, to correspond, in various ways, with Sat, Chit, and 2? nan da. Being, Consciousness, Bliss.
THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF EMOTION- 29
In the hope of suggesting a possibly fruitful line of thought, and therefore even at the risk of being supposed to propound a mere verbal quibble, it may be stated here that Love, the desire to unite with something else, implies the consciousness of the possibility of such union, and that its full significance is this : an instinctive, ingrained, in- herent perception by each individual self, each Jivatma, of its essential underlying unity, oneness Eka-ta, with all other Jivatmas, all other selves ; unity in the being of the All-Self, the Universal, Abstract, Inner Self, the Pratyagatma ; and the consequently inevitable endeavor of these individual selves, these fragments of the one Self, to break through the walls separating each from each — the walls that have disrupted the original 4 One Self ' into the ' many selves ' — and thus merge into each other and re-form the single whole. So too the full significance of Hate is the instinctive perception by each self — now identified with a larger or smaller mass of the Not-Self, of Mulaprakrti, matter — of the non-identity, the inherent separateness, the manyness, n a n a t v a ,
And, here, the first may be sub-divided into: (1) pravrtti, pursuit, vvorldliness, selfish occupations; nivrtti, renunciation, unvvorldliness, unselfish work ; and m o k s h a , justice, balance, equilibrium ; (2) cognition, etc. ; and (3) pleasure, pain, peace. In adjectives (3) would be : pleasant, cheerful, good-humored ; painful, ill-tempered, morose, melancholic; and peaceful, equable, quiet, sober, inexcitable.
30 SCIENCE OF THE EMOTIONS.
of each not-self, each atom of Mulaprakrti, from every other atom, every other not-self, and its endeavour to maintain such separate existence at all costs and by all means.