feeling; and this cannot be avoided if the organ be excited. We have it in our power to permit or restrain the manifestation of it in action; but we have no option, if the organ be excited, to experience, or not to experience, the feeling itself. The case is the same with the organs of Fear, Hope, Veneration, and the others. There are times when we feel involuntary emotions of fear, or hope, or awe, arising in us, for which we cannot account; and such feelings depend on the internal activity of the organs of these sentiments. "We cannot Nature by our wishes rule, In the second place, these faculties may be called into action independently of the will, by the presentment of the external objects fitted by nature to excite them. When an object in distress is presented, the faculty of Benevolence starts into activity, and produces the feelings which depend upon it. When an object threatening danger is perceived, Cautiousness gives an instantaneous emotion of fear. And when stupendous objects in nature are contemplated, Ideality inspires with a feeling of sublimity. In all these cases, the power of acting, or of not acting, is dependent on the will; but the power of feeling, or of not feeling, is not so. "It seems an unaccountable pleasure," says HUME which the spectators of a well-written tragedy receive from sorrow, terror, anxiety, and other passions, that are in themselves disagreeable and uneasy. The more they are touched and affected, the more are they delighted with the spectacle. The whole art of the poet is employed in rousing and supporting the compassion and indignation, the anxiety and resentment of his audience. They are pleased in proportion as they are afflicted, and never are so happy as when they employ tears, sobs and cries, to give vent to * Essay 22. their sorrow, and relieve their hearts, swollen with the tenderest sympathy and compassion." Many volumes have been written to solve this problem. Those authors who deny the existence of benevolent and disinterested feelings in man, maintain, that we sympathize with Cato, Othello, or King Lear, because we conceive the possibility of ourselves being placed in similar situations, and that then all the feelings arise in us which we would experience, if we were ourselves suffering under similar calamities. Mr STEWART, who, on the other hand, admits the existence of generous emotions in the human mind, states it as his theory, that we, for an instant, believe the distress to be real; and under this belief feel the compassion which would naturally start up in our bosoms, if the sufferings represented were actually endured. A subsequent act of judgment, he says, dispels, in an almost imperceptible portion of time, the illusion, and restrains the mind from acting under the emotion; which, if the belief of reality continued, it would certainly do, by running to the relief of the oppressed hero or heroine; but still he considers that a momentary belief is necessary to call up the emotions which we experience. The phrenological doctrine just delivered appears to me to furnish the true explanation. Each propensity and sentiment may be called into activity by presentment of its object, and, when active, the corresponding feeling or emotion attends it, in virtue of its constitution. Happiness consists in the harmonious gratification of all the faculties; and the very essence of gratification is activity. "Thus the muscular system," says Dr A. COMBE, " is gratified by motion, and pleasure arises; the eye is gratified by looking at external objects; Combativeness, by overcoming opposition; Destructiveness, by the sight of destruction, and the infliction of pain; Benevolence, by the relief of suffering; Hope, by looking forward to a happy futurity; Cautiousness, by a certain degree of uncertainty and anxiety, &c. As the degree of enjoyment corresponds to the num ber of faculties simultaneously active and gratified, it follows, that a tragic scene, which affords a direct stimulus to several of the faculties, at the same moment, must be agreeable, whatever these may be;-1st, If it does not at the same time, outrage any of the other feelings; 2dly, If it does not excite any faculty so intensely as to give rise to pain; just as too much light hurts the eyes, and too much exertion fatigues the muscles." In the play of Pizarro, for example, when the child is introduced, its aspect and situation instantly excite Philoprogenitiveness, and individuals possessing this organ largely, feel an intense interest in it; the representation of danger to which it is exposed rouses Cautiousness, producing fear for its safety; when Rolla saves it, this fear is allayed, Philoprogenitiveness is highly delighted, Benevolence also is gratified; and the excitement of these faculties is pleasure. All this internal emotion takes place simply in consequence of the constitution of the faculties, and the relation established by nature betwixt them and their objects, without the understanding requiring to be imposed upon, or to form any theory about the scenes, whether they are real or fictitious. A picture raises emotions of sublimity or beauty on the same principles. "The cloud-capt towers and gorgeous palaces" are fitted by nature to excite Ideality, Wonder, and Veneration; and these being active, certain emotions of delight are experienced. When a very accurate representation of these towers and palaces is presented on canvas, their appearance in the picture excites the same faculties into action, which their natural lineaments would call up, and the same pleasures kindle in the soul. But what would we think, if Mr STEWART assured us that we required to believe the paint and the canvas to be real stone and lime, and the figures to be real men and women, before we could enjoy the scene? And yet this would be as reasonable as the same doctrine applied to tragody. We may weep at a tragedy represented on canvas, and know all the while that there are only colours and forms before us. On the same principle we may shed tears at seeing a tragedy acted, which is just a representation, by means of words and gestures, of objects calculated to rouse the faculties, and yet suffer no delusion respecting the reality of the piece. If the propensities and sentiments become excessively active from these representations, they may overpower the intellect; a temporary belief may follow; and the feeling will be the stronger; but, in this case, it appears to me, that the strong emotion does not arise from a previous illusion of the understanding; but that misconception in the intellect is the consequence of the feelings having become overwhelming. The law of our constitution now explained, accounts also for several of the phenomena of insanity. All the organs are liable to become violently and involuntarily active through disease; this produces mental excitement, or violent desires, to act in the direction of the diseased organs. If Combativeness and Destructiveness be affected in this manner, madness or fury, which is just an irresistible propensity to violence and outrage, will ensue. If the organ of Cautiousness become involuntarily and permanently active through disease, fear will constantly be felt, and this constitutes melancholy. If Veneration and Hope be excited in a similar way, the result will be involuntary emotions of devotion, the liveliest joy and anticipations of bliss; which feelings, fixed and immoveable, amount to religious insanity. It frequently happens that a patient is insane on a single feeling alone, such as Fear, Hope, or Veneration, and that, if the sphere of activity of this feeling be avoided, the understanding on other subjects shall be sound, and the general conduct of the patient rational and consistent. Thus, a person insane in Self-Esteem, sometimes imagines himself a King; but on all other topics he may evince sound sense, and consecutiveness of judgment. This results from the organs of intellect being sound, and only the organ of Self-Esteem diseased. Some times well-meaning individuals, struck with the clearness of the understanding in such patients, set themselves to point out, by means of argument, the erroneous nature of the notions under which they suffer, supposing that, if they could convince their intellect of the mistake, the disease would be cured; but the malady consists in an unhealthy action of the organ of a sentiment or propensity, and as long as the disease lasts, the insane feeling, which is the basis of the whole mental alienation, will remain, and argument will do as little to remove it, as a speech in removing gout from the toe. The converse of the doctrine now explained, also holds good; that is to say, if the organ be not active, the propensity or emotion connected with it cannot be felt; just as we cannot hear a sound when the auditory apparatus is not excited by the air. The most important practical consequences may be derived from this exposition of our mental constitution. The larger any organ is, the more is it prepared to come into activity, and the smaller, the less so. Hence an individual prone to violence, to excessive pride, vanity, or avarice, is the victim of an unfavourable development of brain; and in our treatment of him we ought to bear this fact constantly in mind. If we had wished, for example, to render BELLINGHAM mild, the proper proceeding would have been, not to abuse him for being ill-tempered, for this would have directly excited his Destructiveness, the largeness of which was the cause of his wrath, but to address ourselves to his Benevolence, Veneration, and Intellect, that, by rousing them, we might assuage the vehemence of Destructiveness. In a case like that of DAVID HAGGART, in whom Conscientiousness was very deficient, we ought always to bear in mind, that in regard to feeling the obligation of justice, such an individual is in the same state of unhappy deficiency as Mr MILNE is in perceiving colours, and ANNE ORMEROD in perceiving melody; and our treatment ought to correspond. We would never think of |