Emotion

The passions are the part of human nature these books represent most often and agree upon least. Anger, fear, grief, joy, pity, envy and their kin appear on nearly every page of the epics, tragedies, romances and lyrics. The moralists, physicians and philosophers ask what these motions are, whether they serve or betray us, and how they may be governed. Burke states the practical stake: to know the operations of the passions is to be able to affect them and to judge works designed to move them¹. Channing finds in the study of our own changing feelings the very road to self-knowledge². Raleigh calls life itself the play of passion³, and Gray sees anger, fear, jealousy and despair waiting like vultures for the boys on the playing field⁴. Emotion is a great idea here because it touches everything else: reason, virtue, religion, politics, art and education.

The first question is what a passion is, and how many there are. Hobbes gives the most systematic answer. Appetite and aversion are bodily motions⁵, and hope, despair, fear, courage, anger, benevolence, jealousy and revengefulness are their variants, distinguished by object and opinion^6,7. Laughter, weeping, shame and pity are explained in the same way, as sudden glory, dejection or imagined calamity⁸. Burke divides the passions by their ends instead. Those of self-preservation turn on pain and danger and are the strongest; those of society turn on pleasure^9,10. Augustine inherits the older fourfold scheme of desire, joy, fear and sorrow. He is struck that he can recall and define each from memory without being disturbed, and he wonders how mind and memory differ^11,12. Pascal insists against any merely bodily account that passions are sentiments of the mind, and that greater minds have greater passions¹³.

Yet the body is never absent. Harvey traces grief, love and envy in the heart’s motion and in wasting disease¹⁴, and he shows fear weakening the pulse¹⁵. Dante observes that laughter and tears follow the passions so closely that even the sincere cannot restrain them¹⁶. Burke goes further: imitating an angry man’s gestures produces anger, and a body indisposed to a passion’s gestures cannot feel it, which is why opiates suspend grief and fear^17,18.

Whether one passion governs a man is disputed. Pope holds that a master passion swallows the rest like Aaron’s serpent¹⁹, and Pascal that one can hold only a single great passion²⁰. Burns doubts that any ruling passion explains a man²¹. On excess, by contrast, there is agreement. Hobbes defines madness as too much passion, whether pride, rage, dejection or fear^22,23, and the poets dramatize it. Lear flees the thought of filial ingratitude lest madness follow, and finds that the tempest in his mind blots out bodily feeling^24,25.

The deepest question concerns passion and reason. One tradition treats them as enemies. In the Phaedo the soul rebukes its passions as Odysseus rebukes his heart²⁶. Pascal describes an internal war in which peace with one side means war with the other²⁷, and Penn calls passion a fever of the mind, a mob riot upon reason²⁸. Hobbes notes that men mistake their passions of the moment for right reason²⁹. A second tradition makes passion the matter of virtue. Milton calls passions rightly tempered the very ingredients of virtue³⁰. Pascal says passions held as slaves become virtues and as masters become vices³¹. For Pope, passions are the gale and reason the card³², and anger and envy may be turned into fortitude and emulation³³. Rousseau holds that reason itself improves through the activity of the passions³⁴.

A third view grants feeling a kind of primacy. Pascal’s heart has reasons reason does not know³⁵, and Emerson echoes him³⁶. Hume makes belief a sentiment³⁷ and approbation and blame emotions that philosophy cannot alter³⁸. Rousseau declares that sensibility precedes intelligence and that conscience is sentimental, not intellectual³⁹. Burke defends the natural feelings of horror and pity at the fall of kings as instructors of reason⁴⁰. Kant answers that moral feeling is an effect of the law upon the will, not its foundation, and too variable to give a standard^41,42. Mill warns that instinctive disgust is too easily taken for moral law⁴³.

The cure of the passions divides the ancients from their critics. For Epictetus, a son’s death or a lost ship is only an event, and misfortune is added by our judgment⁴⁴. Marcus Aurelius traces every perturbation to inner opinion⁴⁵. He calls grief, anger and fear discontent with the universal Law⁴⁶, and holds freedom from passion to be strength⁴⁷. The Gita’s ideal man is unmoved by gladness, grief, fear or wrath⁴⁸, and the Buddhist disciple abandons even joy for indifference⁴⁹. Against this stand Cicero’s Laelius, for whom a man without emotion would be no different from a stone⁵⁰, and Pliny, who holds that true manhood grieves for dead servants⁵¹. Bacon would limit anger, not extinguish it as the Stoics would⁵², and Pope calls strength of mind exercise, not apathy³². Sidney smiles that the philosophers are angry at anger⁵³.

The religious writers seek moderation through trust. In Thomas à Kempis, the man who trusts God is neither glad for much nor sorrowful for little^54,55. Pascal consoles grief by setting the loss within God’s will, while granting that grief is natural to men, who are neither angels nor pagans^56,57. Lesser remedies are drink, the hunt and music. Helen drugs the wine to banish grief⁵⁸. Pascal’s mourner forgets his dead son in the boar hunt⁵⁹. Timotheus’s music sways Alexander from pity to love to rage⁶⁰.

Anger receives the fullest moral attention. Marcus finds that it hurts more than the acts provoking it and is a violence of the soul against itself^61,62. Plutarch likens it to a feverish inflammation of the soul⁶³, and Bacon calls it the baseness of the weak⁶⁴. Yet Penn allows anger without sin if it is qualified by charity⁶⁵. Long holds anger at injury natural and useful so long as it stops short of revenge⁶⁶. Don Quixote excuses Sancho because a man’s first motions are not in his hand⁶⁷. More satirizes the friar who rails and calls it holy zeal⁶⁸. The patience counselled toward wrongdoers rests on their ignorance or compulsion, and on our own like faults^69,70. In correction, Locke and Penn agree that punishment in passion breeds revenge rather than repentance^71,72. On revenge, Bacon observes that studying it keeps one’s wounds green⁷³. Hobbes calls it vainglory⁷⁴. Manzoni shows anger preferring a human culprit it can punish to a cause that leaves only resignation⁷⁵. Cellini’s autobiography is a long record of fury, though he once admits that anger blinded him and begs pardon⁷⁶.

Fear has its defenders. Locke calls it a passion which, rightly governed, warns us against evil, arising only from apprehended pain^77,78, and Emerson calls it an instructor of great sagacity⁷⁹. More often the texts find fear exceeding its object. Pliny reasons that apprehension has no bounds while suffering does⁸⁰. Montaigne notes that death feared at a distance is greater than death near⁸¹, and Sancho observes that fear has eyes that see under the ground⁸². Burke explains why: obscurity and darkness heighten terror because we cannot know our danger^83,84. Manzoni shows ignorance breeding fears of poisoned walls during the plague⁸⁵, and Darwin ascribes panic in an earthquake to want of habit in governing fear⁸⁶. On the fear of death, the Phaedo treats it as a child within us needing persuasion⁸⁷. Montaigne prescribes familiarity rather than brutish forgetting^88,89. Bacon remarks that no passion is too weak to master it⁹⁰, and Pascal corrects it by faith⁹¹. Locke warns that early terrors leave lifelong timorousness⁹².

Fear also binds societies. Hobbes makes it the passion to rely on for holding men to promises, and the seed of belief in invisible powers^93,94. Machiavelli prefers fear to love as a bond⁹⁵, and Penn denies that it secures a prince any better⁹⁶. Burke makes terror the source of the sublime, delightful when held at a distance^97,98. Pascal and Bunyan distinguish right fear, joined to hope, from slavish fear, joined to despair^99,100,101.

On grief the ancient dispute is whether to indulge or restrain it. Confucius bids mourning go to grief and no further, yet weeps for Yen Yuan^102,103. Laelius calls excessive mourning self-love¹⁰⁴. Plutarch praises Demosthenes for setting private grief aside for the commonwealth¹⁰⁵. Augustine suppresses his tears for Monica, then lets them flow and defends them^106,107. Shakespeare’s Claudius calls prolonged grief unmanly¹⁰⁸. Leigh Hunt replies that grief for a dead child should be allowed its tears, which relieve the soul¹⁰⁹. Consolation comes through time, which Cicero would have wisdom anticipate¹¹⁰, and through gentleness, since fresh grief shrinks from comfort as a wound from the surgeon¹¹¹. It comes also through friendship, which halves grief¹¹². Hamlet distinguishes real grief from its shows and is shamed by the player’s tears for Hecuba^113,114. Pliny mocks Regulus’s ostentatious mourning¹¹⁵. Augustine asks why weeping is sweet to the miserable, and why we enjoy grieving at tragedies^116,117. Browne weeps at plays yet bears his own pains¹¹⁸.

Melancholy is both praised and dispelled. Milton banishes it and then welcomes it as divine and contemplative^119,120. Fletcher calls it the sweetest state¹²¹, and Keats would glut sorrow on beauty¹²². The moderns discover something worse: dejection without pang. Coleridge sees beauty but cannot feel it^123,124. Byron laments a soul too cold to weep¹²⁵. Mill finds Coleridge’s lines describing his own collapse, and is relieved only when Marmontel’s tale moves him to tears^126,127. Remorse appears as the mind full of scorpions¹²⁸ and as guilt worse than any misfortune¹²⁹.

Joy is most intense at recovery. Augustine asks why finding what was lost exceeds never losing it¹³⁰. Hope and fear alternate, and for Pascal fear tends to prevail, destroying resolution¹³¹. The Christian, he says, stands poised between joy and fear¹³², and Pericles steers his people by them as by two rudders¹³³.

Among the malignant passions, Bacon analyses who is prone to envy and calls it the devil’s attribute^134,135. Hobbes separates envy from emulation by whether one strives to equal or to supplant¹³⁶. Milton’s Satan carries a hell of envy within¹³⁷. Penn calls jealousy a civil war in the soul¹³⁸.

Pity raises a modern question. Rousseau makes it an innate abhorrence of suffering, prior to reflection, which moderates self-love^139,140. Burke finds that we delight in others’ real distress, a delight mixed with the uneasiness that moves us to relieve it^141,142. He also makes sympathy the mechanism by which we stand in another’s place¹⁴³, and Edgar finds his own pain lightened by sharing the king’s¹⁴⁴. The distrust of pity runs from Socrates refusing tearful appeals¹⁴⁵ and Plutarch suspecting unmanly tenderness¹⁴⁶, through Virgil’s rebuke of Dante¹⁴⁷ and Locke’s warning against indulged pity in children¹⁴⁸, to Kant’s judgment that sympathetic delight is mere inclination¹⁴⁹.

Collective passion rounds out the idea. Hobbes hears in a troubled nation the summed roar of each man’s passions¹⁵⁰. Washington warns against party spirit and against habitual national hatreds or fondnesses^151,152. Manzoni’s crowds swing between ferocity and compassion¹⁵³. On tragedy, Milton follows Aristotle: pity and fear are purged by being tempered to just measure, ending in calm of mind, all passion spent^154,155. Dryden thinks tragedy’s remedy brief¹⁵⁶, Pascal that represented passions simply arouse us¹⁵⁷, and Shelley that tragic sympathy strengthens the good affections¹⁵⁸. Wordsworth holds that poetry springs from powerful feeling and that metre tempers excitement^159,160,161.

Finally, the moderns ask whether feeling is starved. Mill describes a youth trained as a reasoning machine. He came to defend cultivating the feelings as part of happiness, against an English suspicion of them^162,163,164. Emerson notes the Englishman’s guard against emotion¹⁶⁵, and Dana finds pity thought unbecoming before the mast¹⁶⁶. Ruskin demands more passion, not less, and charges that a people without true emotion craves false ones^167,168. Arnold credits Wordsworth alone with making men feel¹⁶⁹.

The Stoic asked how to be free of passion. The modern increasingly asks how to recover it. Between them the books leave open whether feeling is judgment’s servant or its ground, and whether apathy is a strength or a kind of death.