Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Handbook of psychology / by J. Clark Murray. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.
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![thoroughly also does sexual feeling free itself from a mere anunal appetite, and expand into that spiritual sentiment which forms at once one of the purest enjoy- ments and one of the purest moral influences of life. It has been maintained that this spiritualisation of the senti- ment has been the result of medi?3val chivalry; but this is a question which belongs rather to history than to psychology. Whatever may have been the history of this sentiment in the past, it must follow the general course of emotional evolution ; and any reversion to the sensuous restriction of the feeling, such as occasionally makes its appearance among the eccentricities of litera- ture, is not only an anachronism, but a solecism in art, as decided as if the poet were to seek the fittest material for the artistic description of a banquet in the animal gusto with which the viands are devoured. I. Among the other benevolent affections, those which are founded on relationships of nature come appropriately first under consideration. The characteristic of these is determined by the fact, that they arise from natural associations, not from combinations of intelligence. It is not any rational consideration that directs them to their objects; it is simply the extrinsic associations of space and time. They appear, therefore, as blind instincts, as unreasoning passions, that cling to their objects without any reflection upon the intrinsic character of these. I. Of such social instincts the type is to be found in what is called, by pre-eminence, jiaim-al affection {a-Topyr]'), that is, affection between persons of the same kindred. The passionate intensity of this affection is mainly de- termined by the closeness of the natural relation, out of which it arises; and consequently a mother's love has in all ages been regarded as among the most irresistible instincts of nature. Even within the sphere of the](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21293508_0394.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
