The groundwork of psychology / by G.F. Stout.

  • George Frederick Stout
Date:
1903
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The groundwork of psychology / by G.F. Stout. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    The hypothesis advanced in the preceding pages inter- prets not only the varieties of painful feeling that are ten- der, but also the corresponding varieties of pleasurable feeling to which it seems at first sight ill-adapted. To some actual or potential admixture of sorrow is due the tenderness of gratitude and benevolence, as well as of pity and reproach. But it is still more significant to watch the working under new conditions and in new emotional states of the universal impulse of sorrow to restore the loss or injury of its object. To that is due the impulse of Pity to relieve suffering, the invocation to repentance of Reproach and the desire of Gratitude to recompense its benefactor. Aspiration, Trust, Resignation, Reverence, Repentance. — We can easily detect, through their feeling or impulse, the action of sorrow in the remaining tender emotions. The upward gaze of Aspiration is dimmed with the sorrows of sin and failure. The disposition to sorrow of clinging Trust is stirred by the sense of weakness. Reserve and secrecy, the supports of our proud independence, are sur- rendered. To some extent we are in the power of another, and feel dimly the evils he could inflict on us. But the sor- row at weakness is absorbed in the joy of trust; and the joy of our security grows tender. And so, while there is one kind of Resignation which is the calm attitude of courage facing the inevitable, trust enters into the weaker and affords it a tender consolation. In Trust and Resignation tender feeling is not universally present, but Reverence and Repentance cannot be without it. In the second, sorrow is prominent; in the first, dis- guised or potential as in gratitude. We can distinguish two constituent emotions in reverence, fear and admiration, evoked by the greatness and mystery of its object. We
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