The exact meaning of the term _emotion_, it is difficult to state in any form of words,--for the same reason which makes it difficult, or rather impossible, to explain, what we mean by the term thought, or the terms sweetness or bitterness. What can be more opposite than pleasure and pain! the real distinction of which is evidently familiar, not to man only, but to every thing that lives; and yet if we were to attempt to show, in what their difference consists, or to give a verbal definition of either, we should find the task to be no easy one. Every person understands, what is meant by an _emotion_, at least as well, as he understands what is meant by any intellectual power; or, if he do not, it can be explained to him, only by stating the number of feelings to which we give the name, or the circumstances which induce them. All of them, indeed, agree in _this_ respect, that they imply peculiar vividness of feeling, with _this_ important circumstance, to distinguish them from the vivid pleasures and pains of sense,--that they do not arise immediately from the presence of external objects, but subsequently to the primary feelings, which we term sensations or perceptions. Perhaps if any definition of them be possible, they may be defined to be _vivid feelings_, arising immediately from the consideration of objects, perceived, or remembered, or imagined, or from other prior emotions. In some cases,--as in that of the emotion which beauty excites,--they may succeed so rapidly to the primary perception, as almost to form a part of it. Yet we find no great difficulty of analysis, in separating the _pleasing effect_ of beauty, from the perception of the mere form and colour, and can very readily imagine the same accurate perception of _these_, without the feeling of beauty, as we can imagine the same feeling of beauty to accompany the perception of forms and colours very different. “Sure the rising sun, O'er the cerulean convex of the sea, With equal brightness, and with equal warmth, Might roll his fiery orb; nor yet the soul Thus feel her frame expanded, and her powers Exulting in the splendour she beholds, Like a young conqueror moving through the pomp Of some triumphal day. When join'd at eve, Soft murmuring streams, and gales of gentlest breath, Melodious Philomela's wakeful strain Attemper, could not man's discerning ear, Through all its tones, the sympathy pursue; Nor yet this breath divine of nameless joy Steal through his veins, and fan the awaken'd heart, Mild as the breeze, yet rapturous as the song.”[59]