which is now quite beyond us. CHAPTER XII _RETROSPECTIVE EMOTION_ Brown divided emotions into retrospective and prospective, but such a classification has no basis in a general biological view nor yet in a special analysis of the particular phenomena. It is evident that the two great classes of emotion from the point of view of struggle for existence will be response to injurer and to benefactor. These are the two prime qualities in things for which emotional notice is most needed as a service to life, and hence the broad and fundamental division of emotion must always be into that which is response to the harmful and that which is response to the beneficial. Here only is the great and constant distinction in the nature of emotions. Prospect and retrospect are equally meaningless in themselves considered. From a merely _a priori_ biologic point of view we must, then, pronounce it quite unlikely that the time-sense should fundamentally differentiate emotion, but we should expect that the prime division would be with respect to cognised injury or benefit. That time-sense is not a grand principle of division we also see plainly when we examine particular emotions. Thus, in the case of anger, while we can say at once that this is, in all its forms, repulse to injury, can we claim it is either prospective or retrospective emotion? The truth is, the thought of injury done, doing, or to be done, equally wakens anger in choleric individuals. The man who harmed me yesterday excites my anger, and so does the man whom I perceive to be now injuring me or about to injure me. The quality of the emotion is identically the same whether the object be considered as in past, present, or future. Even what seems to be a purely temporal emotion, like hope, which is usually regarded as wholly prospective, may yet have other temporal aspects. Thus, we sometimes say, “I hope it was not so,” where hope is obviously retrospective, or more strictly prospective-retrospective, having reference to expectation with desire that the event will turn out not to have happened.