(5) Emotions or feelings, awakened by the perceptions of right
and wrong, obligation, merit and demerit, complete the action of
conscience. These feelings are peculiar and original, unlike the
feelings springing from any other perceptions and incapable of being
resolved into or deduced from others. Psychologically, it is to be
remembered, feeling is in no case a part of perception or cognition,
but an additional psychical action of a different kind. "A purely
cognitive intelligence might have perfect knowledge of things and
their relations to itself; it might know that things, or courses of
action, would destroy its own existence; it might even know that its
own existence was about to be destroyed; but this knowledge alone
would imply no feeling. Such intellect would be like a mirror; it
would accurately reflect all that passed before it; but it would be as
indifferent as the mirror."[19] But knowing is followed by feeling, a
different kind of action of the soul. This is not its action in the
form of intellect, but in the form of sensibility. It is action of
another order--not itself a cognition, but arising out of cognition.
This is the place and relation of these moral feelings. They are
awakened in the soul by and through the ethical perceptions. They are
determined by these, and form the final element in the total action of
the conscience.
These moral feelings, while they form one class, as having their origin
in the ethical discriminations, exhibit distinguishing differences.
These differences develop in a twofold way, presenting special forms of
feeling. They must be noted as they differ by these two conditions of
their development.
==Correspondent to Right or Wrong.==
First, according as the moral quality, the perception of which awakens
them, is good or evil. The soul cannot discern the great distinctions
between right and wrong without correspondent emotional awakening. The
sensibility is moved by the perception, and takes the form of a feeling
of approval for the morally good, and a feeling of reprobation for
the wrong. Our language furnishes no single term to designate either
of these feelings, but this phraseology is sufficiently descriptive
to point them out. The feeling toward the right may be denoted as
moral love; that toward wrong as moral aversion. When the quality
of rightness or wrongness is exhibited in specially intense degree
in particular conduct, the feelings may take the form of ethical
admiration or of abhorrence.
==Before and After Action.==
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