If Despair cannot in most cases be held to subserve the end of the desire to which it belongs,-since, if this end is really unattainable, nothing can advance it; yet despair may subserve the sentiment of which that desire is a part. For man in his self-love finds it to his advantage to abandon some desires, to cling to others tenaciously, and, in respect of the rest, to abandon part to save the remainder.

The evil effects of this emotion have chiefly engaged attention. Its courage is rash and precipitate. It excludes hope, even before all possibilities have been exhausted; which is contrary to the spirit of religion. But these defects indicate that lack of self-control which is characteristic of all emotions, and there is nothing in them which shows that, under the restraints of desire and still more of the sentiments, despair may not fulfill those uses which we have indicated.

We have found Despair a peculiarly difficult emotion to interpret, on account of the complicated and conflicting nature of the facts; nor can we hope that we have been able to do more than carry the theory of its tendency a stage nearer to the standard of a scientific law. Only gradually, and by the accumulation of fresh facts, can all the conditions be brought to light, and successively interpreted. To deal with all of them together, even were they known, might be a problem too complicated for the human mind. Here our method must be that of a slow advance from the abstract to the concrete, dealing first with those problems which are simplest, and abstracting from many of the operative conditions, until at length we are able to interpret those dynamical relations which are the most complex. And this seems to be the method which the human mind naturally adopts. For the generalisations of the great observers of character are enunciated absolutely, and without the disclosure of those conditions which limit the range of their truth. And at this stage the knowledge of character has remained for centuries; nor does it seem possible to make any advance upon it except by a patient investigation of the conditions that have been overlooked.

CHAPTER VI

OF SOME OF THE LAWS OF INTERACTION OF THE

PROSPECTIVE

EMOTIONS

We have divided the tendencies of the special emotions of Desire into two classes: (1) those which bear directly on desire; (2) and those which bear on the interaction of the emotions themselves. In the two preceding chapters we have, as far as possible, confined ourselves to the first class; we shall here study the second. Though some of these laws are sufficiently obvious, they appear to have received little notice in literature.

The first law we may call The Law of the Correlation of Hope and Anxiety. It does not mean that when we feel hope we at the same time feel anxiety; but that we are disposed to feel it, and that this disposition is stimulated, and in a state of readiness to manifest the emotion. What usually happens is that we alternate between the two emotions. We may therefore tentatively enunciate this law as follows: (132) When Hope is present, the disposition to Anxiety is excited; and when Anxiety is present, the disposition to Hope is also excited. The second law of the interaction of these emotions is this: (133) Hope tends always to destroy Anxiety, and Anxiety to destroy Hope; but neither is able to succeed so long as each remains itself. Thus we find that as we indulge in hope, or maintain it by voluntary effort, we remove anxiety farther from us; and that as we are possessed by anxiety, hope recedes. The third law is that, (134) If Hope succeeds in destroying Anxiety, it destroys itself, and the new emotion of Confidence takes the place of both.

The fourth law is that (135) If Anxiety succeeds in destroying Hope it also destroys itself, and the new emotion of Despair takes the place of both.

It is more difficult to define the law of Despondency. The difference between the thoughts of despondency and of despair we have already had occasion to notice. In Despair the belief is present that no hope is possible; in Despondency we have not reached a conclusion so definite. Our hope is weakened; its disposition is rendered less active, but still remains active in some degree. We may therefore tentatively define this law as follows:-(136) Despondency tends to destroy Hope, but never, while remaining itself, succeeds so far as to produce the belief that no hope is possible. There must then be a secondary and consequential law: (137) If Despondency destroys Hope it also destroys itself, and the emotion of Despair replaces both.

While Despondency seems always to imply some activity of Hope, Hope does not always imply Despondency. We may be hopeful, or we may even be anxious, without feeling the least despondent. For despondency is an emotion of failure, and we may not yet have failed.

Finally, there is the tendency of Despair to lead to a renewal of hope in the same or some other desire, to which we referred in the last chapter. But this is 'tendency' in a loose sense of the word. For it amounts to no more than a probability that despair, in working itself out, may strike upon some line of action that will revive hope. It has no inherent tendency to produce this effect. Whereas there seems to be an inherent tendency in hope to exclude anxiety, and in anxiety to exclude hope, and for either, so far as it is successful, to exclude itself, and evoke either confidence or despair; and this is not merely a matter of probability.

The fluid relation which subsists between several of the emotions of desire, does not appear to include Disappointment. That emotion is always caused by some sudden and more or less unexpected event. There is no process by which any one of the preceding emotions evokes it; it always occurs by way of accident. But after the shock of

disappointment has passed things begin to go on again; the process renews itself, though without the same disposition to hope and confidence. There is no one of the previous emotions that must replace Disappointment, though despondency often succeeds to it. There is only the law, to which we have previously referred, that Disappointment tends to weaken the dispositions to hope and confidence, and that, like other emotions, it tends to be felt with greater intensity in proportion as it contrasts with the preceding emotion, and is sudden and unexpected: (138) Disappointment is not, other things equal, felt so intensely after despondency as after hope, or after hope as after confidence.

Passing from Disappointment to Confidence and Despair, we may suppose that there is a law that Despair tends to exclude Hope and Anxiety. Satan, in "Paradise Lost," thus expresses his despair:

"So farewell hope, and with hope farewell fear,

Farewell remorse; all good to me is lost :

Evil, be thou my good. . ."

"1

And again, and implying the law of the mutual implication of hope and anxiety, he says: "Where no hope is left, is left no fear." But while despair arises when hope and anxiety have been excluded, is there a reciprocal tendency for despair to exclude the renewal of hope? The belief of despair that there is no room for hope, may be destroyed by some change in the situation, and, as we have seen, in the desperate struggles to which it may impel us, some faint hope may be renewed. But despair, because it is despair, tends to exclude hope, and is essentially antagonistic to that emotion; and its belief, like other beliefs, may become so fixed that it is little responsive to change of circumstance. It is also a law that (139) Confidence, which arises when doubt and anxiety are excluded, in its turn, when established, tends to exclude a doubtful attitude. And this we clearly see where confidence is strong, as in those of a confident temper. They will not admit of doubt; they are sure of the event; and it takes a long course of adversity and failure before the extravagance of their temper is corrected.

1 'Par. Lost,' B. iv. 1. 108.

If the peculiar emotions of Desire have certain intimate relations among themselves, so that the change which one undergoes imports change in another, we must not forget that it is the function of these secondary emotions to represent and forecast changes of circumstances, through the thoughts which, in distinction from the primary emotions, belong essentially to them. Nor do they respond only to those changes that favour or impede the fulfilment of the desired end; they are responsive to another set of changes within the body, which make them too often untrustworthy indicators of the course of future events. There is a 'hopeful temper,' a 'despondent temper,' an 'anxious temper,' a 'confident temper'; and we seem to be peculiarly disposed by inherited endowment, by the state of health, by the course of experience to one or other of them. Thus the prospective emotions, whatever their uses, have to be held under constant control; and this control it is in the capacity and interest of Desire to exercise, seeing that it is both a more comprehensive system than that of any one of these emotions, and also has to employ them in the pursuit of its ends. Yet while we try to restrain these emotions from exaggeration, so that they may represent adequately the changing course of events, yet we make one exception. We believe that Hope is of such unique importance that, whatever our circumstances, we must sustain it, in one form or another, with all the courage we possess.