Chapter XVIII (part 5)

If we consider the emotional nature of man as self-contained, as serving life and not serving knowledge we shall never understand its true content and significance. Emotions serve knowledge. There are things and relations which can be known only emotionally, and only through a given emotion. To understand the psychology of play , it is necessary to experience the emotions of the player; to understand the psychology of the hunt , it is necessary to experience the emotions of the hunter; the psychology of a man in love is incomprehensible to him who is indifferent; the state of mind of Archimedes when he jumped out of the bath tub is incomprehensible to the staid citizen, who would look on such a performance as a sign of insanity ; the feelings of the globe-trotter, delightedly breathing in the sea air and sweeping with his eyes the wide horizon, is incomprehensible to the sedentary stay-at-home. The feeling of a believer is incomprehensible to an unbeliever, and to a believer the feeling of an unbeliever is quite as strange. Men understand one another so imperfectly because they live always by different emotions. And when they feel similar p. 220 emotions simultaneously, then and then only do they understand one another. The proverbial philosophy of the people knows this very well: "A FULL MAN DOES NOT UNDERSTAND A HUNGRY ONE," it says. "A drunkard is no comrade for a sober man." "One rogue recognizes another." In this mutual understanding or in the illusion of mutual understanding—in this immersion in similar emotions—lies one of the principal charms of love. The French novelist, de Maupassant, has written very delightfully about this in his little story Solitude . The same illusion explains the secret power of alcohol over the human soul, for alcohol creates the illusion of a communion of souls , and induces similar fantasies simultaneously , in two or several men. Emotions are the stained-glass windows of the soul; colored glasses through which the soul looks at the world. Each such glass assists in finding in the contemplated object the same or similar colors, but it also prevents the finding of opposite ones. Therefore it has been correctly said that a one-sided emotional illumination cannot give a correct perception of an object. Nothing gives one such a clear idea of things as the emotions, yet nothing deludes one so much. Every emotion has a meaning for its existence, although its value from the standpoint of knowledge varies. Certain emotions are important and necessary for the life of knowledge and certain emotions hinder rather than help one to understand. Theoretically all emotions are an aid to knowledge; all emotions arose because of the knowing of one or another thing. Let us consider one of the most elementary emotions—say THE EMOTION OF FEAR. Undoubtedly there are relations which can be known only through fear . The man who never experienced the sensation of fear will never understand many things in life and in nature; he will never understand many of the controlling motives in the life of man. (What else but the fear of hunger and cold forces the majority of men to work?) He will never understand many things in the animal world. For example, he will not understand the relation of mammals to reptiles. A snake excites a feeling of repulsion and fear in all mammals. By this repulsion and fear the mammal knows the nature of the snake and the relation of that nature to its own, and knows it correctly, but strictly personally , p. 221 and only from its own standpoint. But what the snake is in itself the animal never knows by the emotion of fear. What the snake is in itself —not in the philosophical meaning of the thing-in-itself (nor from the standpoint of the man or animal whom it has bitten or may bite) but simply from the standpoint of zoölogy—THIS CAN BE KNOWN BY THE INTELLECT ONLY. Emotions unite with the different I's of our psyche.