Nevertheless, if a man be shot out of a cannon, or fall from a great
height, he is to all intents and purposes a mere stone. Place
anything in circumstances entirely foreign to its immediate
antecedents, and those antecedents become non-existent to it, it
returns to what it was before they existed, to the last stage that it
can recollect as at all analogous to its present.
Feeling
Man is a substance, he knows not what, feeling, he knows not how, a
rest and unrest that he can only in part distinguish. He is a
substance feeling equilibrium or want of equilibrium; that is to say,
he is a substance in a statical or dynamical condition and feeling
the passage from one state into the other.
Feeling is an art and, like any other art, can be acquired by taking
pains. The analogy between feelings and words is very close. Both
have their foundation in volition and deal largely in convention; as
we should not be word-ridden so neither should we be feeling-ridden;
feelings can deceive us; they can lie; they can be used in a non-
natural, artificial sense; they can be forced; they can carry us
away; they can be restrained.
When the surroundings are familiar, we know the right feeling and
feel it accordingly, or if "we" (that is the central government of
our personality) do not feel it, the subordinate departmental
personality, whose business it is, feels it in the usual way and then
goes on to something else.
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