The emotions and the will

Abstract

In this treatise, Alexander Bain presents a systematic exposition of the human mind, focusing on the emotions and the voluntary powers as embodied, physiological phenomena. Adopting a natural history method, Bain defines emotion as conscious feeling accompanied by a diffusive physical wave across the nervous, muscular, and glandular systems, classifying individual emotions according to their physical embodiments, subjective qualities, and influences on volition and intellect. He analyses aesthetic and ethical sentiments within this framework, rejecting an innate moral sense in favour of an acquired conscience modelled on social authority, utility, and the sanction of punishment. In his investigation of the will, Bain departs from traditional metaphysical formulations of liberty and necessity, tracing voluntary agency to primordial spontaneous movements that become linked to pleasurable and painful states through experience and association. Over time, contiguous association and trial-and-error yield a general voluntary control over bodily movements, emotions, and intellectual trains, giving rise to complex states such as desire, deliberation, resolution, and moral habit. Bain further conceptualizes belief not as a purely intellectual assent, but as a disposition to action and a reliance on the order of nature, ultimately arguing that volition operates through uniform sequences of motives and actions rather than arbitrary self-determination, while framing consciousness around the fundamental discrimination of differences. – AI-generated abstract.