AFFECTION
AFFECTION (ad and facio).—(1) Passive, an impression made on the sensory system. (2) Active, a disposition towards persons, urging the agent to seek the good or hurt of others. The affections are motive forces, in close relation to the intelligent nature, and superior to desire.
| «There are various principles of action in man which have persons for their immediate object, and imply, in their very nature, our being well- or ill-affected to some person, or at least to some animated being. Such principles I shall call by the general name of affections, whether they dispose us to do good or hurt to others» (Reid, Active Powers, essay III. pt. II. ch. III.-VI.). |
One of the most important divisions of empirical psychology as concerned with Feeling, is that which treats of the natural history of the affections, or the laws of their development (Bain’s Emotions and Will, ch. III.; Cyple’s Process of Human Experience, ch. X. p. 267 ; Sully’s Outlines of Psychology, p. 489).
