on the skin, the pressures in muscles and joints, and the strain in the tendons.
(5) Taste.
15. Prepare a number of ' tastes ' in solution. Stop the nose with cotton wool, and apply the solutions carefully to the tip of the tongue with a camePs- hair brush. You will get none but the four tastes mentioned above.
16. Note the contrast of tastes. Brush sweet along one side of the tongue. Then brush salt or acid along the other side; the sweet becomes notice- ably sweeter.
(6) Smell.
17. Note the antagonism of smells (^. colours). Make paper funnels, and sniff through them at india- rubber with one nostril, and at beeswax with the other. If the substances are taken in the right proportions, you get no smell at all.
(7) What sensations do you get in the act of yawning? What in that of swallowing? What unusual sensations do you have, from the face, after you have been running hard?
(8) Suppose that you pared off the top of the colour-pyramid, at any given height above the base: what would you see upon the cut surfaces (planes of latitude)? Suppose that you peeled the figure, like an onion; what would you see upon the total surface thus exposed? Suppose that you halved the figure longitudinally, cutting from WRB to the axis, and thence on to WGB: what would you see upon the cut surfaces?
(9) To test Weber^s law, take two small weights which, when laid successively on the palm of the hand, exert clearly different pressures. Now double the lighter weight, and find by repeated trial how heavy a fourth weight must be, 5 6 Sensation if it is to differ as much in sensation from the double weight as the heavier of the first pair differed from the lighter. — You can make the weights of coarse shot, tied in little chamois leather bags; and you can take a single shot as unit of weight, without actually weighing the bags.
Or proceed in this way. Take two glass funnels, of equal weight; two largish bags of shot, of equal weight; and a number of very small bags, also of equal weight. One funnel is weighted only with a large bag; this gives the standard weight, a. The other is weighted with a large bag, and with one or more of the small bags, as the experiment requires; this is the variable weight, b. Find by repeated trials what weight.^ must have if it is to be just noticeably heavier than a in sensation. Lift the funnels successively in each experiment, raising them to a marked height above the table. Keep the arm very steady, bending only at the elbow joint; avoid any shift- ing of the weight in the hand. Estimate the weights on the basis of a double (up and down) movement. Having made b just noticeably heavier than a, take b as your standard, and add to a till it is just noticeably heavier than b; then reverse the procedure again, and so on.
If we represent the first standard by i, the series obtained will be approximately: i, fi, f|^, ffHi? ^^c. When sensations are just noticeably different in intensity, their stimuli differ by the same relative amount in each case. For lifted weights (strain sensations) this constant relative difference is about one-thirtieth. Hence we have the series: References James, Textbook, pp. 9-77. Sully, Huina7i Mi7td, vol. I., pp. 81-132. Titchener, Outline, §§ 7, 8, 11-30. Wundt, Lectures, Lects. H.-VII. Wundt, Outlines, §§ 5, 6.
See also: E. C. Sanford, A Course in Experimental Psychology, CHAPTER IV Affection and Feeling § 24. The Two Kinds of Affection. — We not only sense stimuli; we also feel or are ajfected by them. We say, ^^How delightfully cool it is here!" and *'What a delicious fragrance this flower has!" and *^ You must have had a very unpleasant conversa- tion! " The coolness and fragrance and conversa- tion are all made up of sensations; but the delight and pleasantness and disagreeableness are affective processes.
Let us see, now, what affection is. We know that Life is a there are two opposite processes always going on opposing in the body: processes of decay, and processes of ^^^^^^ renewal. We all tend to decay, to die; but we eat and drink and sleep, and so renew our strength for living. Life, then, means that the body is holding its own against the forces that would destroy it; living means a balance between the building-up and the pulling-down processes.
Think of the living body as a lump of jelly, stand- and the ing on its base, but not standing very firmly. All nInceTf over the surface of the lump are little dents or pits, either force at a given These represent the sense-organs, the channels by moment is which the things and processes of the outside world ^^ ^Iff^cfwn. gain access to consciousness. Every time that a stimulus forces its way into one of the dents, the 57 a A k 58 Ajfection and Feeling wJiole lump is tilted, — tilted towards a position of greater or less steadiness. The conscious processes that accompany this tilt are affections. If the tilt is for the good of the lump, the affection is pleasantness; if for its harm, tmpleasantness.
If the organism is balanced as at a of the Figure, a stimulus coming in the direction of the arrow will tend to overthrow it, i.e., will be unpleasant. If the organism is balanced as in b, the stimulus will tend to restore its equilibrium, i.e., will be pleasant.
Do not confuse this ^equilibrium' with that of § 18. There we were talking of the actual balance of the body in space; of our standing upright or staggering and falling. Here we mean by " equilibrium ' the balance of growth and decay, of waste and renewal, that the living body shows us.
Do not think, either, that every stimulus is a life-and-death matter. Many stimuli that are sensed are not felt at all; the tilt is too slight.
And lastly, do not suppose that everything which is pleasant to yoii., under your particular circumstances, is good for you. Nature strikes averages; she does not look after the individual. Pleasant things are good on the average, — good for the per- fectly healthy, adult animal, living under natural conditions. Man is a domesticated animal, living like sheep and oxen under artificial conditions; and there are many things pleasant to particular men which are not for their good, do not conduce to their upbuilding. Nevertheless, the rule holds as a rule of averages. 07i the whole, what is pleasant is for the advantage of the organism.
Definition of Affcction, then, is an elementary conscious process a ec ion. which may be set up by the stimulation of any bodily organ. And while we find some 50,000 different sensations, we find only two different affections.
§ 25. Feeling. — No affection, or mixture of affec- Definition of tions, ever appears in consciousness alone. Affec- ^ ^"^' Jtion always comes with the stimulation of some organ, and consequently always comes together with the sensation from some organ. When we have in consciousness a complex process made up of sensa- tion and pleasantness or unpleasantness, — and when the affective side of the process, its pleasantness or unpleasantness, strikes us more forcibly than the sense-side of it, — we call the total process a feeling.
It is clear, if we work through the list of sensa- Some sensa- tions, that some of them enter into feelings much jn^to^fedings more readily than others. Thus ( i ) black, white "^^^^ readily • than others.
and grey are hardly ever very pleasant or unpleas- ant. We are so familiar with them (in printing and writing, in our clothes, etc.) that they have ceased to affect us. Only when a light is so dazzling that the sensation of pain is set up in the muscles of the eye do we feel it to be unpleasant. The same thing is true, though in slightly less degree, of colours. A simple colour rarely enters into a feeling; we are so constantly surrounded with coloured objects (carpet, wall-paper, pictures, book-covers, clothes, houses, grass, sky, etc.) that we have grown used to colour. (2) Giddiness is never anything but unpleasant. But noise and tone, like brightness and colour, we have always with us (sounds in the house or street, our own and our friends' voices); so that they affect us but little. (3) Sensations from the skin differ among themselves. Pure pressure-feelings are rare; tem- perature-feelings (oppressive heat, bitter cold) are 6o Affection and Feeling quite common; while pain, like giddiness, is natu- rally unpleasant. (4) Tastes and smells affect us so much that we are apt to speak of them simply as 'agreeable' or 'disagreeable,' without troubling to think of their sensation-names. (5) Strain may be pleasant or unpleasant or neither. Hunger and thirst are always either pleasant or unpleasant; nausea is always unpleasant. But most important of all for the arousal of feelings are the stimulations of internal bodily organs that call forth the obscure sensations mentioned in § 21 (3). It is just because these sensations are swamped, so to speak, by pleasantness or unpleasantness that they are so dif- ficult to introspect as sensations.
Remember that we are speaking now of sensations, and not of perceptions or ideas, which are groups of sensations. We get some of our keenest pleasures from sights and sounds, — from beautiful paintings and statues, or from music, — but these pleasures come from mixtures or groups of colours and tones, not from simple sensations.
Oftentimes the pleasantness of a perception outweighs the unpleasantness of a sensation. Thus children will twirl round and round, from pleasure in rhythmical movement (perception), although they know that the giddiness (sen- sation) which will follow the twirling cannot be anything but unpleasant.
The law of Summing up, then, we may say that the sensations which tell us most about the outside world (those of sight and hearing) are least likely to enter into feel- ings, while the sensations that tell us least about out- side matters (those from the internal bodily organs) hardly ever come to consciousness except as parts of feelings.
feeling.
The word ^ feeling ' is used in ordinary language to mean Different several different processes. It will be well, for the sake of ["^^"^"§^ °^ ^ ' the word clearness in our thinking, to distinguish these. ' feeling.'
(i) Feeling is used for the perception of touch (§§ 46, 51). We say that a thing ' feels hard/ and we ' feel in our pocket ' for something.
(2) It is used for certain internal sensations^ whether they are strongly tinged by affection or not. Thus we ^ feel hungry' and 'feel thirsty/ although the hunger and thirst may be neither strongly pleasant nor strongly unpleasant.
(3) It is used for some very complicated affective processes, iox emotions and moods (§ 58). Thus^ we 'feel angry' or 'feel blue.' Anger is an emotion; 'the blues ' is a mood.
(4) It is used, as by us here, for a mixture of affection and sensation in which the affection is the stronger of the two pro- cesses. Thus it is correct to say that we 'feel cramped,' or ' suffocated,' or ' well,' or ' fresh,' or ' drowsy ': all these pro- cesses are made up of internal sensations and affection, and the affection dominates the whole process. It may or may not be correct to say that we ' feel ' hot or cold, hungry or thirsty; it all depends on whether we are thinking of the sensations or their accompanying affections. If we 'feel bitterly cold,' or 'jolly hungry,' the process is a true feeling.
Let us introspect a true feeling, — say, the feeling of The feeling urowsmess, — and convnice ourselves that it is made up of ^^^j ^^^ sensation and affection. Drowsiness begins, on the sensation side, with a sensation of pressure on the upper eyelids, with a tickling in the throat that leads to yawning and so brings a complex of muscular sensations, and with a sensation of pressure at the back of the neck (the head droops). The lids grow constantly heavier; breathing gets slower and deeper, so that its sensations change j the lower jaw be- comes heavy, so that the mouth opens and the chin falls forward on the breast (pressure sensations); the neck sen- sations become stronger, the head heavier; and lastly the hmbs grow heavy, and arrange themselves by their own weight. Sensations of temperature come from the surface of the skin, thrills of warmth running their course at different 62 Affection and Feeling Mental pro- cesses have bodily ex- pressions.
The four bodily signs of affection: parts of limbs and trunk. Over all this mass of sensation is spread an affection; an easy, comfortable pleasantness. And the affection outweighs the sensation; we know better that we ^ feel comfortable ' than that sensations are coming in from this or that organ. — The total process, then, has all the marks of a true feeHng.
§ 26. The Bodily Signs of Affection. — Every mental process has some way of expressing itself through the body; or, in other words, there is always some bodily sign or indication which tells us, if we are good observers, that a certain mental process is in our neighbour's consciousness. Sensations and ideas show themselves by movements, the commonest of which is the movement of speech. For speaking, on its physiological side, is a series of movements; the movements of the muscles of the larynx regulate the passage of air through the slit formed by the vocal cords. Affective processes also show themselves by movements, and more especially (as we shall see later, § 61) by movements of the muscles of the face: we ' look ' pleased or angry, grieved or frightened.
But affection, as we saw, corresponds in conscious- ness to a tilt of the whole body. We shall therefore expect to find that the whole body gives evidence of the presence of affection in consciousness. Not only will there be particular movements, a particular ' play of feature ' or what not, to tell us that affection is there; we must be able to read off from the whole body whether the mind is pleasantly or unpleasantly disposed.
Experiment has shown that this is actually the case. We have no less than four ways of knowing, § 26. The Bodily Signs of Affection 63 by the general behaviour of the body, which of the two affective processes is tingeing the consciousness of the moment. We know it (i) by the state of the pulse; (2) by the state of breathing; (3) by the size of the body; and (4) by the amount of muscular strength that can be exerted.
(i) When we are pleased, the pulse is strong; when pulse, we are displeased, weak. (2) The same thing holds of breathing, breathing. If an experience is pleasant, we breathe more deeply; if unpleasant, less deeply. In joy, we breathe in great breaths; in sorrow, our breathing is short and weak.
(3) When we are pleased, the blood flows freely into the volume, little blood-vessels that lie just beneath the skin; when we are displeased, it is withdrawn to the internal organs of the body. Hence we are really larger, we ' expand,' in pleasure, and * shrink into ourselves ' during an unpleasant experience.
(4) When we are pleased we are stronger muscularly, we strength. can put out more strength, than when we are displeased.
We * feel stronger ' and are stronger than usual when we are heartily and justly angry (pleasant anger). Grief bows us down, crushes us, leaves us physically weaker than we were.
If we wish to measure these bodily changes accurately, we must use complicated scientific instruments. But we can all assure ourselves, from our everyday experience, that they take place. And it is interesting to note, further, that a good novel- ist refers to them, when he is describing the signs of feeling in his characters. Turn, e.g.^ to David Copperfield. You will find the following sentence in ch. xxviii.: ^^As the step ap- proached, I knew it, and felt my heart beat high." Dickens has noticed that the heart-beat is stronger than usual when one is greatly pleased. In ch. Hi. we have: ^^ He looked at us atten- tively, with his whole face breathing short and quick in every feature."" The sentence is meant to describe a man's appearance when he is under the influence of rage and fear: there is a simi- lar passage in ch. xiv. Again: in ch. xxxvi. it is said that Mr. Micawber ^^ walked so erect on the strength of this virtuous action, that his chest looked half as broad again when he lighted 64 Affection and Feeling The differ- ences be- tween sensa- tion and affection: (i) only one affection can be present at any given time: US downstairs/' If Mr. Micawber's arm or leg had been meas- ured, his virtuous pleasure would have been found to carry with it an actual expansion of that part of him also. Lastly, when Miss Mowcher captures the respectable Littimer in ch. Ixi., "she'd have took him single-handed if he had been Samson," — so strong was she in her righteous indignation. And there is a similar remark in ch. vii.
It is, of course, only through introspection that we are able to bring these bodily changes into connection with the mental processes of affection. We first observe the connec- tion in our own case, and then have the right to argue from the same bodily sign to the same mental process in the case of others. It will, perhaps, make the task of introspection easier if we note now some of the chief differences between sensation and affection, as elements of consciousness.
§ 27. Affection and Sensation. — The best way to realise the great difference between sense-experience and feel-experience is just to sense and to feel. But it will help us to sense and feel observantly if we put down in words some of the differences between the two kinds of experience. We cannot put them all down here; we have not travelled far enough into psychology. There are three of them, however, that we are now in a position to understand.
(i) A sensation is set up by the stimulation of a particular organ; an affection by the tilt given to the whole body through that stimulation. Suppose now that (as always happens in actual experience) two or three sense-organs are stimulated together; there will be a group of sensations in consciousness at the same time. Every stimulus is represented by its own special sensation; the sensations run peace- ably side by side. But the body as a whole cannot be tilted botli up and down at the same time; either § 2/. Ajfection and Sensation 65 the tilt-up will be the stronger, or the tilt-down, or the two will counterbalance each other and there will be no tilt. This means that the two opposite affec- tions cannot ever be in consciousness together. The combination of stimuli which has called out the group of sensations will be either pleasant as a whole, or unpleasant as a whole, or neither: it cannot possibly be both. — In other words: a consciousness may be made up of all sorts of sensations, sights and sounds and tastes and organic sensations; but the affection of that consciousness is a single affection, a pleasant- ness or unpleasantness which spreads over the total stream of sense-processes, and makes it as a whole pleasant or unpleasant.
There is a reference to this law in the Pickwick Papers. " A good, contented, well-breakfasted juryman,^' says Mr. Perker (ch. xxxiv.), ^^is a capital thing to get hold of. Discontented or hungry jurymen always find for the plaintiff." That is to say: if your mood is pleasurable, if you are comfortable and experiencing the pleasant feelings of satiety and easy digestion, you tend to see everything in a favourable light; if your mood is unpleasurable, and you are uncomfortable and hungry, you are likely to take the worst possible view of your fellow-creatures' actions. The affection of the moment is spread over the whole of consciousness.
Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnets^ viii., xcviii. — For a discussion of ^ mixed feelings,' see § 65.
(2) We are inclined, until we know better, to think (2) affection is subiectivc * of sensations as something physical. Many of the readers of the previous Chapters were, probably, surprised to find that colours and temperatures were dealt with by psychology; they had thought that it was the sky that is blue, the air or ivater that is hot or cold. Not till we have fully grasped the differ- 66 Ajfection and Feeling ence between the physics of light (ether-waves), the physiology of light (stimulations and excitations in eye and cortex), and the psychology of light (sensations of brightness and colour), can we understand that * blue ' is a mental process rather than a physical fact. But we never think of affections in this way. When we talk of ' a piece of unpleasant news,' we do not think of the unpleasantness as being where the news is, in the letter or newspaper; we mean ' news that makes us uncomfortable,' ' a piece of unpleasant-to-us news.' When we tell a friend that a certain book is ' interesting,' we mean that it pleased us and will please him; the interest is not between the covers of the book, but is aroused in our minds by the book. All our feelings are, so to say, personal matters, belonging simply and solely to our- selves; we never have any inclination to look at them as physical facts, outside of us.
This difference between sensation and affection is some- times expressed by the terms 'objective' and 'subjective.' Both are mental processes; but sensation is an objective, affection a subjective mental process. Sensations stand for outside things and processes; my sensation of blue mearts the sky, to me; a sensation of pressure means my book or my cup and saucer. Affections stand for the health or ill- health of my own body; they 7nean that my body is in a good state or a bad state. Hence they are more personal to me than sensations are.
We can see now why it is that the sensations from the internal bodily organs enter so readily into feelings, and are so difficult to introspect as sensations. They tell us of the state of things in some particular organ of the body, just as affection tells us of the state of the whole body. If we wish § 2/. Ajfection and Sensation 6/ to see them as sensations, therefore, we must pretend that we have no personal relation to that part of the body in which they arise; we must look at the organ as if it were something apart from us, hke the sky or a chair or a sound. We can do this, though it is not easy. But we cannot look at the whole body in this way, we cannot get out of our bodies altogether; and so we cannot get rid of the personal or subjective flavour of affection. Indeed, if we could, there would be no affections; affection would have been turned into sensation.
(3) If a stimulus is repeated^over and over again, (3) affection the sensation aroused becomes clearer and clearer, |1 repeUtion until it has reached the greatest possible degree of clearness, but the affection set up grows weaker and weaker, until at last it disappears altogether. The usefulness of this difference is clear. We have to live in certain surroundings, to work out our lives under certain external conditions. We must, then, become wholly familiar with these surroundings; we must ^ know our way about ' them, without having to waste time by re-learning them from day to day. In other words, the sensations which we get from them must become clear and remain clear. But it would never do for us to be perpetually affected by our sur- roundings; we should be worn out with trifles, and unfit for serious work. It is therefore a very useful property of the nervous system that it can adapt or adjust itself, within certain limits, to its surround- ings; that it can become ' set,' as it were, at a cer- tain slight tilt, so as to meet -the tilt in the other direction given it by familiar stimuli.
Think how vexed you are when you lose some Httle thing; how sorry you are when you break something; how 68 Ajfectio.n and Feeling pleased you are when something is given you. But think, too, how seriously your life would be interfered with if you felt the same feeling over again every time that you thought of the loss, every time that you thought of the broken cup, every time that you saw the gift on your table. Life would be a constant seesaw of feeling; one would never find op- portunity to ' settle down ' to anything, and there would be no spur to press on towards new enjoyments.
Think, too, how much time would be wasted if you had to find your way about your home and native town just as if they were always a strange house and a new town. Famil- iarity has given you clear ideas, distinct pictures, of your home and town; you take them for granted.
Here, then, is a great difference, and a very useful differ- ence, between sensation and affection. If you find that one part of a concrete process gets clearer with use, while an- other part fades out with repetition, you may be sure that the first part is the sense-side and the second the feel-side of the process. — Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnets^ hi., Ivi.
We cannot enter here into the question of the bodily con- ditio7is of affection; we must wait till we have discussed the state of attention, to which affection is very closely related. Before we go on to deal with attention, however, we must notice that some psychologists give a very different account of affection from that given above. It is only fair that we should see what their account is; and it will be well to try to find out why they differ from us.
§ 28. Are there More than Two Kinds of Affection?
We have recognised two, and only two, kinds or qualities of affection: pleasantness and unpleasant- ness. This means (to quote Professor Wundt) that **the unpleasurableness of a toothache, of an intel- lectual failure, and of a tragical experience is iden- tical." In so far as they are 7inpleasant experiences.
§ 28. More tJiaii Two Kinds of Ajfection? 69 the toothache-, faikire- and tragedy-consciousnesses are the same.
Professor Wundt looks upon this as '' an entirely untenable assertion." '*The variety of simple affec- tive qualities," he says, ^^is exceedingly great, much greater than that of sensations." That is, mind is made up not of some 50,000 sensations and two affec- tions, — but of some 50,000 sensations and a great many more than 50,000 affections. Here is a radical difference of opinion!
Professor Wundt confesses that we cannot name Wundt'ssix all these affections. But he thinks that we can dis- affective pro- cesses.
tinguish six great groups of elementary affective processes. These are (i) pleasantness and unpleas- antness, (2) strain and relaxation, and (3) excitement and depression. Just as there are a large number of * smells ' and ' colours ' and ' sounds,' so there are a large number of different affections under each of these six heads.
Which is the right view } Nobody can say; the matter must be decided by long-continued and care- ful introspection. But, supposing our own view to be right, can we say how the other view could have arisen } Yes: that question can be answered. The other view might easily arise from the confusion of feeling and affection, i.e.y of specific and elementary processes.
The reader knows what is meant in psychology by an 'Elementary* elementary process: it is a process which cannot be split up and 'specific mto snnpler processes by introspection. Now the specific character of a process is different from elementariness, but may readily be confused with elementariness. It is what JO Affection a7id Feeling makes one concrete process different from another concrete process that is composed of the same elements. Thus all the emotions (fear, hate, joy, hope) are made up of the same material: perceptions and ideas, organic sensations, and affection. But no one would ever take a hate for a fear, or a hope for a joy; these emotions are specifically different. Again: all ideas are made up of sensations; but the idea of a table and the idea of a desk could not be mistaken for each other. And again: all feelings are made up (on our view) of sensations and affection; but the feeling of drowsiness is specifically different from the feehng of suffocation.