第126章 PSYCHOLOGICAL LAWS OF RELATION.(2)

On this basis we can not only reconcile the increase of psychical energy with the constancy of physical energy as accepted in the natural sciences, but we find in the two reciprocally supplementary standards for the judgment of our total experience.. The increase of psychical energy is not seen in its right light until it is recognized as the reverse, subjective side of physical constancy. The former, being as it is indefinite, since the measure may be very different under different conditions, holds only under the condition that the psychical processes are continuous. As the psychological correlate of this increase we have the fact which forces itself upon us in experience, that psychical values disappear.

5. The laws, of psychical relations supplements that of resultants; it refers not to the relation of the components of a psychical interconnection to the value of the whole, but rather to their reciprocal relation. The law of resultants thus holds for the synthetic processes of consciousness, the law of relations for the analytic. Every resolution of a conscious content into its single members is an act of relating analysis. [p. 324]

Such a resolution takes place in the successive apperception of the parts of a whole which is ideated at first only in a general way, a process which is to be seen in sense-perceptions and associations, and then in clearly recognized form in the division of aggregate ideas. In the same way, every apperception is an analytic process whose two factors are the emphasizing of one single content and the marking off of this one content from all others. The first of these two partial processes is what produces clearness, the second is what produces distinctness of apperception (p. 208, 4). The most complete expression of this law is to be found in the processes of apperceptive analysis and the simple relating and comparing functions upon which it is based (p. 250 and 260).

In the latter more especially, we see that the essential content of the law of relations is the principle that every single psychical content receives its significance from the relations in which it stands to other psychical contents. When these relations are quantitative, this principle takes the form of a principle of relative quantitative comparison such as is expressed in Weber's law (p. 254).

6. The law of psychical contrasts is, in turn, supplementary to the law of relations. It refers, like the latter, to the relations of psychical contents to one another., It is itself based on the fundamental division of the immediate contents of experience into objective and subjective components, a division which is due to the very conditions of psychical development. Under subjective components are included all the elements and combinations of elements which, like the feelings and emotions are essential constituents of volitional processes. These are all arranged in groups made up of opposite qualities corresponding to the chief affective directions of pleasurable and unpleasurable, exciting and depressing, straining and relaxing feelings (p. 83). These opposites obey in their succession the [p. 325] general law of intensification through contrast In its concrete application, this law is always determined in part by special temporal conditions, for every subjective state requires a certain period for its development; and if, when it has once reached its maximum, it continues for a long time, it loses its ability to arouse the contrast-effect. This fact is connected with the other, that there is a certain medium, though greatly varying, rate of psychical processes most favorable for the intensity of all feelings and emotions.

This law of contrast has its origin in the attributes of the subjective contents of experience, but is secondarily applied to the ideas and their elements also, for these ideas are always accompanied by more or less emphatic feelings due either to their own content onto the character of their spacial [sic] and temporal combination. Thus the principle of intensification through contrast finds its broader application especially in the case of certain sensations, such as those of sight, and in the case of spacial [sic] and temporal ideas.

7. The law of contrast stands in close relation to the two preceding laws. On the one hand, it may be regarded as the application of the general law of relations to the special case where the related psychical contents range between opposites. On the other hand, the fact that under suitable circumstances antithetical psychical processes may intensify each other, while falling under the law- of contrast, is at the same time a special application of the principle of creative synthesis.