第35章 SIMPLE FEELINGS.(4)

7. In consequence of the difficulties indicated, a complete list of simple affective qualities is out of the question, even more than is such a list in the case of simple sensations. Then, too, there are still other reasons why it would be impossible. The feelings, by virtue of the attributes described above, do not form closed systems, as do the sensations of tone, of light, or of taste, but are united in a single manifold, interconnected in all its parts (p. 35). Furthermore, the union of certain feelings gives rise to feelings which are not only unitary, but even simple in character (p. 75). In this manifold of feelings, made up, it is, of a great variety of most delicately shaded qualities, it is nevertheless possible to distinguish certain different chief directions, including certain affective opposites of predominant character. Such directions may always be designated by the two names that indicate their opposite extremes. Each name is, however, to be looked [p. 83] upon as a collective name including an endless number of feelings differing from one another.

Three such chief directions may be distinguished; we will call them the direction of pleasurable and unpleasurable feelings, that of arousing and subduing (exciting and depressing) feelings, and finally that of feelings of strain and relaxation. Any concrete feeling may belong to all of these directions or only two or even only one of them. The last mentioned possibility is all that makes it possible to distinguish the different directions. The combination of different affective directions which ordinarily takes place, and the above mentioned (p. 79) influences which are due to the overlapping of feelings arising from various causes, all go to explain why we are perhaps never in,i state entirely free from feeling, although the general nature of the feelings demands an indifference-zone.

8. Feelings connected with sensations of the general sense and with impressions of smell and taste, may be regarded as good examples of pure pleasurable and unpleasurable forms. A sensation of pain, for example, is regularly accompanied by an unpleasurable feeling without any admixture of other affective forms. In connection with pure sensations, arousing and subduing feelings may be observed best in the case of color-impressions in clang-impressions. Thus, red is arousing, blue subduing. Feelings of strain, and relaxation are always connected with the temporal course of processes. Thus, in expecting a sense-impression, we note a feeling of strain, and on the arrival of the expected event, a feeling of relaxation.

Both the expectation and satisfaction may be accompanied at the same time by a feeling of excitement or, under special conditions, by pleasurable or unpleasurable feelings. Still, these other feelings may be entirely absent, and then those of strain and relaxation are recognized as [p. 84] specific forms which can not be reduced to others, just as the two directions mentioned before. The presence of more than one direction may be discovered in the case of very many feelings, nevertheless, simple in quality, just, as much as the feelings mentioned. Thus, the feelings of seriousness and gaiety connected with the, sensible impressions of low and high tones or dark and bright colors, are to be regarded as characteristic qualities which are outside the indifference-zone in both the pleasurable and unpleasurable direction and the exciting and depressing direction. We are never to forget here that pleasurable and unpleasurable, exciting and depressing, are not names of single affective qualities, but of directions, within which an indefinitely large number of simple qualities appear, so that the unpleasurable quality of seriousness is not only to be distinguished from that of a painful touch, of a dissonance, etc., but even the different cases of seriousness itself may vary in their quality. Again, the direction of pleasurable and unpleasurable feelings, is united with that of feelings of strain and relaxation, in the case of the affective tones of rhythms. The regular succession of strain and relaxation in these cases is attended by pleasure, the disturbance of this regularity by the opposite feeling, as when we are disappointed or surprised. Then, too, under certain circumstances the feeling may, in both cages, be of an exciting or a subduing character.

9.These examples lead very naturally to the assumption that the three chief directions of simple feelings depend on the relations in which each single feeling stands to the whole succession of psychical processes. In this succession every feeling has in general a threefold significance 1) It represents a particular modification of the state of the present moment; this modification belongs to the pleasurable and unpleasurable direction. 2) It exercises a certain definite influence on the succeeding state; this [p. 85] influence can be distinguished in its opposite forms as excitation and inhibition. 3) It is determined in its essential character by the preceding state; this determining influence shows itself in the given feeling in the forms of strain, and relaxation. These conditions also render it improbable that other chief directions of feeling exist.

9a. Of the three affective directions mentioned, only that of pleasurable and unpleasurable feelings has generally been recognized; the others are reckoned as emotions. But the emotions, as we shall see in §13, come from combinations of feelings; it is obvious, therefore, that the fundamental forms of emotions must have their antecedents in the affective elements.