第64章 COMPOSITE FEELINGS.(1)

1. In the development of temporal ideas it appears clearly that the discrimination of sensational and affective components in immediate experience is purely a product of abstraction. For time-ideas the abstraction proves impossible, because, in this case, certain feelings play an essential part in the rise of the ideas. Time-ideas may, therefore, be called ideas only when the final results of the process, the arrangement of certain sensations in relation to one another and to the subject, are considered; when their real composition is looked into, they are complex products of sensations and feelings. They are thus to a certain extent transitional forms between ideas and those psychical compounds that are made up of affective elements, and are designated by the general name affective processes. These affective processes resemble time-ideas especially in the impossibility of an abstract sepa- [p. 159] ration of the affective from the sensational elements in the investigation of their rise. This is due to the fact that in the development of all kinds of affective processes, sensations and ideas are determining factors, just as feelings are among the essential factors of temporal ideas.

2. Intensive affective combinations, or composite feelings, must be the first affective processes discussed, because in them the characteristic attributes of a single compound are the products of a momentary state. The description of the feeling, therefore, requires only the exact comprehension of the momentary condition, not a combination of several processes occurring in time and proceeding from one another. In this respect, the composite feelings stand in the same relation to emotions and volitions, which always consist of affective processes extending through periods of time, as intensive ideas do to extensive. Intensive psychical compounds, in the broadest sense of the term, include, accordingly, intensive ideas and composite feelings. Extensive compounds include as special forms of tempora1 arrangements, besides the temporal ideas, also emotions and volitions.

3. Composite feelings, then, are intensive states of unitary character in which single simple affective components are to be perceived. We may distinguish in every such feeling component feelings and a resultant feeling. The last component feelings are always simple sense-feelings.

Several of these may unite to form a partial resultant which enters into the whole as a compound component.

Every composite feeling may, accordingly, be divided, 1) into a total feeling made up of all its components, and 2) into single partial feelings which go to make up the total feeling. These partial feelings are in turn of different grades according as they are simple sense-feelings (partial feelings of the first order) or feelings which are themselves [p. 160] composite (partial feelings of the second or higher orders). Where we have partial feelings of higher orders, complicated combinations or interlacings of the component elements may take place. A partial feeling of lower order may, at the same time, enter into several partial feelings of higher order. Such interlacings may render the nature of the total feeling exceedingly complicated. The whole may sometimes change its character, even when its elements remain the same, according as one or the other of the possible combinations of partial feelings takes place.

3 a. Thus, the musical chord c e g has a corresponding total feeling of harmony whose last elements, or partial feelings of the first order, are the feelings corresponding to the single clangs c, e, and g . Between these two kinds of feeling stand, as partial feelings of the second order, the three feelings of harmony from the double clangs c e, e g and c g . The character of the total feeling may have four different shades according as one of these partial feelings of the second order predominates, or all are equally strong. The cause of the predominance of one of these complex partial feelings may be either the greater intensity of its sensational components, or the influence of preceding feelings. If, for example, c e g follows c e g the effect of c b e g will be intensified, while if c e g follows c e a the same will hold for c g . Similarly, a number of colors may have a different effect according as one or the other partial combination predominates. In the last case, however, because of the extensive arrangement of the impressions, the spacial proximity has an influence antagonistic to the variation in the manner of combination and, furthermore, the influence of the spacial form with all its accompanying conditions is an essentially complicating factor.

4. The structure of composite feelings is, thus, in general exceedingly complicated. Still, there are different degrees of development even here.

The complex feelings arising from impressions of touch, smell, and taste are essentially simpler [p. 161] in character than those connected with auditory and visual ideas.