Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/770

 756 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

So long as this feeling-association is not thought of as also cognitive no error is involved. But when it is so thought of we have error and social friction of all degrees from a warfare between religion and science which stirs a sect or nation to the thousand and one little misunderstandings which distract the daily life of the members of my groups. Thus, in some com- munities the man who works on Sunday is put in the same class with the occasional drinker and the latter often in the same class with the habitual drinker because all stir the same feeling- tone. Again, the mother in our isolated family became attached to a summer boarder, and attributed to this woman her own religious beliefs, in fact, ran through the whole category of her expansive symbols, attributing them all to this woman who had become to her a symbol of expansive feeling. One of her reli- gious beliefs was that dancing was wicked and when I told her that the object of her devotion danced, in fact was a beautiful dancer, she would not believe it. I have many examples which prove that, as Professor Ross puts it, "Beliefs can be controverted but not feelings." As he says, "Only by vivid images and im- pressions that excite counter- feelings is it possible. to extirpate a superannuated sectarian feud, class antipathy, or race preju- dice."3o

One of the greatest difficulties in the way of training people to distinguish between the two associative processes is that the feeling-tone of states feelingly and not cognitively associated is often subconscious.^^ Often one does not realize that the reason he believes evil things about another is that he does not like him or that the reason he believes good things about another is that he does like him. Consequently, action prompted by feeling- association is explained in other ways than by citing the feeling which is the cause of it. Thus we find clergymen who theologize about their religious beliefs, while others, with finer discernment, declare that religion is a life and not a theology.

" Social Psychology, pp. 266-70.

" "The general contrast between the apperception by quick, total, merged, affective impressions, and the successive and separate attention to logically selected detail, falls in large measure within the contrast of the subconscious to the conscious." — ^Jastrow, The Subconscious, p. 112.