Page:Mary Whiton Calkins - The Abandonment of Sensationalism in Psychology (The American Journal of Psychology, 1909-04-01).pdf/3

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The Wundtian conclusion from both sorts of evidence is the following: Experiences which are thus shown to be, on the one hand, introspectively elemental, distinct, and independently variable and, on the other hand, accompanied by clearly differentiated yet co-ordinated circulatory and respiratory phenomena are elements of consciousness belonging in a class together. Therefore tension–relaxation and excitement–quiesence form, with pleasantness-unpleasantness, the enlarged class of the ‘feelings (Gefühle)’.

This form of advance upon the old sensationalism has, however, found little favor outside the rather narrow group of Wundt’s fellow-workers and students. No one questions the occurrence of straining and relaxing, exciting and quieting emotions; but these distinctions, it is claimed, are incorrectly referred to the presence of elemental ‘feelings’—strain, relaxation and the rest. The alleged elemental experiences are analvzable, rather, into non-affective elements. Against the Wundtian argumeuts from experiment it is urged by the critics that the outcome of experiment is very far from conclusive in Wundt’s favor. Even experiments undertaken from the same theoretical standpoint as Alechsieff’s issue in results of very conflicting nature—results which he himself can explain only by a supposition which is really a criticism of the experimental method, the supposition, namely, that the stimulus was too complex to rouse any discoverably elemental experiences.

The experiments (earlier than Alechsieff’s) carried on in the Cornell laboratory to test Wundt’s theory seem also to point