Page:Psychology and preaching.djvu/220

 202 PSYCHOLOGY AND PREACHING

ward, subjective reference. There is a realization of the subject which stands over against that object. Every con scious state, certainly every ordinary one, has this polarity, object-subject ; though conditions may render either the sub ject or the object more prominent at the moment. Further more, the meaning of the object for the subject is always a phase of this consciousness, very prominent or very incon spicuous as the case may be. Now, when consciousness assumes this polar form of the object-subject relation the function is cognitive. When it appreciates the meaning of the object for the subject the function is affective it is feeling. Simultaneously with the development of this con scious state the nervous excitation is passing or tending to pass into some form of muscular contraction some motor response to the stimulus which has occasioned the whole process. The feeling and the motor response are thus con comitant. It can hardly be said, therefore, that the feeling which accompanies a given act is its motive, or prompts it.

But the facts just stated do not at all imply that feeling has no influence in determining voluntary action. The proc ess as described does not include certain factors which are characteristic of voluntary action. The specific character istics of volition are, first, the presence in consciousness of two or more ends ; second, the choice of one of these imaged ends as against the other, which involves more or less of deliberation, i.e., the holding in check of the motor response until the meaning of the several ends for the self shall have been considered; and third, the fiat or resolution to realize the one selected, which is followed by the release of the nervous energy in one direction rather than another. Now, each of these ideas of ends is accompanied by feeling; the deliberation consists in comparing the values of these ends, i.e., their affective meaning for the self; the decision, there fore, is in the last analysis grounded in feeling.

If there were space to go into further details it could be shown that in other more indirect and remote ways feeling plays a great role in determining voluntary courses of

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