Page:Psychology and preaching.djvu/85

 FEELING 67

has three &quot; dimensions.&quot; A given feeling is found in each of the scales, pleasantness-unpleasantness, tension-relax ation, excitement-quiescence. This doctrine has been much criticised on the ground that the last two couplets of terms apply to the sensational factors of consciousness but not to feeling per se. The misunderstanding seems to me to arise out of the fact that both Wundt and his critics have failed to make the distinction, mentioned above, between feeling and feeling-tone. They both seem to treat the pleasantness or unpleasantness of a sensation as a feeling. But a feeling is in fact a sensation or blended mass of sensations plus a feeling-tone of pleasantness or unpleasantness which indi cates its meaning for the organism. Wundt s &quot; tension-re laxation &quot; and &quot; excitement-quiescence &quot; may be simply organic sensational factors of a given state of consciousness, as his critics maintain; but these have their inevitable ac companiment of pleasant or unpleasant tone, and with this constitute a feeling.

This distinction, it seems to me, enables us to resolve another difficulty in which many writers on the subject find themselves. If a feeling is nothing more than the pleasant ness or unpleasantness of an experience, then it would seem that there are only two kinds of feelings. But is it true that there is no difference between pleasant feelings or between unpleasant feelings except that of degree? May not two pleasant feelings be different in kind as well as in degree? If a feeling is composed of a mass of more or less definite sensations plus a feeling-tone of pleasantness or unpleasantness, the answer obviously is, yes. The feeling aroused by the news of my friend s recovery from a critical illness is different in kind, and not alone in degree, from that aroused by a drink of cold water on a hot day. The chagrin aroused by the defeat of my favourite base-ball team is a different feeling from the sense of sin. They are both unpleasant and, if the unpleasantness is the feeling then there is no difference between them as feelings except possibly one of degree. This is contrary to common sense

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