Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/652

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636 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

unity in the one Self." On the contrary, according to the theory of "ejective" interpretation, approved by metaphysicians, before we can appreciate the experience of the person imitated, we must first by imitation make the experience our own; after that we attribute to the one imitated experience like that which we have secured by imitating him, and so for the first time comprehend the inward feel of that which we imitated as an outward act, either for the sake of the outward act, for the sake of the outward conse- quences of the act, or for the sake of inward experiences which we inferred from our own previous experience would accompany the outward conditions imitated.

To summarize: We have frankly admitted the important differences between the phenomena of consciousness and other phenomena. We have admitted, moreover, the differences between the affective, and the cognitive and volitional, elements in experience, and that there is a sense in which affective experience is neither describable, permanent, nor public; that the affective phase of experience is simply our own appreciation of our own states of consciousness, and that the emotional quality of social phenomena would never be known by a being who himself had never felt emotion. But we do feel emotions of our own, and are therefore qualified to recognize the same varieties of emotion as evinced by others. And the self-knowledge that arises intro- spectively in our own consciousness is as truly matter of observa- tion as, and no more metaphysical ( in the sense of non-scientific) than, the knowledge that gets into consciousness through the medium of sensation. And the emotional life of the society to which we belong its patriotism, its enthusiasms and aversions constitute a part of what we justly call the objective psychic world, though it may be the subtlest part, least easy to discern. For purposes of science, socially prevalent varieties of emotion are, first, "describable" inasmuch as they exist in time, can be identified and named, and to all appearance (and the scientist has to do only with appearance, and his business is to describe the phenomena which appear in their apparent relations) they arise out of observable conditions and issue in observable effects ; and, second, they are " permanent inasmuch as emotion, though it be