Page:Psychology and preaching.djvu/86

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

68 PSYCHOLOGY AND PREACHING

and to the testimony of consciousness. The mere pleasant ness or unpleasantness of the organic sensations may be dis tinguished in thought from them; but as a matter of fact the sensation, or mass of sensations, and its feeling-tone are integral and inseparable parts of a single experience, and this is a feeling.

2. Feeling and emotion. Among our affective expe riences there are some which have a more specific, definite and intense character than others. These are called " the emotions," and by psychologists are often treated separately as phenomena distinct from the feelings in general. It is not possible to give a satisfactory list of the emotions ; but anger, fear, joy, grief, shame, pride, and sexual excitement are the principal primary emotions, though they may be blended with one another in many complex forms, and each of them has its moral, intellectual or aesthetic correlative. Each of them is supposed to result from the excitation of a particular instinct. " Each of the principal instincts con ditions some one kind of emotional excitement whose quality is specific and peculiar to it; and the emotional excitement of specific quality that is the affective aspect of the operation of any one of the principal instincts may be called a primary emotion." l On the physical side they are marked by cer tain characteristic disturbances of the nervous system, and on the psychical side they are marked by certain masses of blended sensations usually with intense feeling-tones. For instance, " in anger we ordinarily find the breathing dis turbed, the circulation irregular and many of the voluntary muscles, e.g., those of the hands and face, tense and rigid. These muscular movements are inevitably reported by dis tinct modifications in the tone of consciousness. In grief an opposite type of muscular condition is met with, i.e., de pression of motor tonicity throughout most of the system." 2

Now, in what respects are these differentiated from our

1 MacDougal, " Social Psychology," p. 47.

2 Angell, " Psychology," p. 137.

�� �