FEELING 75
the same person is not always the same. It may happen that the cultivated person is naturally of dull sensibility, and that the uncultivated person has naturally very keen sen sibility. In that case the natural difference may overbal ance the cultural difference. Of course, if the quietness of the cultivated individual is not the result of self-restraint but of naturally dull sensibility, the lack of external demon stration is not the sign of deep conscious feeling; but then the internal organic tension will be absent. The point is that external demonstration and inward organic tension are generally in inverse proportion to one another. When the organic tension becomes so great that it cannot be con trolled, it relieves itself through the external demonstration ; the point at which the control breaks down is high or low according to the degree of the mental development, and the feeling-tone is proportionate to the internal tension. It can not be questioned, therefore, that, given equal natural sen sibility, the quiet, self-restrained person has the deeper con scious feeling response to a stimulus of the same intensity. It should be borne in mind, too, that culture normally tends to develop the natural sensibility, as it does all other capac ities. In general, the statement unquestionably holds good that quietness and self-possession in exciting situations indi cate intense rather than weak feeling-tones.
6. An important question now to be considered is, why do some experiences cause pleasant and others unpleasant states of consciousness? In order to answer this question we must remember that every conscious being begins its existence with a very complex organization. First, there is the organization which it inherits as a member of the race to which it belongs, wherein it is constituted like all other members of its race. In the second place, it has stamped upon it at the beginning of its existence certain individual characteristics, due, perhaps, in part, to the conditions under which its generation took place, though it is not possible to give an adequate explanation of individual variations. These special characteristics of its individual organization
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