FEELING AS MOTIVE
49. FEELING. [Footnote: See the notes on
this chapter at the end of this volume.]—Two
men may recognize with equal clearness the presence
of a danger. That recognition may evoke in the
one a violent emotion of fear, and in the other little
or no emotion. Two men may be treated with indignity.
The one fumes with rage; the other remains calm.
It is well recognized that men may be susceptible
to emotion in general, or to certain specific emotions,
in varying degrees. Knowledge is not always accompanied
by a marked manifestation of emotion. Thoughts
may be clear, but cold. There are, however, natures
whose intellectual processes are steeped in emotion.
Such men live in an atmosphere of agitation.
Lists of the emotions which correspond to the instincts
and fundamental impulses of man have been drawn up.
In them we find mentioned fear, disgust, wonder, anger,
elation, tender feeling, and so forth; phenomena which,
by earlier writers, were classified as “passions,”
and to which we may conveniently give the name “feeling.”
We constantly speak of our emotions as our “feelings,”
and we contrast the man of feeling with the coldly
intellectual mind in which emotion is at a minimum.
But it is not alone to such specific emotions as those
above-mentioned that we apply the term feeling.
Thoughts are agreeable or disagreeable, pleasurable
or painful. So are emotions. The agreeableness
or disagreeableness, pleasantness or painfulness,
which are the accompaniments of thoughts and emotions,
have been called by modern psychologists their feeling-tone.
It is not out of harmony with common usage to give
them the name of feelings. In so doing we contrast
them with knowledge and assimilate them to emotion.
Whether every sensation and every thought gives rise
to an emotion of some sort is matter for dispute,
as is also the question whether every sensation, thought
and emotion is tinged with some degree of pleasurable
or painful feeling. In the absence of conclusive
evidence, it is open to us to assume that some feeling
is always present where there is mental activity of
any kind. The feeling may be so faint and evanescent
as to escape detection, but this does not prove that
it is absent.
50. FEELING AND ACTION.—Emotions and
feelings of pleasure and pain are the normal accompaniments
of the exercise of the instincts and impulses of creatures
that desire and will. Within limits, we appear
to be able to take them as an index of the strength
of the desire and the vigor of the effort at attainment.
An act of cruelty is perpetrated. I see it, and
it leaves me, perhaps, cold and unmoved. In such
case, it is hardly expected of me that I should take
energetic measures to have the evil-doer punished.
The man whose face flushes, whose brows descend, whose
teeth come together, whose fists clench, whose heart
beats thickly, at the recognition of an insult, is,
as a rule, the man from whom we look for vigorous efforts
at retaliation. The apathetic creature who feels
no resentment is usually expected to swallow the indignity.
The child who jumps for joy at the sight of a new
doll is supposed to desire it eagerly, and to be ready
to make efforts to obtain it.
