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SECTION V The Self in Its Affective and Projective Phases 1. The Affective Phase: Feeling Lecture X. February 5, 1901 IN A GENERAL way it strikes me that the term 'feeling' is used in a general sense and in a wider sense. In the wider sense the word 'feeling' is the equivalent ofthe entire affective process and life, including emotion, sentiment, interests, where the merely personal or immediate reference is very great. Within that we have (1) feeling in the narrower sense, (2) emotion, (3) interests. It may seem that when the strain is gone feeling is at its highest. According to the theory it is then at its highest value or realization. The emotional phase of it, i.e., the disturbance or agitation would have given way to another form of feeling and the words I have thought of to designate that are sentiment, or interests. The steadied, focused, centralized feeling or emotion is an interest. The only difference between an interest and an emotion would be simply in the amount of disturbance that entered in on the one side or the amount of focusing on the other. The latter goes along with a more unified ideational attitude, not necessarily higher. The line of activity is more defined. As an example of feeling in a more limited sense there is a certain feeling tone that accompanies hearing a sound or seeing a brighter color. There is sense quality as such, as an accompanying affect, that in one sense is below the level of emotion. Then when that suspense or uncertainty or opposition is ended and the thing becomes fixed and defined, I should call it an interest. The term 'sentiment', used by the 144 Psychology of Ethics 145 older writers to designate the highest idealized form of feeling, seems in popular use to be more and more affected by the term 'sentimentality ', and to be acquiring a worse and worse meaning. The question ofthe difference between a man ofstrong emotions and one of weak emotions, I should say, became ultimately a difference of the force ofthe impulse in the two individuals. Ifthe impulses, instincts, habits-the projective processes that come into conflict with each other-are very strong, there is much material for getting up considerable emotion. If these processes are not [very] strong, there is not material for getting up much emotion but the whole play will be on a rather reduced plane. Strong projective impulses and tendencies give a prospect of strong conflict and equally strong emotional responses. (Strength of emotion is different from violence of emotion. People may pass for outwardly unemotional individuals, but they may have strong emotions; they are consuming their own smoke; their emotions do not take any of the recognized outward channels.) The point thus being recognized, the fundamental difference would be in the strength ofthe projective tendencies themselves or the strength of the self-assertive instinct. This is the impulse which keeps a man going, the instinct of life itself, which continually carries him on from one thing to another. Which certainly cannot be a bad thing itselfbecause it is the fundamental expression of the life instinct! There is a distinction between an emotional attitude and an emotional act, or emotion as an act. The term 'affection' designates a more permanent emotional attitude while an emotion is more localized in character. Take hope as an example. There is a difference between a sanguine man, one constantly in the hopeful attitude, and the emotion of hope. A man does not feel the emotion of hope except under some stress. That is, he also feels doubt and he is under the stress ofthe two. In the hopeful man, while he may have comparatively little emotion, the term designates his entire affective attitude. MeLellan, in an article in The Psychological Review,1 goes over some of these matters and makes the point regarding affection in its more literal sense, viz., life. We may mean by that simply the interest which one person has in another which displays itself in a long series of particular acts and attitudes without any special emotional disturbance or agitation, or we may mean by it the disturbance itself. For illustration , he says, suppose the affection or interest is broken by death or separation. Then all the elements are thrown out in tension and conflict with each other, and it passes from the form of affection to the form of 1. Probably S. F. M'Lennan, "Emotion, Desire and Interest...

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