pleasant and the unpleasant, or the agreeable and the disagreeable, are often
used. Aversion is frequently employed as a synonym for repugnance.
It is somewhat hard to believe on first thought that feeling comprises but the
classes given. For have we not often felt the pain from a toothache, from not
being able to take a long-planned trip, from the loss of a dear friend? Surely
these are very different classes of feelings! Likewise we have been happy from
the very joy of living, from being praised for some well-doing, or from the
presence of friend or lover. And here again we seem to have widely different
classes of feelings.
We must remember, however, that feeling is always based on something known.
It never appears alone in consciousness as mere pleasures or pains. The mind
must have something about which to feel. The "what" must precede the "how."
What we commonly call a feeling is a complex state of consciousness in which
feeling predominates, but which has, nevertheless, a basis of sensation, or
memory, or some other cognitive process. And what so greatly varies in the
different cases of the illustrations just given is precisely this knowledge element,
and not the feeling element. A feeling of unpleasantness is a feeling of
unpleasantness whether it comes from an aching tooth or from the loss of a
friend. It may differ in degree, and the entire mental states of which the feeling is
a part may differ vastly, but the simple feeling itself is of the same quality.
Feeling Always Present in Mental Content.—No phase of our mental life is
without the feeling element. We look at the rainbow with its beautiful and
harmonious blending of colors, and a feeling of pleasure accompanies the
sensation; then we turn and gaze at the glaring sun, and a disagreeable feeling is
the result. A strong feeling of pleasantness accompanies the experience of the
voluptuous warmth of a cozy bed on a cold morning, but the plunge between the
icy sheets on the preceding evening was accompanied by the opposite feeling.
The touch of a hand may occasion a thrill of ecstatic pleasure, or it may be
accompanied by a feeling equally disagreeable. And so on through the whole
range of sensation; we not only know the various objects about us through
sensation and perception, but we also feel while we know. Cognition, or the
knowing processes, gives us our "whats"; and feeling, or the affective processes,
gives us our "hows." What is yonder object? A bouquet. How does it affect you?
Pleasurably.
If, instead of the simpler sensory processes which we have just considered, we
take the more complex processes, such as memory, imagination, and thinking,