The three just mentioned, belief-doubt-disbelief, belong to the class
of =intellectual= sentiments. An attempt has been made to examine them
under experimental conditions; with the result that they prove to be
of rare occurrence; that they are characterised in different minds—as
might perhaps be expected, from the complexity of the situation—by
different complexes, by the kinæsthesis of bodily attitude, by
internal speech, by the interplay of visual imagery; and that they
are ordinarily replaced by the feeling-attitudes of certainty and
uncertainty. The mental patterns of belief and disbelief turn out to
be the same; and this result is psychologically reasonable; for the
positive and negative of the terms are logical, an affair of meaning;
so far as experience goes, disbelief is as positive as belief. Hence it
is natural that both of them should be represented in feeling-attitude
by the same ‘certainty,’ Another group of intellectual sentiments, less
often named, but familiar to everyone who has set to work seriously to
master a new writer or a new subject, consists of _agreement, obscurity
and contradiction_. These have not, to the author’s knowledge,
been subjected to analysis; indeed, the present paragraphs can do
little more than catalogue a few of the more obvious sentiments; the
experiences are difficult to induce, and their detailed study is yet to
come.
In the sphere of the =moral= or =social= sentiments, we have such
opposites as trust-distrust, honour-dishonour, justice-injustice. There
is always a suspensive sentiment, corresponding with oscillation of
judgement, though its name can be made only approximative; we may,
perhaps, speak of trust-trial-distrust, honour-ambiguity-dishonour,
justice-equivocalness-injustice; think yourself into concrete
situations, and you will get the meaning of the terms! Social
situations are, however, of great practical importance; and we
usually meet them, not by a sentiment, but by some emotion based upon
instinctive tendencies; vanity, shame, pride, sympathy are emotions of
this sort. The same thing holds of =religious= situations. Triads like
faith-perplexity-denial, communion-insecurity-estrangement point to the
state of secondary attention; but in general the religious situation
sets up an emotion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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