An Introduction to Psychology: Translated from the Second German EditionWundt, Wilhelm Max
Science
An Introduction to Psychology: Translated from the Second German Edition
Wundt, Wilhelm Max
Educational psychology; Psychology
of an association, and in so far as in it the sensation-components
only appear as modified elements of the resulting spatial idea, it
also possesses the characteristics of a fusion. In contradistinction,
however, to the intensive fusions of clangs and chords, this
possesses the special characteristic, that it consists of elements
out of different senses. For the qualitative local signs belong to
the sense of sight or to the sense of touch if we are dealing with
spatial cutaneous perceptions which are exactly analogous to visual
perceptions; whereas the intensive local signs belong to sensations of
movement or muscle sensations. Both together form a complex system of
local signs.
Just as sensations fuse together into more or less complex ideas, so
also do feelings fuse together into complex compounds, in which single
elements appear to bear the rest, which act in a modifying manner
upon the form, something analogous to the overtones of a clang. These
affective fusions are again bound up most closely with the ideational
fusions that correspond to them. The impression of a musical chord is
composed of both. Only in a psychological analysis can we separate the
ideational from the affective associations, which are the essential
causes of the æthetic character of the chord. One of the most
important and simplest affective fusions of this kind is that of the
so-called "common or organic feeling." It consists of an indefinite
number of organic feelings, to which more or less lively feelings
are joined, which in this case pre-eminently belong to the class of
pleasant-unpleasant feelings. In this case, just as in the case of a
chord, certain elements are predominant, while the others are merely
modifying concomitants. Our general state of health, e.g. freshness
and activeness or general displeasure and exhaustion, is essentially a
product of this affective complex, in which under normal conditions the
sensuous feelings joined to the strain and movement sensations of the
muscles play the most important part.
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