The _intensity_ of the feeling will depend upon the force or amount
of the outgoing currents from the motor cells. This would enable one
to explain that state of mind when a sensation only is experienced
from a stimulus which ordinarily has a characteristic feeling-tone,
but which feeling-tone in the special instance is lacking. Many cases
have been cited above where one feeling seemed to efface another. The
nerve-energy called for in arousing the unpleasant feeling-tone for
the sandpaper inhibited the process of the discharge from the cells
conditioning any response to the ordinarily pleasing red color. Others
again can reënforce or at least not seriously interfere with each
other. All cases already cited where two feeling-tones were detected
as existing simultaneously are examples in point. It is quite clear of
course that the intensity of feeling is not at all commensurate with
the intensity of sensation. Commotion is not the only condition for
emotion. Yet where there is no tendency to _do_ anything, as is so
noticeable in the reported introspections above, there is no feeling.
A mere shock, even though intense as a sensation, simply benumbs one.
In thus describing any feeling for a particular stimulation, one
should include, besides the original results of the chosen peripheral
excitation, all the reënforcing factors that accumulate by reason of
the sensory counterparts to this originally called-for movement. When
one is, for example, feeling sandpaper, the feeling for the soft red,
when it exists at all, is less intense. Subjects say, "It ought to be
more pleasant than it is. The trouble is in me, not in the color."
The suggested movement which conditions the intensity is lessened in
amount, or partially inhibited. One could scarcely say, so far as the
sensation is concerned, that it has lost some of its brightness, or
that it is not strong enough to arouse its customary feeling-tone. This
is distinctly reported as not the case. It is of course almost always
recognized as the same shade of color. The recorded examples, showing
that intensity of feeling is itself one dimension of a feeling-tone
in no way necessarily related to the intensity of the sensation, are
numerous.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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