Psychology: an elementary text-bookEbbinghaus, Hermann
Science
Psychology: an elementary text-book
Ebbinghaus, Hermann
Psychology
Why does a sunny spring landscape give us pleasure? What is its
advantage over a gloomy winter landscape? Possibly green is a pleasanter
color than brown or gray, which predominate in the winter landscape.
Possibly the curved outlines of the trees in their foliage are more
beautiful than the naked branches appearing like a system of dark veins
on a gray sky. But these are hardly the main causes of the difference in
feeling, which are found rather in the different ideas associated with
the one and the other percept. The spring landscape reminds one of life,
warmth, travel, picnics; the winter scene suggests death and decay,
cold, moisture, overheated and ill-ventilated rooms. The feelings
aroused by these things when we actually experience them are likely to
be aroused now when these thoughts, however fleetingly, are reproduced.
For the same reason the cold sensation of touching a corpse is
accompanied by a feeling differing from that of touching a piece of ice.
It is a different thing to see a stream of blood or of cherry juice, and
in a lesser degree even of cherry juice or milk. In every case a
multitude of memories influence our feelings, or lead us directly into a
train of thought of pleasant or unpleasant character. Thus the feelings
which have their first origin in a simple percept may become exceedingly
complicated.
An especially important consideration is that these feelings increase in
intensity and finally become more conspicuous than the memories by which
they are aroused. A house in which I experienced an unpleasant scene
finally arouses unpleasantness directly, without any mediation by the
consciousness of that event. This kind of transference of feeling is
particularly noticeable when the same feeling is aroused by many
different memories, quite unconnected among themselves, though attached
to the same percept. No better illustration of this law can be found
than the feelings accompanying the thought of money. From early
childhood all through life man learns that it is money and again money
on which the realization of his desires depends. A definite memory of
any of these special experiences soon becomes impossible because of the
competition among them. But the pleasantness originally aroused by them
is not lost. It attaches itself directly to money. In a similar manner
our love for our parents, our friends, our home, and so on, originates.
A reverent child may reject as a brutal theory the statement that he
loves his parents because of the innumerable benefits received from
them, that this love is but a kind of precipitation of all the pleasures
derived from the actions of his parents and from his living with them.
This rejection is in so far justified as the child’s love is not a
conscious deduction from the memory of benefits received. Nevertheless,
it is quite certain that his love is in some way naturally derived from
them. Children who are brought up by foster parents, if they are as well
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