Psychology: an elementary text-bookEbbinghaus, Hermann
Science
Psychology: an elementary text-book
Ebbinghaus, Hermann
Psychology
The subjective factor which determines what feelings accompany our
perceptions may be defined as the relation of the situation perceived to
the weal and woe of the organism. Pleasantness indicates that the
impressions made upon the organism are adapted to the needs or
capacities of the organism or at least to that part of the organism
which is directly affected; unpleasantness indicates that the
impressions are ill adapted or harmful. Exceptions to this rule may be
explained through the great complexity of the situations by which the
organism is often confronted, and through the complications resulting
from the fact that the organism must adjust its activity not only to the
present but also to the future, and not only in harmony with the present
but also with past experience. Feeling is a reliable symptom and witness
only for the present and local utility or inadequacy of the relation
between the organism and the world. It is not a prophet of the future.
Disease may result from eating sweets, whereas medicine is often bitter.
The addition of feeling to our perceptions and images, because of the
peculiarities just mentioned, brings about great complications in the
make-up of our mental states and increases enormously the task of
classifying and comprehending our states of consciousness. The feelings
accompanying images are originally the same as those which accompanied
the perceptions in question. The memory image of the pain of flogging is
unpleasant because the original pain was unpleasant. But the manifold
connections of the images often result in unexpected feelings. The
memory of an unpleasant experience may become a source of pleasure
through the additional thought that the experience was the result of
some folly of which one is no longer capable. The feeling accompanying a
perception can change in a similar manner. A saturated green, as the
color of a pasture or of an ornament, is pleasant; as the color of a
girl’s cheek it would be highly unpleasant.
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