On the other hand, no other way of description is open. If there were
mental states which are composed of other elements than sensations, they
would necessarily remain indescribable; we could not grasp them because
they would not have any definite relation to the common physical world.
We might say, for instance, that our mental content is made up of
sensations and feelings, but if such feelings were really entirely
different from sensations, they would have to remain for all time
mysterious and unknown. We could not compare notes. The feeling which I
call joy may feel just like the one which you call despair. The
consistent development of modern psychology and its emancipation from
vagueness and superficial analysis became possible only through the fact
that such recourse to indescribable elements has become unnecessary.
Modern psychology has been able to demonstrate more and more that the
same elements which constitute our perceptions are also the elements of
the other contents of consciousness. In other words modern psychology
has recognized that the volitions and emotions and feelings and
judgments, and the whole stream of inner life, are made up of
sensations. Millions of sensations in all degrees of vividness and
clearness, of intensity and fusion, in endless manifoldness of rhythms
and relations constitute their whole content. It is a discovery quite
similar to the one which chemistry made when it found that the same
elements which are part of the inorganic substances are also the only
possible elements of the organic world.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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