see the object and _must_ acknowledge its apparent, or in the end its
ascertained, unfitness. One is "coerced." The situation is one of
conflict, and it is out of the conflict that the essentially emotional
experience of "resistance" emerges.[124] The more special emotions of
impatience, anger, or discouragement may in a given case not be present
or may be suppressed, but the emotion of objectivity will still
remain.[125]
On the same general principles the other of our two coefficients of
reality may be explained. Let us assume that the stone in our
illustration has at last been cleared of all ambiguity in its
suggestion, having been taken as a missile, and that the man in flight
now holds it ready awaiting the most favorable moment for hurling it at
his pursuer. It will hardly be maintained that under these conditions
the coefficient of the stone's reality as an object consists in its
obtrusiveness, in its resistance to or coercion of the self. The stone
is now regarded as a fixed and determinate feature of the situation--a
condition which can be counted on, whatever else may fail. Over against
other still uncertain aspects of the situation (which are now in _their_
turn real because resistant, coercive, and obtrusive) stands the stone
as a reassuring fact upon and about which the agent can build up the
whole plan of conduct which may, if all goes well, bring him safely out
of his predicament. The stone has, so to speak, passed over to the "end"
side of the situation, and although it may have to be rejected for some
other means of defense, as the definition of the situation proceeds and
the plan of action accordingly changes (as in some degree it probably
must), nevertheless for the time being the imaged activities as stimulus
to which the stone is now accepted are a fixed part of the plan and
guide in further judgment of the means still undefined. The agent can
hardly recur to the stone, when, after attending for a time to the
bewildering perplexities of the situation, he pauses once more to take
an inventory of his certain resources, without something of an emotional
thrill of assurance and encouragement. In this emotional appreciation of
the "solidity" and "dependability" of the object the second of our
coefficients of reality consists. This might be termed the Recognition,
the other the Perception, coefficient. Classifying them as emotions,
because both are phenomena of tension in activity, we should group the
Perception coefficient with emotions of the Contraction type, like grief
and anger, and the Recognition coefficient with the Expansion emotions,
like joy and triumph.
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