The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1 (of 2)James, William
Philosophy
The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1 (of 2)
James, William
Psychology
_Tenth Proof._ There is a great class of experiences in our mental life
which may be described as discoveries that a subjective condition which
we have been having is really something different from what we had
supposed. We suddenly find ourselves bored by a thing which we thought
we were enjoying well enough; or in love with a person whom we imagined
we only liked. Or else we deliberately analyze our motives, and find
that at bottom they contain jealousies and cupidities which we little
suspected to be there. Our feelings towards people are perfect wells of
motivation, unconscious of itself, which introspection brings to light.
And our sensations likewise: we constantly discover new elements in
sensations which we have been in the habit of receiving all our days,
elements, too, which have been there from the first, since otherwise
we should have been unable to distinguish the sensations containing
them from others nearly allied. The elements must exist, for we use
them to discriminate by; but they must exist in an unconscious state,
since we so completely fail to single them out.[185] The books of the
analytic school of psychology abound in examples of the kind. Who knows
the countless associations that mingle with his each and every thought?
Who can pick apart all the nameless feelings that stream in at every
moment from his various internal organs, muscles, heart, glands, lungs,
etc., and compose in their totality his sense of bodily life? Who is
aware of the part played by feelings of innervation and suggestions of
possible muscular exertion in all his judgments of distance, shape, and
size? Consider, too, the difference between a sensation which we simply
_have_ and one which we _attend to_. Attention gives results that seem
like fresh creations; and yet the feelings and elements of feeling
which it reveals must have been already there--in an unconscious
state. We all know _practically_ the difference between the so-called
sonant and the so-called surd consonants, between D, B, Z, G, V, and
T, P, S, K, F, respectively. But comparatively few persons know the
difference _theoretically_, until their attention has been called to
what it is, when they perceive it readily enough. The sonants are
nothing but the surds plus a certain element, which is alike in all,
superadded. That element is the laryngeal sound with which they are
uttered, surds having no such accompaniment. When we hear the sonant
letter, both its component elements must really be in our mind; but
we remain unconscious of what they really are, and mistake the letter
for a simple quality of sound until an effort of attention teaches us
its two components. There exist a host of sensations which most men
pass through life and never attend to, and consequently have only in
an unconscious way. The feelings of opening and closing the glottis,
of making tense the tympanic membrane, of accommodating for near
vision, of intercepting the passage from the nostrils to the throat,
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