The Psychology of the EmotionsRibot, Th. (Théodule)
Science
The Psychology of the Emotions
Ribot, Th. (Théodule)
Emotions
The false or abstract memory of feeling is only a sign,
a simulacrum, a substitute for the real occurrence, an
intellectualised state added to the purely intellectual elements of
the impression, and nothing more.
2. The true or concrete memory of impressions consists in the
_actual_ reproduction of a former state of feeling, with all its
characteristics. This is necessary—at least in theory—if it is to
be complete. The nearer it approaches to totality, the more
accurate it is. Here the recollection does not consist merely in
the representation of conditions and circumstances, in short, of
intellectual states, but in the revival of the state of feeling
itself as such, _i.e._, as _felt_. I have already given instances
of this: Fouillée’s experiment, the cases of Littré and
Sully-Prudhomme; those numbered III. and IV., so clear and
precise, show that a true memory of impressions, independent of
its intellectual accompaniment, is no chimera.
Bain says that the emotions, “in their strict character of emotions
proper, have the minimum of revivability; but being always
incorporated with the sensations of the higher senses, they share in
the superior revivability of sights and sounds.” On which Professor
W. James makes the following comment: "But he fails to point out
that the revival of sights and sounds may be _ideal_ without ceasing
to be distinct; whilst the emotion, to be distinct, must become real
again. Professor Bain seems to forget that an ‘ideal emotion,’ and a
real emotion prompted by an ideal object, are two very different
things."[106]
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Footnote 106:
_Psychology_, ii. 474.
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