Your Mind and How to Use It: A Manual of Practical PsychologyAtkinson, William Walker
Science
Your Mind and How to Use It: A Manual of Practical Psychology
Atkinson, William Walker
Psychology
evolutionist ought to have no difficulty in explaining these terrors,
and the scenery that provokes them, as relapses into the consciousness
of the cave men, a consciousness usually overlaid in us by experiences
of a more recent date."
Instinctive emotion manifests as an impulse arising from the dim
recesses of the feeling or emotional nature--an incentive toward a dimly
conscious end. It differs from the almost purely automatic nature of
certain forms of reflex process, for its beginning is a feeling arising
from the subconscious regions, which strives to excite an activity of
conscious volition. The feeling is from the subconscious, but the
activity is conscious. The end may not be perceived in consciousness, or
at least is but dimly perceived, but the action leading to the end is in
full consciousness. Instinct is seen to have its origin in the past
experiences of the race, transmitted by heredity and preserved in the
race memory. It has for its object the preservation of the individual
and of the species. Its end is often something far removed in time from
the moment, or the welfare of the species rather than that of the
individual; for instance, the caterpillar providing for its future
states, or the bird building its nest, or the bees building cells and
providing honey for their successors, for very few bees live to partake
of the honey which they have gathered and stored--they are animated by
"the spirit of the hive."
The most elementary forms of the instinctive emotions are those which
have to do with the preservation of the individual, his comfort, and
personal physical welfare. This class of emotions comprises what are
generally known as purely "selfish" feelings, having little or no
concern for the welfare of others. In this class we find the emotional
feelings which have to do with the satisfaction of hunger and thirst,
the securing of comfortable quarters and warm clothing, and the spirit
of combat and strife arising from the desire to obtain these. These
elemental feelings had their birth early in the history of life, and
indeed life itself depended very materially upon them for its
preservation and continuance. It was necessary for the primitive living
thing to be "selfish." When man appeared, only those survived who
manifested these feelings strongly; the others were pushed to the wall
and perished. Even in our civilization the man below the average in this
class of feelings will find it difficult to survive.
CHAPTER XIII.
The Passions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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