170. What is the difference between objectively correct thought and belief?
171. What is the wider and what the narrower meaning of “belief”?
172. How do the ideas of reality and of unreality originate in the child?
173. Why are we more inclined to apply the concept of reality than that of unreality?
174. What is the double influence of experience on the child’s belief?
175. Should authoritative belief be eradicated? Give reasons for your answer.
176. Should practical belief be eradicated? Give reasons for your answer.
177. What is a superstition?
178. Why do we believe the Copernican theory and reject the Ptolemaic theory?
B. _Affection and Conduct_
§ 19. COMPLICATIONS OF FEELING
1. _Feeling Dependent on Form and Content_
Perception and ideation rarely, if ever, occur in the isolation in which they were shown above in order to make clear their structure: they are accompanied by, interwoven with, feelings. A summer landscape not only looks different from the same landscape when covered with snow, but also arouses different feelings. I may look forward to the same event--an ocean voyage or an automobile tour--as a danger or as a pleasure; I may regard an assertion as a truth or as doubtful. The ideas of which I am conscious surely differ much in the alternative cases. But still greater is the difference of feeling to which we refer by such terms as _fear_, _low spirits_, _disquietude_, _comfort_, _joy_. The exact make-up of these complexes of feeling is difficult to describe, but we may try to point out the conditions on which they depend. We shall first consider form and content.
Sensations, images, perceptions, and so on, give rise to feelings, not only on account of what they are, but also and indeed chiefly because of their manner of connection, of succession, and of spatial relation. Colors which we regard as most beautiful separately may compose a carpet whose color scheme we dislike and call inharmonious; on the other hand, the most uninteresting gray dots may compose a beautiful design. A piece of music is beautiful not alone because of the clearness of the single tones, but chiefly because of the relations of these tones in melody, harmony, and rhythm.
One principle is generally applicable to this class of feelings: a variety of mental contents is bound together into a unity for our perception and imagination. A multitude of unconnected things is not easily perceivable or thinkable; therefore it is unpleasant. A single thing, so simple that it cannot be analyzed into component parts, cannot occupy our mind for any length of time; it is tedious, unpleasant. A combination of variety and unity is able to keep us mentally busy without overburdening the mind; therefore it is pleasant.
The general principle, however, admits of a great many different applications. The unity may consist, for example, in the similarity and regularity of arrangement of the pickets of a fence. The unity may consist in subordination of a number of equal elements to a dominating element, as the larger fence post taking the place of a picket at regular intervals, or the accented element in a rhythm. The unity may consist in organic unity of the elements of a living thing. It may be logical unity, as in a sentence or a lecture. Several of these and other kinds of unity may appear simultaneously in the same matter; and one of these unities may be subordinate to another, this again to another, and so on, as in a Gothic cathedral, a symphony, or a drama.
Thus the variety and complication of the feelings based on the principle in question is immensely great, depending on all these unities, their harmonious relation or opposition, and the contents of impression or imagination directly. This complication is further increased by the conditions discussed below.
2. _Feeling Dependent on Association of Ideas_
Why does a sunny spring landscape give us pleasure? What is its advantage over a gloomy winter landscape? Possibly green is a pleasanter color than brown or gray, which predominate in the winter landscape. Possibly the curved outlines of the trees in their foliage are more beautiful than the naked branches appearing like a system of dark veins on a gray sky. But these are hardly the main causes of the difference in feeling, which are found rather in the different ideas associated with the one and the other percept. The spring landscape reminds one of life, warmth, travel, picnics; the winter scene suggests death and decay, cold, moisture, overheated and ill-ventilated rooms. The feelings aroused by these things when we actually experience them are likely to be aroused now when these thoughts, however fleetingly, are reproduced. For the same reason the cold sensation of touching a corpse is accompanied by a feeling differing from that of touching a piece of ice. It is a different thing to see a stream of blood or of cherry juice, and in a lesser degree even of cherry juice or milk. In every case a multitude of memories influence our feelings, or lead us directly into a train of thought of pleasant or unpleasant character. Thus the feelings which have their first origin in a simple percept may become exceedingly complicated.
An especially important consideration is that these feelings increase in intensity and finally become more conspicuous than the memories by which they are aroused. A house in which I experienced an unpleasant scene finally arouses unpleasantness directly, without any mediation by the consciousness of that event. This kind of transference of feeling is particularly noticeable when the same feeling is aroused by many different memories, quite unconnected among themselves, though attached to the same percept. No better illustration of this law can be found than the feelings accompanying the thought of money. From early childhood all through life man learns that it is money and again money on which the realization of his desires depends. A definite memory of any of these special experiences soon becomes impossible because of the competition among them. But the pleasantness originally aroused by them is not lost. It attaches itself directly to money. In a similar manner our love for our parents, our friends, our home, and so on, originates. A reverent child may reject as a brutal theory the statement that he loves his parents because of the innumerable benefits received from them, that this love is but a kind of precipitation of all the pleasures derived from the actions of his parents and from his living with them. This rejection is in so far justified as the child’s love is not a conscious deduction from the memory of benefits received. Nevertheless, it is quite certain that his love is in some way naturally derived from them. Children who are brought up by foster parents, if they are as well taken care of as by real parents, love them equally well.
We have pointed out that the idea of _I_ is almost omnipresent in our thought, and that it constantly influences our feelings. To understand this influence better, we may distinguish two relations between _I_ and the rest of our thought, according as this or the _I_ is the predominant part of our consciousness. The former case may be illustrated by our perceiving the movements, gestures, and voice-sounds of a person or of an animal as the expressions of conscious motives. Even into the percepts of inorganic things the idea of _I_ is carried in a similar manner. We speak of a bridge boldly swinging across the river, a mountain rising proudly to the clouds, a beam resting heavily on columns, lines crowding together or leaning against each other, tones hiding before and seeking each other. We attribute contents of the _I_ to the things which we perceive; we give them mental life, feeling, and conduct, and experience in consequence further responses of our own life of feeling. In such cases, the influence of the _I_ on our thought is obvious, but it does not predominate. On the other hand, the idea of _I_ may be predominant, but may receive its special coloring from the data presented: as when I feel the tragic fate of a hero, not merely through the sympathy or admiration which it arouses in me, but as my own pain; when in the stress and striving of a Faust I feel my own dreams and desires; when the precipice pulls me down or the towering rock uplifts me.
Since the idea of _I_ is so influential for our life of feeling, it is to be expected that the opposite idea, the idea of the external _world_, is also of considerable importance in this respect. Very often we refer to a thing by merely emphasizing that it is opposed to, different from, or independent of the _self_. We frequently speak of _the world and its ways_, of _the course of the world_, meaning all its sense and nonsense, its kindness and cruelty. Naturally, this idea of the world also gives rise to many complicated feelings.
3. _Irradiation of Feeling_
We mentioned above that feeling is easily transferred from one percept or idea--its _substratum_--to another one which is associated with the first. A special form of this law of feeling may be called irradiation of feeling. A disagreeable message received early in the morning may spoil the whole day; the news of a great success may for some time give to every other experience a joyful aspect. Not that the unpleasant or pleasant event is constantly recalled. It is recalled now and then; and the feeling may be more intense at these moments. But the feeling does not depend on this recall. It attaches itself to any other substratum, even to one which is scarcely in any way related to the first. I have been vexed by an employee’s failure to carry out an order in the proper way and by the resulting consequences. Now I am provoked to anger by everything that happens, by a harmless question of a child, by the visit of a friend who is ordinarily welcome, by the happy looks of a neighbor, by the fly on the wall, not least by myself, being so stupid and so deficient in self-control that I give room to all this unpleasantness.
So many-sided are the complications of our life of feeling. The contents, their mutual relations, their connections in the past, the prevailing impressions of the present, all these are conditions on which our feeling depends.
