Feeling as the Principle of Individuation and Socialization (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1903. Excerpt: ... A. FEEUNG AS PRINCIPLE OF INDIVIDUATION. I. The Rise Of Self-consciousness Through Feeling. If we assume feeling to be the principle of individuation throughout the organic kingdom, we posit at the same time a certain kind of consciousness below man. It will be necessary, therefore, to define these two terms. Consciousness is the Reaction of an Organism on a Stimulus. Whatever consciousness may be in itself, does not concern us directly in this paper. What we know of it is through its reactions upon physical stimuli. These reactions take place in and through the organic body, and they are, consequently, objective facts which can be observed and studied. Along with this objective fact goes, as we know from our own consciousness, a subjective fact which we call feeling. Feeling we shall use as an equivalent term for sensation and emotion, since it is sometimes more the former, at other times more the latter; although emotion will be used only in connection with man. Since we have no exact knowledge of the relation between the objective fact, the reaction, and the subjective fact, feeling, except that they appear invariably together in our own consciousness, we assume that there exists a parallelism between psychical and physiological facts. The reactions of plants have no bearing on our topic, and will, therefore, be omitted for the present; since we are concerned only with conscious and self-conscious, but not with sub-conscious organisms. The task before us, then, is to show that all conscious life is based on feeling.1 This task involves two things. We must 1 After completing this thesis, my attention was called to Professor Hiram M. Stanley's work on Evolutionary Psychology of Feeling. He supports a similar theory, but does not draw the conclusions that...