LECTURE XIV

§ I. The Feelings. § II. Sense-feelings. § III. Common Feeling
and the Other Total Feelings. § IV. Relation of Feeling
TO Idea.

§1

1~^HE mental phenomena with which we have been con¬
cerned hitherto have represented stages in one and the
same great process. We have seen that ideas are derived from
sensations in the regular course of development, and that both
alike have a single end,—knowledge of the external world. But
we have purposely neglected one very important side of our
mental life. We never actually find a mind which apprehends
things without joy or sorrow, and contemplates them with ab¬
solute indifference. In cognising objects we feel ourselves
attracted to or repelled from them, or incited to the performance
of some kind of action, according to their nature. We can,
therefore, comprehend all those phenomena which are not in¬
cluded in the ideational process under the two words'feeling' and
'will.' Feeling and conation always accompany our sensations
and ideas; they determine our actions, and it is mainly from
them that our whole mental life receives its bias and stamp of
individuality.

Feeling and will are closely interconnected. And both are
again connected with ideas. The separation between these
processes is one that exists only in psychological abstraction,
and has no basis in reality. Feeling passes over into impulse,
impulse into voluntary action, and voluntary action has reference
to objects which are given to us as ideas.

In ordinary language we employ the word 'feeling' in
various senses. We call hunger and thirst ' feelings' ; we speak
of   the  'feeling' of  pain, and  of   'feeling' external objects