Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)/Feeling

FEELING, the sensation or impression produced in the mind when a material body is touched by any part of the body; a physical sensation of any kind due to any one of the senses; as, a feeling of warmth, or of cold; also a mental sensation or emotion; mental state; sensitiveness.

Classifying them by their functions, they may be divided into centrally initiated feelings called emotions, and peripherally initiated feelings called sensations. These last again are subdivided into epiperipheral sensations, being those which arise on the exterior surface of the body, and endoperipheral sensations, those which arise in its interior. The proximate components of mind are of two broadly contrasted kinds, feelings and the relations between them. Quantity of feeling is of two kinds, that which arises from intense excitation of a few nerves, and that which springs from slight excitation of many nerves.

Feeling and sensibility, taken as moral properties, are awakened as much by the operations of the mind within itself as by external objects. Susceptibility designates that property of the body or the mind which consists in being ready to take an affection from external objects, hence we speak of a person's susceptibility to take cold, or his susceptibility to be affected with grief, joy, or any other passion.