Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/631

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SOCIOLOGY AND PSYCHOLOGY
619

not merely neglected but generally despised field variously called the passions, the affections, and the emotions. In short everything which is not clearly a vital attribute—is not exclusively concerned in furthering the functions of life—must belong to mind and form a part of psychology. The subdivision of mind which I prefer is that into sense and intellect, using the word sense as synonymous with feeling in general. But as most forms of intellection may be regarded as modes of thinking, it is sometimes clearer to draw the antithesis between feeling and thought. But as adjective forms are convenient and as all feelings are in the philosophical sense affections, it often strengthens the conception to refer to the feelings in this general sense as constituting the affective side of mind, or the affective faculties. Similarly, as all intellectual processes grow out of the primary process of perception, it is sometimes convenient to designate these as constituting the perceptive side of mind. From still another point of view the science of psychology may be divided into subjective and objective. Affective phenomena relate exclusively to the subject and yield no notion of the object, while perceptive phenomena have for their primary function to acquaint the subject with the qualities of the object. We thus have the two great fields of subjective and objective psychology.

But it matters not what terms we use, the distinction is always the same and should be rigidly adhered to. It is much confused in modern discussions, and the word "mind," which formerly always meant the operations of the intellect only, has come in recent times to be used in the sense of feeling only, the thinking process itself being described as a form of feeling. There is a sense in which this cannot be denied, for without feeling there could be no consciousness; still the subjective process, feeling, can be distinguished from the objective product, knowledge, and the two fields kept apart.

Mind is of biological origin. Feeling was first developed under the operation of the law of survival for the protection of plastic organisms, taking the positive form of pleasure to induce them to seek nourishment and reproduce their kind, and the