When a red, seen on a blue-green ground, appears redder than the same red seen on another shade of red, it is the sensation-quality itself which is altered; there is no contrast-sensation, in addition to the present sensations of red and blue-green. So again, though we may intensify a present pleasure by representing a past pain, we have simply the alternation of intenser pleasure-consciousness and pain-consciousness; there is no separate contrast-consciousness implicated. No one ever felt or sensed contrast; one feels or senses the contrasting contents. (3) In the third case, the non-existence of the relation-consciousness is not so obvious. This rubric covers the so-called intellectual feelings; the logical, ethical, etc. (the feelings of clearness and obscurity, of ease and effort, of objective truth, of expectation; the pleasure of fulfilment; hope, anxiety, fear, agreeable surprise, doubt, relief; the unpleasantness of deception). Here, if anywhere, we are in face of the relation-feeling. But here, again, there is an explanation in terms of content ready at hand: the explanation that the substrate to which the affection attaches is not ideational or associational (emotion), but is an apperceptive ideational combination.[1]
It does not seem, then, that Dr. Lehmann has justified his division of feelings into Inhalts- and Beziehungsgefühle. Let us proceed to examine Professor James' remarks.
Professor James objects to our asking him to 'produce' his feelings of relation; the request is preposterous. Yet, surely, if one observer can be so sure of them, others ought to be able to discover their traces. And, indeed, I do not suppose that any psychologist would deny the existence of 'feelings' of 'and' and 'if, 'but' and 'by'. All that I would urge is, that these are not relation-'feelings'; 'feelings' attaching to the (logical and abstract) relations of coördination and causal dependence, of agreement and contradiction. Experience does not know them as feelings of 'but' and 'if'; they are, from this point of view, simply misnamed. They are as much 'feelings' of content, as are those of 'blue' or 'cold.' And if it is
- ↑ Wundt, Phys. Psych., 4th Ed., II, pp. 521 ff. These states (I have elsewhere proposed to term them 'sentiments': Phil. Review, II, p. 597) presuppose the developed consciousness, and with that the logical abstraction of 'relations' referred to above in the text. Hence the ideated relation may enter into their composition; a fact which would account for the introduction of the word Verhältniss in Wundt's exposition; p. 522. They, like the psychological correlate of 'abstraction,' can be analyzed as contents without reference to 'apperception,' if this process be ruled out. Cf., e.g., Sully, op. cit., II, pp. 124 ff., etc.: tho' his language is at times vacillating.
