of those who treat excitement and tranquillity as forms of affection. A striking confirmation of it is found in Royce’s discussion of ‘quiescence and restlessness’: “We tend to regard with restlessness whatever tendency involves our interest in immediately future changes. The emotions of … fear, of hope, of suspense are accordingly especially colored by restless feelings. On the other hand, the feelings of quiescence predominate when … we regard the past.”[1]
The analysis of the Wundtian theory has led, accordingly, to the conclusion that Wundt is unjustified in his teaching of the two new pairs of feelings co-ordinate with each other and with pleasantness-unpleasantness. Only one of the four, namely strain, is either elemental or—in any sense—parallel with pleasantness–unpleasantness. Relaxation, a second of these alleged elements, seems to reduce to bare sensation, where the name does not indicate mere absence of strain. The other two, excitement and quiescence, are, indeed, as the Wundtians insist, unsensational; but the unsensational elements which distinguish them are not affective elements (or feelings), but rather relational elements. A discussion of this third group of conscious elements, and of the theories about them, will form the final section of this paper.
II
The doctrine of elements of consciousness which are neither sensational nor in any sense co-ordinate with the affections or feelings is upheld by psychologists of the most diverse schools. Herbert Spencer was the first to name and to discuss them,[2] but his teaching attracted little notice and thirty years passed before Ebbinghaus rediscovered the Gestaliqualitäten,[3] and James wrote of’the ‘transitive feelings’ of ‘and’, ‘but’, and ‘if’.[4] To-day two groups, or schools, and several individuals among Continental psychologists and a considerable number of English-speaking psychologists more or less unequivocally teach the occurrence of elements of consciousness neither sensational nor affective. ‘There is, first, the school of Meinong[5] which discusses relational elements under the names ‘fundirte Inhalte’ and ‘Gegenstände höherer Ordnung’.[6] The second of the Con-
- ↑ “Outlines of Psychology”, p. 1802.
- ↑ “The Principles of Psychology”, first edition (1855), § 81, p. 285.
- ↑ Vierteljahrschr. für wissenschaftliche Philos.', XIV, p. 249, 1890.
- ↑ “Principles of Psychology”, I, p. 247, Note.
- ↑ A. Meinong: Zeitschrift, II, p. 247, 1891; and XXI, pp. 182 ff.; and “Ueber Annahmen”, 1902.
- ↑ A. Höfler (“Psychologie”), and S. Witasek (“Grundlinien der Psychologie”, 1907), have incorporated Meinong’s doctrine in systematic treatises.
