parts of Acarnania, Locris, Thessaly, etc. Its executive officers were chosen at a yearly meeting called Panætolicum. It was formed after the battle of Chæronea (338 B.C.) to resist the encroachments of Macedon, to which, after the death of Alexander, it proved a serious antagonist, as well as to its rival, the Achæan League. (See Achæa.) Later, for a time, it was in alliance with the Romans, hut. having taken part with Antiochus III. against them, it lost its power upon his defeat, 189 B.C.
AFANASIEFF, ii'fa-na'syef,
Alexander Nikolayevich (1826-71). A famous student of Russian folklore and national poetry. He published a collection of popular tales (4 volumes, 1863; third edition, 2 volumes, 1897), and The Poetic Views of Nature Entertained by the Ancient Slavs (3 volumes, Moscow, 1866-69), besides numerous contributions to various periodicals.
AFAR, a'far.
See Danakil.
A'FER. See Arnobius.
AFER, Cn. Domitius. A Roman orator, teacher of Quintilian. He was born in Gaul, 15 B.C. and died 59 A.D. He was made a consul by Caligula.
AFFECTION, AFFECTIVE PROCESSES (Lat. affectio, a state of mind produced by some influence, from afficere, to do something to one, ad, to + facere, to do). For many centuries psychologists have discussed the phenomena of the human mind under the three headings of Intellect, Feeling, and Will. (See Psychology.) One of the chief aims of modern psychology is to analyze these great mental functions into their simplest component processes, and so finally to reach the mental elements, the ultimate and irreducible constituents of mind. The various forms of intellectual experience (perception, idea, association of ideas, etc.) reduce, on such analysis, to the sensation (q.v.); the various forms of feeling (emotion, passion, mood) to the affection; while the simplest will-processes are found to contain both sensational and affective elements.
Affection, then, is the mental element which characterizes all varieties of our emotional life. It is the last result of the analysis of joy and sorrow, love and hate, anger and fear: it forms the common basis of the sense-pleasures of eating and drinking, and of the highest æsthetic appreciation of music and painting. Like sensation, it is the product of scientific abstraction; it is never experienced singly, but always in connection with other processes. And, like sensation, it cannot be reduced to anything simpler than itself. Many attempts have been made, in the interests of scientific economy, to derive it from sensation, which would then remain as the only mind-stuff, the sole material of which the mind is built; but so far all attempts have failed.
As to the different kinds or "qualities" of affection, modern psychology is divided. Some psychologists maintain that the manifold forms of affective experience are traceable, in the last resort, to the two typical processes of pleasure and pain, or, in the better phraseology — since pain (q.v.) is a sensation, with a definite organ in muscle and skin — to pleasantness and unpleasantness. Relief, despair, hope, satisfaction, anxiety, resentment would then be, in pure feeling and at any given moment of their course, either simply pleasant or simply unpleasant. There are two principal objections to this view: (1) that it does not do justice to the immense complexity and variety of the emotions: and (2) that it confuses the lower and the higher, the pleasure of a good dinner with that of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. The latter point is very differently taken by different psychologists. One says, e.g., that the unpleasurableness of a toothache, of an intellectual failure, and of a tragical experience is so patently diverse that assertions to the contrary require no criticism. Another declares as positively that there is no qualitative difference discoverable between the pleasantness of a color and that of a successfully concluded argument, when careful abstraction is made from the very wide differences in their attendant circumstances. And so the matter rests. The former objection has suggested a more elaborate classification of the affective qualities.
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AFFECTIVE PROCESSES. Wundt's Scheme of the Affective Processes. P, U, Pleasantness, Unpleasantness; E, D, Excitement, Depression; S, R, Strain, Relaxation. The curved line represents the course in consciousness of an actual feeling.
According to this second view, the number of affective qualities is as large as — if not larger than — the number of sensations. We have, it is true, no names for the great majority of them; but that is because language has been developed, not for the sake of a scientific psychology, but for purposes of practical intercourse, and for all practical purposes the discrimination of the main emotional types (anger, fear, and the rest) has been sufficient. We can, however, distinguish three main trends or directions of the affective consciousness, within each of which a long series of ultimate qualities is ranged between opposed extremes. These directions are those of (1) pleasantness-unpleasantness: (2) excitement-depression (tranquilization, inhibition); and (3) tension-relaxation (resolution). The first series of qualities comprises the affections of the present time: our affective state, as determined by the occurrence of any given moment, is one of pleasure or displeasure. The second series contains all the shades and tints of our affective anticipation of the future: we are aroused or subdued by what is to come. And the third series represents the effects of experiences just past; we are kept on the stretch, or relieved from our tension, by what has just happened. Or — to put the differences from another point of view — we are pleased or displeased by
