§ 3. The Feeling-Attitude.—Besides having cognisance of an object, we are usually, if not always, pleased or displeased, satisfied or dissatisfied with it, and sometimes partially the one and partially the other. This feeling-attitude presupposes the existence of cognition. We cannot feel pleased or displeased with a thing when we have no cognisance of it. Even when we have no cognisance of it, it may produce an agreeable or disagreeable feeling in us; but this causal relation is quite different from that between subject and object. Wo may feel displeased with a glaring light. Doubtless our displeasure is caused by vibrations in the luminiferous ether; but if we know nothing of these vibrations, we cannot say that they are the object of our displeasure+, in the psychological meaning of the word object. Therefore, from a psychological point of view, we cannot say that we feel displeased with them.

* Analytic Psychology, vol. i., p 47.

+ The term displeasure is ordinarily used to signify resentment. In this work we make it signify simply the opposite of being pleased. The term pain, as we shall see later, is ambiguous.

Can our total consciousness at any moment be entirely devoid of pleasure and displeasure? This is a question which we may be at first sight tempted to answer decidedly in the affirmative. I may, it would seem, perceive a stone, or a clod of earth, or a geometrical diagram, without feeling either agreeably or disagreeably affected towards these objects. But the apparent plausibility of this answer disappears when we look more closely into the case. Why do we notice these objects at all? Perhaps we do so merely with the view of settling by experiment the question we are now discussing. But if that be so, the issue of the experiment itself is more or less satisfactory or unsatisfactory. We are in some degree pleased that our own preconceived view is confirmed, or displeased because it is apparently upset. If we have no preconceived view, we are pleased or displeased because we do or do not succeed in obtaining an answer to the question proposed. Thus, the affirmative answer turns out under these special conditions to be due to an oversight. "We have not taken into account our total consciousness in relation to the object, but only a small and unimportant part of it. Now, suppose that, instead of having a preexisting motive for noticing the object, we simply take cognisance of it because it happens to pass before our eyes. Here it may be said that we are purely neutral in regard to it. But there are many things presented to our bodily vision of which we take no cognisance. The more preoccupied we are, the more entirely they escape notice. If this or that object so obtrudes itself when our minds are preengaged on some other topic as to divert the current of our thoughts, it must have some interest of a pleasant or unpleasant character. If it does not divert the current of our thoughts, the cognisance we take of it will be slight and transient, and will form only a small and insignificant portion of our total consciousness. Thus our total consciousness may involve pleasant or painful interest, although this small portion of it does not contribute in any appreciable degree to its pleasantness or unpleasantness. Again, our minds may be comparatively disengaged, so that they are free to attend to surrounding things; but it is the characteristic of these idle moods that we are more or less amused or bored by the trivial objects which obtrude themselves on our senses. On the whole, the presumption appears to be that our total consciousness is never entirely neutral. The student must here be warned against a common fallacy: we are apt to suppose that we are only pleased or displeased, when we expressly notice, at the time, that we are, or remember afterwards that we have been, pleased or displeased. But in fact we only notice or remember when the pleasantness or or unpleasantness is specially conspicuous. There is a customary level of agreeable or disagreeable feeling which we are apt to treat as a neutral state. In like manner, we do not notice that we are hot or cold, unless we feel more hot or cold than usual. Similarly, what we call silence is not absolute silence, but only a comparative absence of sound. This is shown when we pass from what we call silence to a still more complete absence of sound. The previous state then ceases to appear to us as one of silence. As a matter of fact, sound of some sort is never wholly absent from our experience. The same is in all probability the case with pleasure or displeasure. One or the other or both, are always in some degree present, although we by no means always notice their presence.

When we wish to say that pleasure or displeasure belongs to this or that mental process, we say that the process is pleasantly or unpleasantly toned. Feeling-Tone is a generic word for pleasure and pain. It is less ambiguous than feeling alone, which not only has many other applications in ordinary language, but even in psychology is to some extent required for other purposes. Hence, as a technical expression, we shall henceforward speak of feeling-tone when the reference is to pleasure-pain.

Are there other kinds of feeling-attitude besides pleasure and displeasure? It would seem that there are. It is difficult to bring emotions, such as anger and fear, and sentiments, such as love and hate, completely under any other head. Certainly, an emotion, like anger, involves some kind of cognition; but it cannot be said that the specific experience of being angry directly qualifies the nature of the presented object; in other words, this experience is not a presentation. So, too, anger has feeling-tone, mostly of an unpleasant kind. But its specific quality cannot be resolved into pleasure or displeasure. Again, it involves certain characteristic active tendencies; but there is in it a peculiar and unanalysable mode of being conscious, which cannot be resolved into these. We must, therefore, conclude that in the complex emotion of anger there is included a specific feeling-attitude distinct from being pleased or the reverse. The same may be said of the other emotions.