The soul of man : an investigation of the facts of physiological and experimental psychology / by Paul Carus.

  • Carus, Paul, 1852-1919.
Date:
1891
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The soul of man : an investigation of the facts of physiological and experimental psychology / by Paul Carus. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

    45/484 (page 27)
    world. Subjectivity cannot originate out of nothing ; it must be con'^'lived as the product of a co-operation of certain elements which are present in the objective world. In other words, the elements of the subjective world are features that we must suppose to be insepar- ably united with the elements of the objective world, which are represented in our mind as motions. This leads to the conclusion that feeling has to be considered not as a simple but as a complex phenomenon. Feel- ings as explained in the first chapter, originate through a combination of elements of feeling ; and the presence of the elements of feeling must be supposed to be an intrinsic property of the objective world. The ob- jective elements, the action of which is accompanied with the elements of feeling, arrange themselves, we suppose, into such combinations as display actual feel- ings, in exact agreement with the laws of molar and molecular mechanics. This, we must assume, takes place with the same spontaneity as, for instance, an acid and a base combine into a salt. To use another example, it takes place with the same necessity as, under special conditions, a certain amount of molar motion is transformed into the molecular motion of ether-waves, called electricity. Motions are not trans- formed into feelings, but certain motions (all being separately accompanied with elements of feeling), when co-operating in a special form, are accompanied in that form with actual feelings. III. HOW FEELINGS ACQUIRE MEANING. There is a certain class of philosophers who look upon feeling as an incidental effect, as a fortuitous by- play of the interacting elements of matter. This con-