SIMPLE IMAGE AND FEELING
Conceptions and apparitions [sensations and images] are nothing really
but motion in some internal substance of the head; which motion
not stopping there, but proceeding to the heart, of necessity must
there either help or hinder the motion which is called vital; when
it helpeth, it is called pleasure; but when such motion weakeneth or
hindereth the vital motion, then it is called pain.—THOMAS HOBBES
§ 17. =Simple Images.=—Common sense draws a sharp distinction
between our present perception of an object or event, and our later
revival of it in memory; and psychologists have been accustomed, in
the same way, to distinguish the simple sensation, the elementary
process in perception, from the =simple image=, the elementary
process in memory. In fact, however, _it is very doubtful if there
is any real psychological difference between sensation and image_.
The statement is often made that the image is weaker, fainter, more
fleeting than the corresponding sensation. Thus, the great philosopher
David Hume (1711-1776) wrote: “All the perceptions of the human
mind resolve themselves into two distinct kinds, which I shall call
_impressions_ and _ideas_. [Hume’s terminology is different from
ours.] The difference between these consists in the degrees of force
and liveliness, with which they strike upon the mind.” Hume himself
admits that “in sleep, in a fever, in madness, or in any very violent
emotions of soul, our ideas may approach to our impressions; as on the
other hand it sometimes happens that our impressions are so faint and
low, that we cannot distinguish them from our ideas.” It is certain
that sensation and image are often confused; and some writers have
accordingly proposed to drop the term ‘image’ and to replace it by
‘secondary sensation.’ Let us look at the facts.
There is no department of sense in which sensation stops entirely
when its stimulus is removed; in all cases, even in that of sound,
the sensation is prolonged, for a longer or shorter time, and either
after an interval or without interruption, in what is called the
=positive after-image=. Blow out a match in the dark, and wave the
glowing stem about; you see complete circles or figures of eight;
the sensation persists, although the stimulus has passed from one
part of the retina to another. In some departments, the positive is
followed by a =negative after-image=; we have already mentioned the
antagonistic after-images of sight. So the removal of a continued warm
stimulus leaves a sensation of coolness; and the swimming in the head
that you feel while twirling round is followed, when you come to rest,
by a swimming in the opposite direction. Lastly, the name of =memory
after-image= has been given to an experience which is most familiar,
perhaps, in the taking of dictation; as you write the words last
spoken, the speaker’s voice still rings in your ears; the sound hangs
for a few seconds, as if arrested, and your pen is guided by the mental
echo. Similarly, an attentive glance at an object may set up a sort of
photographic image that remains distinct for several seconds.
All the after-images are sensory in character. So too are the =memory
colours= that we habitually lay over familiar objects (p. 63), and that
make us see snow as white and gold as yellow and coal as black, just
because they are ordinarily or typically white and yellow and black.
So also are the =recurrent images=, those troublesome and haunting
images to which most of us are subject at times: the tunes that run
in our head and that we cannot get rid of, the rows of figures that
obsess us after a long morning of calculation, the bright disc that
keeps cropping up after we have spent several hours at the microscope.
So, again, are the images that serve to complete and round out an
imperfect perception. A favourite device of modern advertising is to
outline the human figure only in part and to leave the remainder to
the imagination; and you will perhaps notice, if you look attentively
at such a figure, that the outline, so far as the suggestion of the
neighbouring lines is unambiguous, is indeed completed in image, black
on white or colour on colour; only where the completion is uncertain
do the images fail. These =tied images=, so called because they are
unequivocally bound up with the sensory portion of the perception,
occur also in the sphere of sound; a missing orchestral part, if it is
familiar, may be clearly heard by the conductor.
_Not everyone has recurrent images; and perhaps only a large
minority have tied images._ The image—even if we decide that it
is only a secondary sensation, psychologically indistinguishable
from sensation—nevertheless represents a later stage of biological
development than the sensation proper, and our equipment of images is
correspondingly variable; your own experience may be richly imaginal,
while your friend, under the same conditions, has hardly a trace of
imagery. Those who do possess recurrent and tied images agree that
they are distinguished from sensations rather by their context, by the
presence or absence of certain other processes, than by any difference
of nature. The same thing holds of those abnormal phenomena to which
Hume referred. =Hallucinatory images= are by no means uncommon in the
drowsy period that precedes sleep; we hear the telephone bell, or we
hear our name called; some of us—there are, again, great differences
in individuals—have hallucinations of sight. =Dream images= also
differ markedly from individual to individual; but the dream is nearly
always accepted as a real event. One of the most puzzling facts in this
connection is the occurrence of concomitant or =synæsthetic images=. In
the commonest case, that of =coloured hearing=, any auditory stimulus
arouses, along with the appropriate sensation of hearing, whether tone
or noise, a visual image of light or colour. The sound of the word
Tuesday, for instance, may be seen as a light grey-green followed by a
yellow! We might suppose, at first thought, that coloured hearing is
due to association, to a connection between sight and hearing set up
in childhood and continued into adult life; but the evidence points to
some inborn connection in the nervous system; coloured hearing tends
strongly to run in families. Moreover, we know of no natural or normal
association of colours with tones, although the attempt has often
been made to illustrate music by colours; the recent colour-scoring
of the Russian composer Scriabin is, for instance, nothing more than
an idiosyncrasy, and will make no general or permanent appeal to the
musical public. There are many other kinds of synæsthesia, besides
this connection of sight and sound; and we have no reason to think
that every instance is to be explained in just the same way; in all
cases, however, we have a particular sensation uniformly accompanied by
another, which we may call either a secondary sensation or an image of
sensory character.
Coming back to the normal life, we have next to note the part played
in certain minds by =habitual images=. Just as, in Wagner’s operas,
the performer comes upon the stage to the accompaniment of some
characteristic musical phrase, some ‘motive,’ as it is called, which
recurs again and again as he enters and reenters to take his share
of the action, so in minds of the imaginal type such general notions
as ‘virtue’ and ‘commerce’ and ‘summer’ may regularly call up mental
pictures, little groups of images, which illustrate or characterise the
notions: thus, virtue may be pictured mentally by the flash of a human
figure, standing very upright. These pictures are usually incomplete,
mere impressionist sketches; but they may remain unchanged for years.
Finally, we come to the images which enter into our ideas of memory and
of imagination. We discuss these ideas later; here we need only say
that the psychological distinction between sensation and image, if it
is to be drawn at all, must be drawn between sensation and the =free
images of memory and imagination=, and cannot be drawn earlier. Some
psychologists believe that a memory-image can always be distinguished
from a sensation, that the two processes differ in their intrinsic
nature. It is difficult to put the question to the test of experiment;
but what evidence we have seems to look the other way. We shall do best
to suspend judgement.
The word ‘image’ is unfortunately used, as the foregoing paragraphs
have shown, both for the simple image and for groups or clusters of
images; thus, the recurrent image and the habitual image are always
complex. Summing up our results, with this warning in mind, we may
say that positive and negative after-images, memory colours, and
synæsthetic images are definitely sensory in character; that the simple
images which make up memory after-images, recurrent and tied and
habitual images, hallucinations and dreams, appear to be of the same
kind; and that the simple images which compose our ideas of memory and
imagination may or may not be intrinsically different from sensations.
The simple image may therefore be defined as _an elementary mental
process, akin to sensation and perhaps indistinguishable from it,
which persists when the sensory stimulus is withdrawn or appears when
the sensory stimulus is absent_. We may say further that, while every
normal person has very much the same equipment of sensations, there
are great individual differences in the matter of secondary sensations
or images; in some cases they are interwoven into the whole tissue of
experience, in others they are infrequent or even lacking; we shall see
presently how they may be replaced. In general, images of sight and
sound are common; then come images of touch and temperature, and then
again images of taste and smell, which are uncommon; organic images are
very rare. Kinæsthetic images undoubtedly occur, and probably occur
frequently; but they are likely to blend with kinæsthetic sensations,
and so to escape notice.
§ 18. =Simple Feelings and Sense-Feelings.=—Many of our experiences
are indifferent; but many of them, again, are pleasant or unpleasant.
These two words, _pleasant_ and _unpleasant_, denote elementary mental
processes of a different sort from sensations and images; they are
known as =simple feelings=. The term ‘feeling’ is itself even more
ambiguous than the term ‘image’; it is natural to speak of ‘feeling’
a strain or effort, a warmth or cold; but we shall henceforth use it
only in its technical meaning, to indicate the way in which stimuli
affect us, pleasantly or unpleasantly. We must discard altogether the
words _pleasure_ and _pain_, although they have long been current as
the names of the simple feelings, and although they are much less
clumsy than pleasant and unpleasant. We discard them because pain is a
sensation (p. 43); and pains, while usually unpleasant, may at times be
pleasant; the scratching that relieves an itch and the nip of the wind
on a brisk winter’s day are both pains, but they are also both pleasant.
_The main difference between sensation and simple feeling is that
a feeling cannot be made the object of direct attention._ Try to
attend to the pleasantness or unpleasantness of an experience, and
the feeling evaporates, eludes you; it is like clutching a ghost; you
find yourself beyond the feeling, so to speak, and face to face with
some obtrusive sensation or image that you had no wish to meet. This
peculiarity of feeling must, of course, be taken account of in our
conduct of the psychological method of observation. The formula of
observation (p. 19) was:
psychological (vivid experience → full report).
In the case of sensation, the observer is set or disposed, beforehand,
to attend to sensation and to report upon sensation; the sensation
comes, and is attended to; and the report which follows is determined,
under the influence of the preliminary set or disposition, by the
nature of the sensation. In the case of feeling, the observer is set to
attend to sensation, but to report upon the feeling which accompanies
the sensation; the sensation comes and is attended to; and the report
then describes, under the influence of the preliminary set, the feeling
which accompanied the sensation. That sounds a little paradoxical; but
the method is not difficult in practice; and it has the advantage that
we can use all manner of sensory stimuli (colours, tones, everything)
in our study of feeling.
We find, first of all, that _pleasant and unpleasant are really
opposites_; the colour or tone that is most often reported as pleasant
is least often reported as unpleasant, and conversely. An obvious
result? Not at all; for what is obvious to common sense demands very
careful consideration at the hands of science; and the fact that, in
this instance, common sense turns out to be right does not at all
mean that we should have been justified in taking it for granted. We
find, secondly, that _intensity of feeling behaves like intensity of
sensation_ (p. 67); the more pleasant or unpleasant an experience is,
the more must the stimulus be changed if we are to feel a difference;
and the less pleasant or unpleasant it is, the less change need be made
to produce a change of feeling.
_There is no convincing evidence of any qualities of feeling other
than pleasant and unpleasant._ There is evidence, on the other hand,
that the simple feelings form intimate and characteristic blends with
sensations, and especially with kinæsthetic and organic sensations; we
may call such blends =sense-feelings=. Every sensory stimulus, even so
local and trifling a thing as a tone of moderate intensity, sets up a
widespread organic disturbance: a result that is natural, perhaps, in
view of the manifold interconnections within the nervous system, but
that we are nevertheless likely to overlook. This organic stir brings
out kinæsthetic and organic sensations which may form the body of a
sense-feeling, developed round about the disturbing tone, and giving
it a peculiar tinge of feeling that it would not otherwise possess.
The same thing holds of other stimuli. We can distinguish _six types
or classes of these sense-feelings: the agreeable and disagreeable,
the exciting and subduing, and the straining and relaxing_. Tastes
and smells are preeminently agreeable or disagreeable. Deep tones are
solemn and serious, that is, subduing; high tones are cheerful and
playful, that is, exciting. The painter’s ‘warm’ colours, red and
yellow, are exciting; his ‘cold’ blues are subduing; the gloom of a
darkened room is positively depressing. Warmth and cold are themselves
exciting and subduing. The straining and relaxing feelings are
dependent upon the temporal course and succession of sensations; the
interminable pedal-point in _E_♭ with which Wagner begins the _Ring_
sets up a feeling of tension which is relaxed when the _B_♭ is added,
only to grow again, and again relax when new tones are introduced; and
if you follow the strokes of a slow-beating metronome you get a similar
alternation of the two sense-feelings. Notice that the six names
are all alike class-names; _the sense-feelings themselves appear in
numberless variety_; but any particular sense-feeling may be referred
to one or more of the classes. Notice also that the paired names are
all opposites: a sense-feeling may be agreeably exciting, or agreeably
subduing, but it cannot be excitingly subduing; and so on with the
rest. Remember finally that the simple feeling taken alone, and not
blended with sensory qualities into a sense-feeling, is always a bare
pleasant or unpleasant.
We must next discuss _the organic disturbances that accompany feeling
itself_. We know that feelings ‘express’ themselves in various ways;
we blush for shame and pale from fear; we shake with rage, and our
‘heart beats high’ with hope. Now it is possible to measure all these
organic changes; to record the rate and height of pulse, for instance,
or the variation in the volume of a limb according as blood flows into
it or is withdrawn from it; physiology puts the necessary instruments
at our disposal. The observer may therefore be harnessed to some such
system of recording apparatus, and may be subjected to some pleasant or
unpleasant stimulus; he reports what he feels, and the experimenter
is able to compare the report with the record from the instrument. The
results of work of this sort are summed up in the following table;
where a + stands for an increase, and a-for a decrease, of rate or
height or volume, as the case may be.
PLEASANT UNPLEASANT
Rate of pulse - +
Height of pulse + -
Volume of arm + -
Rate of breathing + -
Depth of breathing ? - ? +
The table asserts that, during a pleasant experience, our pulse is
slowed and heightened; blood flows from the trunk into the extremities;
and our breathing quickens and, perhaps, grows more shallow. During an
unpleasant experience, the reverse of all these things takes place.
The pleasant and unpleasant experiences here referred to are, of
course, agreeable and disagreeable sense-feelings; and we have the
right to correlate the organic changes with pleasant and unpleasant
feeling only because they remain the same so long as feeling remains
the same, whatever may be the character of the sensory stimulus. There
can be no doubt that similar tables may presently be made out for the
other sense-feelings; indeed, that must be the case, in so far as the
sense-feelings are stable blends of simple feeling with sensations.
But it is not easy, in the case of the other pairs, to secure a stable
blend, to keep the nature of the ‘excitement’ or the ‘relaxation’ just
the same from experiment to experiment; and we shall therefore make
no attempt here to list their bodily expressions. We come back to the
general subject of expression when we deal with emotion (§ 51).
Can we now say anything definite about _the nervous correlate of the
simple feelings_? Can we say what is going on in the nervous system
when we feel pleasantly or unpleasantly? Unfortunately no: _we have
many theories, but no positive knowledge_. There is, however, one view
of feeling which has persisted from Aristotle to the present day; and
we must say a word about it, if only because you cannot read far in
psychology without running against some form of it, and you should not
blindly accept it. We may call it the =biological theory= of feeling.
Aristotle said that pleasure (we must now use the old-fashioned terms)
accompanies the unimpeded exercise of any faculty, that is, the healthy
exercise of any mental faculty upon its appropriate object; and that
pain accompanies impeded activity. In more modern language, pleasure
is for Aristotle a matter of efficiency. Herbert Spencer puts the same
idea into evolutionary language; “pains are the correlatives of actions
injurious to the organism, while pleasures are the correlatives of
actions conducive to its welfare.” Does this statement really mean,
though, that a man’s personal pleasures are always good for him and
his personal pains bad for him?—because, if that is meant, it is
not difficult to think of any number of cases to the contrary. No,
not quite that; Spencer would qualify by saying that nature can only
strike an average for the species; she cannot attend in detail to the
individual; the sentence means that on the whole, in the long run,
pleasures are good and pains are bad for us. We might reply that it is
rather a poor average that makes the tearing off of a finger nail so
exquisitely painful, though the loss hardly matters, and that allows
the ravages of pulmonary tuberculosis to run so long a course before
warning is given to the suffering organism. But let us offer a definite
objection: a surgical operation is not pleasant; yet it may be the one
thing necessary to save life. Spencer has his answer: “special and
proximate pleasures and pains must be disregarded out of consideration
for remote and diffused pleasures and pains.” In that case,
however,—if the feelings are merely witnesses to the state of affairs
at the moment, and not prophets of the future,—the correlation does
not help us very much; nature’s achievement is less important, even
for the species, than it seemed at first. Or take another objection: I
am overheated, and I sit in a cooling draught; the result is catarrh
or pneumonia; yet the coolness was pleasant. To be sure, says the
biologist; and the local effect was good for you; the testimony of
the feelings is limited in space as I have just acknowledged it to be
limited in time. Again, however, we must rejoin that, in that event,
the correlation is of less importance to the race than it was asserted
to be; if things that are ‘sweet in the mouth’ are going to be ‘bitter
in the belly’ we want to know it; it is small comfort to be told that
the organ of taste is benefited by the pleasant sweetness. And so the
argument might go on.
There is yet another difficulty. “Every pleasure,” says Spencer,
“increases vitality; every pain decreases vitality. Every pleasure
raises the tide of life; every pain lowers the tide of life.” Yet we
read elsewhere that “pleasures are the incentives to life-supporting
acts, and pains the deterrents from life-destroying acts.” Pain, then,
is thoroughly bad for us, because it is detrimental to life; but pain
at the same time is thoroughly good for us, because it prevents our
doing what is detrimental to life. Pain as detrimental ought to have
been eliminated by natural selection; pain as warning of what is
detrimental has been conserved by natural selection. Can the two points
of view be reconciled?
_It would be foolish and overhasty to reject outright the biological
view of feeling_; the very fact that it has lasted through so many
centuries and, in some form or other, has appealed to so many
psychologists—the quotation which heads this chapter is a case in
point!—raises a presumption in its favour. Our conclusion must rather
be this: that general formulas, which need to be qualified almost as
soon as they are phrased, and which lay themselves open to all kinds of
specific objections, cannot help us to a psychology of feeling—or of
anything else. When we have found out, by detailed experimental work,
what the nervous correlate of simple feeling really is, then we may
perhaps advance to some general biological view; but the detailed work
must come first.
Questions and Exercises
(1) Answer the questions printed on pp. 255, 256 of F. Galton’s
_Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development_ (Everyman’s Library,
E. P. Dutton & Co., New York; price 35 cents). When you have answered
them, read Galton’s discussion of mental imagery, pp. 57 ff. (You will
find many other interesting things in the book; for instance, the
discussion of synæsthesia, pp. 105 ff.)
(2) Try to secure a memory after-image, (_a_) by glancing attentively
at a lamplit study-table, and then closing the eyes; and (_b_) by
listening attentively to a short musical phrase or to a dictated
sentence. How do you distinguish this image from a positive after-image?
(3) Describe the tied images that you find in the following figure.
[Illustration]
(4) How is it that very great differences in mental imagery may go
undetected in everyday life?
(5) Try to give instances, from your own experience, (_a_) of the
confusion of sensation and image, (_b_) of memory-colours, and (_c_)
of the alteration of a perception by an image-complex. (An instance
under (_c_) would be, for example, your failure to find something that
you had lost, although it lay in plain sight, because you had a mental
picture of it, different from its actual look in perception.)
(6) The following have been given, by various psychologists, as
differences between sensation and simple feeling. What have you to
say about them? (_a_) Sensation depends upon a present stimulus;
feeling depends not only upon stimulus, but upon the whole state of
the individual at the moment. (_b_) Sensations range between maximal
differences; feelings between maximal opposites. (_c_) All sensations
have corresponding images; there is no image of pleasantness or
unpleasantness. (_d_) Sensations may be localised; feelings are not
localisable.
(7) Professor Wundt, who first distinguished the groups of agreeable
and disagreeable, exciting and subduing, straining and relaxing
feelings, thinks that these experiences are not sense-feelings, but
are all simple feelings; so that there are three dimensions of simple
feeling, the pleasant-unpleasant, the exciting-subduing, and the
straining-relaxing, corresponding in a way with the three dimensions of
space. What criticism have you to offer? And how would you test Wundt’s
theory?
(8) Do you think that a mixed feeling, a feeling which is at the
same moment pleasant and unpleasant, is a possible experience? Give
your reasons, and support them by observations. Can you remember any
references, that bear on the question, in poetry or fiction?
(9) Analyse the sense-feelings of smarting pain, of health, of hunger,
of oppressive heat.
(10) Can you give, from your own experience, any evidence for the
belief that Weber’s law holds for intensity of feeling?
(11) The chapter teaches that the pleasantness of a perfume, of a word
of praise, and of a kindly action is, as simple feeling, identical;
there are no qualitative differences in the pleasant. To many persons
this teaching is repugnant. Why? and how should their objections be
answered?
(12) Define (without looking at the book!) sensation, simple image,
simple feeling.
References
On images: Galton, as above; D. Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature,
1739, bk. i., pt. i., § 1; J. E. Downey, An Experiment on Getting an
After-image from a Mental Image, in Psychological Review, viii., 1901,
42; E. B. Titchener, Lectures on the Experimental Psychology of the
Thought-processes, 1909, Lect. 1; Text-book of Psychology, 1910, 194
ff.
On feeling: H. Spencer, The Principles of Psychology, i., 1881, ch.
ix.; The Data of Ethics, 1887, chs. vi., vii.; J. M. Baldwin, Mental
Development in the Child and the Race: Methods and Processes, 1906, ch.
xvi., § 3; W. Wundt, Outlines of Psychology, trs. C. H. Judd, 1907,
§§ 7, 12; E. B. Titchener, Lectures on the Elementary Psychology of
Feeling and Attention, 1908, Lects. 2-4; Text-book of Psychology, 1910,
225 ff. For experimental methods: Titchener, Experimental Psychology,
I., i., 1901, ch. vii.; ii., 1901, ch. vii.; C. S. Myers, A Text-book
of Experimental Psychology, i., 1911, ch. xxiv.