Literary Notices. xcix 



Hobbes sought to make a clearer presentation of feeling. He sought 

 a physiological basis for feeling. A material called animal spirits flowed 

 through the nerves to the brain, there it aroused sensation. Continuing 

 in its course the stream passes from the brain to the heart. There it 

 arouses feelings. This is all pure nonsense, yet it is a step in the right 

 direction. It is a step towards a true explanation, which is much more 

 than can be said of the definitions of either Descartes or Spinoza. 



Locke speaks clearly from an intellectual standpoint. Man is joyful 

 when he knows that he has accomplished something good. He is sad 

 when he has done evil. Joy and sorrow accompany the knowledge of 

 his acts. 



Kant called pleasure a feeling of advancement of life, and pain a 

 feeling of the retardation of life. 



Wolff and his school follow in the footsteps of Locke. 



Herbarf s view is an outgrowth of his polemic against distinct facul- 

 ties of the soul combined with his opinion as to the nature of the pre- 

 sentations. He traced both feelings and the effects of feeling back to 

 the relations of many presentations, which presentations do not appear 

 singly and which, perhaps, cannot become perceptions. To support this 

 view, Herbart had resort to the aesthetic feelings. This view gives no 

 conception whatever of the bodily feeling. It does not state clearly what 

 relation a feeling sustains to a single presentation. 



General Feeling. By general feelings are meant all those feelings 

 which pertain to the body as a whole and not to my special organ or 

 group of organs. Yet some so-called general feelings are always more or 

 less localized. Pain is always localized. If a sensory nerve is irritated 

 in its course, pain is localized at the extremity of that nerve. Men with 

 amputated limbs feel intense irritation of the nerve stump as pain at the 

 spot where the nerve originally terminated. 



On the other hand, feelings of comfort or discomfort are never local- 

 ized. They involve the whole body. It is the same with the emotions. 

 In the last case two factors are involved ; viz : 1st, a bodily general feel- 

 ing, either as a cause or an effect; 2d, the course and content of the 

 thought. Such feeling can never be localized. Here then is a marked 

 contrast between pain and discomfort. Pain is always localized, discom- 

 fort is never localized. 



Wundt considers the general sensation the prime cause of the gen- 



