FEDERATION OF LABOR 



2149 



FEELING 



in which the sultan shares power with Malay 

 chiefs, Chinese merchants and a British resi- 

 dent. This form of government has been grad- 

 ually established since 1874. 



Of the million people who inhabit the 27,500 

 square miles of the Federated Malay States, 

 only two-fifths are Malays, a slightly larger 

 number being Chinese and nearly all the rest 

 British Indians. The Chinese and Indians 

 have been drawn to the country by its mar- 

 velous natural wealth, to develop which the 

 government has constructed more than 800 

 miles of railway and over 2,000 miles of cart 

 roads. The states are the source of nearly 

 half the world's tin and are becoming one of 

 the most important centers of rubber culture. 



FEDERATION OF LABOR, AMERICAN. See 

 LABOR ORGANIZATIONS. 



FEEBLE-MINDED, EDUCATION OF THE, a 

 term which embraces all the activities involved 

 in training, in school homes and asylums, 

 those persons who are mentally defective. 

 The purpose is to make them less a burden 

 to themselves and others. There are three 

 classes of mental defectives, not including the 

 insane (see INSANITY). The most helpless of 

 these classes are idiots, who have no power 

 of attention and self-control; the next group 

 includes the simple idiots, whose attention is 

 feeble and difficult, and who do not develop 

 beyond the mental age of seven; the third, 

 the imbeciles, are the most teachable. How- 

 ever, since they have weak will power and 

 initiative, they need to be directed even in 

 their play. This latter group possess the minds 

 of children from seven to twelve, and never 

 develop beyond that degree of mentality. For 

 these reasons the schools must be homes for 

 the continuous residence of all inmates. 



Kindergarten games and exercises, such as 

 stringing beads and spools, block-building, etc., 

 are included in the training received by the 

 majority of feeble-minded pupils. Reading, 

 writing and number work are within the ca- 

 pacity of only a few. Gymnastics and march- 

 ing to music are provided to develop bodily 

 control. For the most part the education is 

 motor and practical. The boys are taught 

 mat-making, shoe-mending, weaving, tinsmith- 

 ing, carpentering, gardening and farming, and 

 the girls are instructed in the care of the 

 home, in cooking and in sewing. Much of the 

 work in these homes is done by the inmates. 

 Farm colonies are operated in several states 

 with successful results. In Canada each prov- 

 ince cares for its own mental defectives. 



Recent data collected in a study of 10,000 

 school children, in the states of California, 

 New Jersey and Philadelphia, showed three 

 per cent to be in some degree feeble-minded. 

 More than eighty per cent of the truants and 

 one-half of the paupers and degenerates are 

 mentally defective. About sixty-six per cent 

 of the cases of feeble-mindedness and idiocy 

 are from alcoholic families. 



FEEL 'ING. We know, we feel, we will; or, 

 to express the same thoughts in other words, 

 we think, we enjoy or suffer, we act. All men- 

 tal activity consists of knowing, feeling, will- 

 ing. Feeling accompanies all mental acts and 

 constitutes the personal element in them. We 

 can understand feeling only through experi- 

 ence. Unless one has felt pleasure and pain, 

 joy and sorrow, all the literature ever written 

 upon these subjects could not make him un- 

 derstand them. Because feeling is such a 

 strong personal element in mental activity it 

 is difficult to define, and the word is used in 

 popular language to express a great variety of 

 meaning. 



We say we feel hungry, or thirsty, or fa- 

 tigued; we also say we have a feeling of ill- 

 health, or of drowsiness. In all these cases 

 the word feeling is used to express the total 

 consciousness of a complexity of organic sen- 

 sations. As these organic sensations are fre- 

 quently accompanied by pleasure or pain, the 

 popular use of the term is to a certain extent 

 correct. We may define feeling as the subjec- 

 tive side of any modification whatever of con- 

 sciousness, for feeling, with its tone of pleas- 

 ure or pain, enters into every operation of the 

 conscious mind. 



Besides the feelings, described above, that 

 accompany general physical conditions, there 

 are feelings which are occasioned by organs 

 of special sense, such as the pleasure we derive 

 when seeing a pretty landscape, a glorious 

 sunset, a beautiful picture, or when hearing a 

 sweet melody. Finally, there are feelings 

 which are occasioned by our knowledge or our 

 ideas, and are known as intellectual, or ideal 

 feelings. These higher feelings are known as 

 emotions. 



Quality of Feeling. Feelings are either 

 pleasurable or painful. These qualities are 

 intimately associated with the condition of the 

 nervous system. Pleasure results from work- 

 ing off a surplus of nervous force and energy; 

 this is the reason why children enjoy running 

 and other muscular exercises. The fact holds 

 good also for animals. An animal feels pleas- 



