March 4, 1920] 



NATURE 



of supernatural. . . . They, constitute an essential 

 part of the whole truth, be our religious convic- 

 tions what they may." 



And there we must leave this interesting volume 

 to the judgment of the many readers who will 

 certainly be attracted by its contents. 



W. A. T. 



A Natural History of the Feelings. 



The British Journal of Psychology : Monograph 

 Supplements. No. vi. Pleasure — Unpleasure : 

 An Experimental Investigation on the Feeling- 

 Elements. By Dr. A. Wohlgemuth. Pp. vii + 

 252. (Cambridge : At the University Press, 

 1919.) Price 145. net. 



WHAT the psychologists of the Wiirzburg 

 school have so largely done for- the 

 thought processes, Dr. Wohlgemuth has here 

 attempted for the feeling-elements of the mind. 

 The investigation consists essentially of a lengthy 

 series of introspections on the affective states pro- 

 duced by various sensory stimuli — given singly or 

 in combination — carried out by four trained 

 observers under strictly experimental conditions, 

 the data thus obtained being submitted to a 

 detailed consideration and analysis, and eventually 

 summarised and expressed in seventy-seven rules. 

 These rules, the author maintains, may be re- 

 garded as a first step towards the building up of 

 a natural history of the feeling-elements^a task 

 which should precede any systematic attempt at 

 theorisation or at the application of the psycho- 

 logy of feeling to practical life. 



A novelty in the presentation as regards work 

 of this kind consists of the fact that the data 

 from which the conclusions are drawn {i.e. the 

 protocols of the observers) are recorded in full, 

 occupying the largest portion of the book (137 

 closely printed pages), references in the margin 

 indicating passages in the protocols from which 

 the subsequently stated conclusions have been 

 drawn. From the purely scientific point of view, 

 this procedure has everything to recommend it. 

 There exist no well-recognised and trustworthy 

 methods of summarising introspective data, such 

 MS there are, for instance, in the case of purely 

 quantitative results, and the presentation of the 

 complete material enables the reader and critic 

 to control at each step the author's conclusions, 

 or to draw new and independent conclusions of 

 his own, in a way that would not otherwise be 

 possible. The opportunity of studying the 

 observers' gradually increasing power of analysing 

 and describing the fleeting affective contents of 

 the mind should, moreover, be welcome to all who 

 are interested in the possibilities of the modern 

 NO. 2627, VOL. 105] 



method of exact introspection in psychology. On 

 the other hand, the inclusion of the full data has 

 increased by not a little the size (and doubtless 

 also the cost) of the present work. 



It is impossible to summarise adequately the 

 wealth of conclusions arrived at from the study 

 of the protocols. A very few only of the more 

 salient points can be mentioned here. The 

 observers find that "the feeling-elements are not 

 attributes or functions of sensations or other cog- 

 nitive processes, but a separate class of conscious 

 processes. Although generally closely dependent 

 upon the cognitive and conative processes to 

 which they belong, they often show a certain inde- 

 pendence and detachment." The feeling-elements 

 possess two qualities only — pleasure and un- 

 pleasure, this result supporting the more common 

 view as against the multi-dimensional theories 

 advanced by Wundt and certain others. Un- 

 pleasure must be clearly distinguished from pain, 

 which is not a feeling, but a sensatioiv— " a sensa- 

 tion of a definite modality whose feeling tone is 

 mostly unpleasant, but which may be neutral or 

 sometimes even pleasant." 



As regards the much-disputed question con- 

 cerning the possibility of the co-existence in con- 

 sciousness of distinct feeling-elements, some 

 fairly strong evidence is brought in favour of 

 such co-existence, the co-existing feelings being 

 either of the same quality {i.e. both pleasant or 

 unpleasant) or of different qualities {i.e. one 

 pleasant, the other unpleasant). There are, how- 

 ever, important mdividual differences in the ease 

 and frequency with which such co-existence can 

 be observed. 



A further disputed question — that of the local- 

 isability of the feelings — is also answered in the 

 affirmative, the localisation of feelings being 

 closely dependent on the observer's power of 

 objectifying the feelings in question. In this con- 

 nection it is interesting to observe that "the 

 behaviour of feeling-elements is inverse to that of 

 sensations in this way, that whilst sensations of 

 the auditory and visual senses are more readily 

 objectified than those of other senses, the feeling- 

 elements when belonging to the former are less 

 readily objectified and localised than when they 

 belong to the latter." 



An important difference between feeling and 

 sensation was found in the fact that "there is 

 nothing on the affective side of consciousness to 

 correspond with the memory image on the cog- 

 nitive side. The memory of a past feeling-element 

 is merely knowledge — i.e. solely cognition. The 

 affective experience attaching to an ekphored 

 [i.e. recalled] cognitive experience is a new feeling- 

 element, a new pleasure or a new unpleasure." 



