COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



of the word " feeling " to designate indiffer- 

 ently a sensation or an emotion bears uncon- 

 scious witness to the fact that the two kinds 

 of psychical state differ only in their modes of 

 genesis and of composition. The contrast be- 

 tween a peripheral sensation, as of colour or 

 touch, and an emotion, is chiefly a contrast in 

 degree of definiteness and of localization. But 

 this contrast holds also between peripheral sen- 

 sations and such vague internal sensations as 

 hunger, which, being known as cravings, are 

 assimilated to the lowest orders of emotion. 

 From this difference in definiteness arises the 

 fact that the peripheral sensations admit of 

 being definitely grouped according to their re- 

 lations of likeness and unlikeness, and thus 

 afford the material for perception and reasoning, 

 while emotional states admit no such definite 

 grouping, but arrange themselves variously in 

 clusters, the particular character of the cluster 

 being determined by certain contemporaneous 

 perceptions or ideal reproductions of past per- 

 ceptions. For these reasons the ultimate psy- 

 chological nature of emotion can be reached 

 only through a synthetical interpretation which 

 starts by recognizing the fadt that, along with 

 that classifying of conscious states which occurs 

 in perception and reasoning, there goes on a 

 recognition of certain states as pleasurable or 

 desirable to retain in consciousness, and a re- 

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