ON THE MNEMONIC ORIGIN AND NATURE OF 
AFFECTIVE TENDENCIES.! 
If we observe the behavior of the various organisms 
from the unicellular up to man, we see that a large num- 
ber of their processes, and especially the most important 
ones, may be regarded as manifestations of a tendency 
of the organism to maintain or to restore its “stationary” 
physiological state (to use the term of Ostwald’s ener- 
getics). 
In other words, if we call “affective” that particular 
class of organic tendencies which appear subjectively in 
man as “desires” or “appetites” or “needs” and objec- 
tively in both man and animals as “movements” com- 
pleted or incipient (except those that have become 
mechanical in character), then a large number of the 
principal “affective tendencies” thus defined may be at 
once reduced to the single fundamental tendency of each 
organism to preserve its “physiological invariability.” 
For instance, we see that hunger, the most fundamen- 
tal of all affective tendencies, is in reality nothing but 
the tendency to keep, or restore that qualitative and 
quantitative condition of the nutritive system of the body 
which will make possible a continuation of the stationary 
1Translated for The Monist (July, 1911) by L. G. Robinson 
from Rivista di Scienza Vol. XI, 3, 1909. 
361 
