Psychological principles / by James Ward.

  • Ward, James, 1843-1925.
Date:
1918
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Psychological principles / by James Ward. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    458/504 (page 438)
    acquired a distinctively psychological meaning by no means identical with that of temperament This the synonymous term ‘ mood,’ which has come to suggest variation, shews. The Germans recognise the same distinction, contrasting Tempera- menten as permanent with Stimmungen (or Launen) which may even suddenly vary. There is a happy analogy underlying this German phrase, so appropriate to the genius of that people. The ‘ soul ’ as affective and conative, or as they call it, das Gemiith, is conceived to be—like a musical instrument—in tune or out of tune, now in one key, now in another. This attuning is its Stimmung. Upon what does this depend ? Primarily, that is, on the lower level of consciousness—and more or dess on all levels—upon the state of the body, i.e. on the healthy and har¬ monious working of the organism, or the opposite. In a word, the Gemiithsstimmung, or ‘ ground-tone,’ is the feeling-tone of coenaesthesis, including under this term the so-called ‘ tonic action ’ of muscles1. The bodily state upon which this depends, depends itself in turn on innumerable physical conditions, ‘ weather, temperature, diet, the due mean of sleep and work and so forth2.’ To sum up : what we experience in ourselves and observe in others are continuous variations in ' how we feel ’ : these we learn by slow degrees to connect with the play of the environment on ‘ the thousand strings ’ of our organism, or with their tension, or with both. Such variations are greater in some persons than in others, but all of us ‘ feel more or less different,’ mornings and evenings, spring and autumn, in youth and in age, &c., &c. True, there is a certain underlying identity; a man cannot change his body or constitution as he may change his garments; but bodily changes, and profound ones too, most people undergo; and all such changes entail a change of coenaesthesis and so of Stimmung. They also all of them involve changes in what we have described as ‘ the sensitive and appetitive self’: how radical these changes may be has been briefly noted3. This 'physio¬ logical self,’ as it has been called—though so to call it is going just 1 Cf. above, ch. ii, § 5, p. 53, and ch. v, § 3, pp. 110 f. 2 Cf. Nahlowsky, Das Gefiihlsleben, 1862, pp. 234 ff. It is greatly to be regretted that this admirable book, so little known to English psychologists, has neverbeen translated.