side 208

(fortsat fra side 207)

peculiarity of localization in certain parts of the body. One 'wave-

length' causes irritation at the root of the tongue and marked increase

of blood supply. Each is also accompanied by its own emotional

response, so that one kind of stimulus predisposes to religious fervor

and exalted egoism and the other causes morose and turbulent pas-

sions. One even produces a violent desire for something of which no

concept can be formed. Now I may believe all these as true state-

ments of fact but they do not nor can they produce in me any sense

of reality such as five minutes of actual experience might produce.

The writer believes that a consistent limitation of these words to

the spheres respectively indicated will lighten the burden of the stu-

dent of metaphysics as well as of psychology.

The loose use of the words real and true in psychology coupled

with clear consciousness of the distinctions involved is encountered in

James' Psychology. "The sense that anything we think of is unreal

can only come when the thing is contradicted by some other thing of

which we think. Any object which remains uncontradicted is ipse

facto believed and posited as absolute reality" But the only thing

that can never be so contradicted is immediate experience. A subse-

quent experience may explain, it can never annul it. The only things

that can so be contradicted are judgments of relations. The presenta-

tion 'rain-bow' is real, but the judgment 'rain-bow now in the sky'

can be proven untrue.

If the word 'real' be considered to have too strongly intrenched

itself in the wide sphere in which it has been used so carelessly, surely a

new word is required for the primary affectation of consciousness called

'sense of reality' and 'reality-feeling.' The further characterization

'a sort of feeling more allied to the emotions than anything else' may,

perhaps better apply to the recognition of truth. The reason for this

relation to the feelings will be found in the nature of feelings. The

writer in his inhibition-irradiation theory of pleasure-pain (which has

theory') has attempted to derive all emotional acts, physiologically

considered, from resistance, obstructions, depletion, or other inter-

ference with the flow of nervous impulses, so that there is irradiation

or inhibition respectively. If this derivation be correct it will follow

that all acts of identification must share in this peculiarity. The new

concept meets a barrier at the threshold of recognition which is finally

thrown down and the wave of thought finds outlet in a path of least

resistance, it is identified with previous acts. This release affords the

recently received a psychological restatement by Fite(1) as ' resistance

(1) PSYCHOLOGICAL REVIEW, X., 6.

(fortsættes på side 209)