CHAPTER XII.

THE FEELINGS AND THE ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS 172

The function of the feelings, as the cause of association—The law of affective association, conceived as general, and as local—I. Function of unconscious feeling: ancestral or hereditary unconsciousness; personal unconsciousness arising from cœnæsthesia; personal unconsciousness arising from the events of our life—Law of transference by contiguity, by resemblance: wide or narrow—II. Function of the conscious feelings: accidental cases, permanent cases, exceptional or rare cases.

Part II.—SPECIAL PSYCHOLOGY.

INTRODUCTION 187

Importance of the study of special feelings—Utility of historical documents—Causes of the evolution of the feelings: (1) intellectual development; (2) hereditary influence, perhaps reducible to influences of environment—Cases in which the evolution of ideas precedes that of feelings—Inverse cases—The intellect swayed by the principle of contradiction; feeling by that of finality—Classification of primitive tendencies—Method to be followed—Group I.: physiological (reception, transformation, restitution)—Group II.: psychophysiological—Group III.: psychological—Their enumeration.