Elements of psychology / by George Croom Robertson ; edited from notes of lectures delivered at the college, 1870-1892, by C.A. Foley Rhys Davids.

  • Robertson, George Croom, 1842-1892.
Date:
1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Elements of psychology / by George Croom Robertson ; edited from notes of lectures delivered at the college, 1870-1892, by C.A. Foley Rhys Davids. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    85/292 (page 65)
    f IX.] Elements of Psychology. 65 Its character in adolescent or adult consciousness is chiefly that of feeling in its proper sense, of affection either pleasurable or painful, and especially of the latter. Many modes of organic sensations are unknown to us save as sources of pain. When our vital mechanism is working rightly, we know nothing of it in detail, but on occasion of disorder, e. g. of the liver, we get sensations of the most depressing kind. Certain other modes, however, of general sensibility are pleasurable, e.g. a sense of warmth, or 'moderate repletion. All that we sum up in the terms, physical comfort or discomfort, sense of ill- or well-being, bien-elre, malaise, ccenaesthesis, is to the greatest extent organic or general sensibility. Even though particular modes of it •nay not figure in consciousness as pleasurable, it does not follow that they do not iell on consciousness. Once more, our general sense of being is a collective sensible experience, made up of all our feeling at any given moment, containing some elements of special sense, but into which organic sense generally enters. We have further good grounds for stating, that into our consciousness of self, as of an individual, of myself, of being myself, organic sensibility enters as the fundamental factor and nucleus, round which is gradually developed the ego, as distinguished from the non-ego. Herein organic sensations attain to great psychological importance, however unfitted they may be, from the fact that they are non-localisable, to become sources of the knowledge of objects. Finally, in respect of Conation organic sensibility has a marked character. Every mode of experience which is markedly pleasurable or painful has a great conational im- portance, even though it may not take the form of overt action. Some of the most fundamental active impulses of our nature F