A first book in psychology / by Mary Whiton Calkins.

  • Mary Whiton Calkins
Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A first book in psychology / by Mary Whiton Calkins. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    and of community. To the detailed study of perception and imagination as sensational we must now turn. II. Perception and Imagination as Sensational . The conscious self is, as we have seen, persistent, unique, related, and complex. If now we arbitrarily drop out of ac¬ count the persistence, the uniqueness, and even the related¬ ness, we are still conscious of complexity. The mental reduction of this complex experience to its lowest terms gives what are called the structural elements of consciousness. These apparently irreducible constituents seem to fall into three main classes which have been called ‘sensational’ (or ‘substantive’)*; (2) ‘attributive’ (sometimes called by the name of the chief subclass ‘affective’ elements); and (3) ‘relational.’ To illustrate from the experience which we are studying: My consciousness of blueness is a sensational element; my consciousness of the unpleasantness of the warm day is an affective element; and, finally, my consciousness of the contrast between the blue of the pen handle and the blue of my account-book cover is a relational experience. It is evident that my experiences may be distinguished according as one or other of these elemental kinds of consciousness pre¬ dominates ; and it is equally evident that, from this point of view, perception and imagination are both chiefly sensational in character, distinguished mainly as the consciousness of colors, sounds, and fragrances. Between perception and imagination as sensational com¬ plexes three further distinctions may ordinarily be made. If I close my eyes, and then imagine the oval gilt frame * On all this, cf. Appendix, Section III., § 29 ff.
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