EMOTIONS ACCOMPANYING CRISES IN EXPERIENCE

EMOTIONS ACCOMPANYING CRISES IN EXPERIENCE.--If our description of the
feelings has been correct, it will be seen that the simpler and milder
feelings are for the common run of our everyday experience; they are the
common valuers of our thought and acts from hour to hour. The emotions,
or more intense feeling states, are, however, the occasional high tide
of feeling which occurs in crises or emergencies. We are angry on some
particular provocation, we fear some extraordinary factor in our
environment, we are joyful over some unusual good fortune.

THE CONTENT OF THE PERCEPT

THE CONTENT OF THE PERCEPT.--The percept, then, always contains a basis
of _sensation_. The eye, the ear, the skin or some other sense organ
must turn in its supply of sensory material or there can be no percept.
But the percept contains more than just sensations. Consider, for
example, your percept of an automobile flashing past your windows. You
really _see_ but very little of it, yet you _perceive_ it as a very
familiar vehicle. All that your sense organs furnish is a more or less
blurred patch of black of certain size and contour, one or more objects
of somewhat different color whom you know to be passengers, and various
sounds of a whizzing, chugging or roaring nature. Your former experience
with automobiles enables you to associate with these meager sensory
details the upholstered seats, the whirling wheels, the swaying movement
and whatever else belongs to the full meaning of a motor car.