Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 August 2010
260. Although, as we have seen (§ § 189, 190), there are various forms of Emotional sensibility which are directly called- into activity by Sense-perceptions, yet those Emotional states of Mind which directly or indirectly determine a great part of our conduct, belong to the level of the Ideational consciousness; being, in fact, the result of the attachment of the feelings of pleasure and pain, and of other forms of emotional sensibility, to certain classes of ideas. Thus the Cerebrum and the Sensorium would seem jointly concerned in their production; for whilst the Cerebral hemispheres furnish the ideational part of the material, the Sensory ganglia not only give us the consciousness of their result, but invest that result with the peculiar feeling which renders it capable of actively influencing our conduct as a motive power. This we see clearly, when the Emotional state takes the form of a true desire; for when this is felt, even as regards the gratification of a bodily appetite, it involves the existence of an idea of the object of desire; but it is only when this idea is associated with the contemplation of enjoyment in the act to which it relates, or of discomfort in the abstinence from that act, that it becomes an impelling force towards the performance of it.—All the higher forms of Emotional consciousness may be decomposed (as it seems to the Writer) in a similar manner.
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