ocalized in the mouth, and we even think of the sweet substance as
being objectively pleasant. We say that it is a "pleasant day", and
that there is a "pleasant tang in the air", as if the pleasantness
were an objective fact.

By arguing with a person, however, you can get him to admit that,
while the day is pleasant _to him_, and the tang in the air pleasant
to him, they may be unpleasant to another person; and he will admit
that a sweet substance, ordinarily pleasant, is unpleasant when he has
had too much of sweet things to eat. So you can make him realize that
pleasantness and unpleasantness depend on the individual and his
condition, and are subjective rather than objective. Show a group of
people a bit of color, and you will find them agreeing much better as
to what color that is than as to how pleasant it is. Feeling-tone is
subjective in the sense that people disagree about it.

Theories of Feelings

1. Pleasantness might represent a general _organic state_, and
unpleasantness the contrary state, each state being an internal bodily
response to pleasant or unpleasant stimuli, and making itself felt as
an unanalyzable compound of vague internal sensations.

This theory of feeling is certainly attractive, and it would {176}
account very well for all the facts so far stated, for the
subjectivity of feeling, for its lack of localization, and for the
absence of specific sense organs for the feelings. It would bring the
feelings into line with the emotions. But the real test of the theory
lies just here: can we discover radically different organic states for
the two opposite feelings?

Numerous experiments have been conducted in the search for such
radically different organic states, but thus far the search has been
rather disappointing. Arrange to record the subject's breathing and
heart beat, apply pleasant and unpleasant stimuli to him, and see
whether there is any characteristic organic change that goes with
pleasant stimuli, and an opposite change with unpleasant stimuli. You
should also obtain an introspective report from your subject, so as to
be sure that the "pleasant stimuli" actually gave a feeling of
pleasantness, etc. Certain experiments of this sort have indicated
that with pleasantness goes slower heart beat and quicker breathing,
with unpleasantness quicker heart beat and slower breathing. But not
all investigators have got these results; and, anyway, it would be
impossible to generalize to the