nt
which gives force and meaning to the opinion.

Thus we may think of opinions merely as representative of a
psycho-physical mechanism, which we may call the sentiment-attitude.
These sentiment-attitudes are to be regarded in turn as organizations of
the original tendencies, the instinct-emotions, about some memory, idea,
or object which is, or once was, the focus and the end for which the
original tendencies thus organized exist. In this way opinions turn out,
in the long run, to rest on original nature, albeit original nature
modified by experience and tradition.

C. THE FOUR WISHES: A CLASSIFICATION OF SOCIAL FORCES

1. The Wish, the Social Atom[166]

The Freudian psychology is based on the doctrine of the "wish," just as
physical science is based, today, on the concept of function. Both of
these are what may be called dynamic concepts, rather than static; they
envisage natural phenomena not as things but as processes and largely to
this fact is due their pre-eminent explanatory value. Through the "wish"
the "thing" aspect of mental phenomena, the more substantive "content of
consciousness," becomes somewhat modified and reinterpreted. This
"wish," which as a concept Freud does not analyze, includes all that
would commonly be so classed, and also whatever would be called impulse,
tendency, desire, purpose, attitude, and the like, not including,
however, any emotional components thereof. Freud also acknowledges the
existence of what he calls "negative wishes," and these are not fears
but negative purposes. An exact definition of the "wish" is that it is
_a course of action_ which some mechanism of the body is _set_ to carry
out, whether it actually does so or does not. All emotions, as well as
the feelings of pleasure and displeasure, are separable from the
"wishes," and this precludes any thought of a merely hedonistic
psychology. The wish is any purpose of project for _a course of action_,
whether it is being merely entertained by the mind or is being actually
executed--a distinction which is really of little importance. We shall
do well if we consider this to be, as in fact it is, dependent on a
_motor attitude_ of the physical body, which goes over into overt action
and _conduct_ when the wish is carried into execution.

It is this "wish" which transforms the principal doctrines of psychology
and recasts the science, much as the "atomic theory" and later the
"ionic theory" have reshaped earlier conceptio