inate in this generalized motive, simply
because the specific actions in which the sense of power is obtained
cannot so readily, or cannot at all, be generalized. Such an
organization of actions and states in consciousness demands nothing
new in principle, implies nothing different from that found on the
intellectual side when concepts are formed from concrete experiences.
The associative processes and the selective principles everywhere
present in mental action are all that are necessary to be assumed
here. We may take advantage, however, of the special investigations of
affective logic, and the like, as giving evidence in support of such
a conception of the formation of moods as is here being worked out. We
are likely to make the mistake of thinking the specific instincts and
the impulses and pleasure states that we find in human experiences,
such as ecstasy, as the whole of these experiences, and to overlook
the constant process of generalization that goes on in all the mental
activity of the individual. For example, we may think of various plays
which involve instinctive actions as being wholly explained by, or to
be made up of, these instinctive acts alone, whereas in most plays
that take the form of excitement, abandon or ecstasy, there are being
employed processes which are general in the sense of reenforcing all
the specific acts alike, and are yet specific in the sense that they
are themselves, or have been, practical: that is, they are in reality
processes that belong to the fundamental strata of consciousness--to
the nutritional and reproductive tendencies. Out of these tendencies
the more complex processes of which we speak are made, but they are no
mere repetition of old forms. That, at least, is the way these
ecstatic moods appear from our point of view.

It is precisely because ecstatic moods are presumably thus general and
composite, and involve fundamental instincts (but in such a way that
they are transformed, and no longer present in body, so to speak, but
are represented by their organic processes rather than appearing as
specific concatenated chains of motor events), with their purposes
changed and their whole meaning determined by the present states to
which they belong, that we should be inclined to say that to explain
any great and powerful movement in the lives of individuals or nations
as merely reversions is very inadequate and indeed wrong. They are
emotional forces that are at work, composit