ABSTRACT
Feeling is the function offering the greatest difficulty as regards clear definition. The word is used for many different kinds of mental contents, when these more or less lack definition. For example, one hears it said that someone has a certain “feeling” in his leg, when actually a certain sensation is meant. But although physical sensations may be regarded as an element in feeling, the two must be distinguished. There is a second difficulty in relation to intuition. We say, for example, “I ‘feel’ that some trouble is brewing”, or “I ‘feel’ that he wanted to say something different”. Here the main content of the mental happening is a vague intuition. The greatest difficulty, however, is found in distinguishing between feeling and emotion, concepts which many psychologists regard as equivalent. Some of them identify emotion with feeling, and distinguish sentiment. In my opinion, it does not matter much what names we attach to our concepts, so long as we explain our meaning. I shall use feeling and sentiment as synonyms, and shall try to indicate in what respects they differ from emotion.
