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The main body of this book first appeared in 1887, coming to a fourth edition in 1926, after a long period out of print. Its historical interest is great, but Paulhan's chief claim to our attention is that his views on the subject of feeling are widely accepted by French psychologists to-day and have greatly influenced their work. We may take his position as largely representative of French thought.
One has not to read far before one realizes how great a share, direct or indirect, Paulhan must have had in the formation of Mr. Shand's views, as developed in The Foundations of Character, for instance, in his emphasis on the fact that all mental phenomena are systems.
Man is, Paulhan holds, an imperfectly adapted animal. Both affective and intellectual phenomena are the expression of imperfect functioning of the psycho-physical organism. '… and if we compare affective with intellectual phenomena from the point of view of the peculiar conditions which occasion both, we see that the difference between them lies in the fact that the amount of psychical energy set up is less in the case of the production of the second and the systematization greater. In short, as a complete automatism appears to be the perfect and ideal state of the organism, the intellectual phenomenon is the indication of a slight disturbance and a relatively inconsiderable weakness in systematization, whereas the affective phenomenon is the expression of a more profound disturbance and a more considerable deficiency in systematization and harmony' (page 57). This is Paulhan's main thesis, and he formally defines the general law governing the production of affective phenomena in these terms:
An affect is the expression of a more or less profound disturbance of the organism, due to the fact that a relatively considerable