But if he forgets that he has substituted and
simplified, he soon lapses into verbalism, and begins to talk about
names regardless of objects. And then he has no way of knowing when
the name divorced from its first thing is carrying on a misalliance
with some other thing. It is more difficult still to guard against
changelings in casual politics.
For by what is known to psychologists as conditioned response, an
emotion is not attached merely to one idea. There are no end of things
which can arouse the emotion, and no end of things which can satisfy
it. This is particularly true where the stimulus is only dimly and
indirectly perceived, and where the objective is likewise indirect.
For you can associate an emotion, say fear, first with something
immediately dangerous, then with the idea of that thing, then with
something similar to that idea, and so on and on. The whole structure
of human culture is in one respect an elaboration of the stimuli and
responses of which the original emotional capacities remain a fairly
fixed center. No doubt the quality of emotion has changed in the
course of history, but with nothing like the speed, or elaboration,
that has characterized the conditioning of it.
People differ widely in their susceptibility to ideas. There are some
in whom the idea of a starving child in Russia is practically as vivid
as a starving child within sight.
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