LIFE'S IDEALS ON A CERTAIN BLINDNESS IN BY WILLIAM JAMES NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY ON A CERTAIN BLINDNESS IN HUMAN BEINGS UR judgments concerning the worth of things, big or little, depend on the feelings the things arouse in us. Where we judge a thing to be precious in consequence of the idea we frame of it, this is only because the idea is itself associated already with a feeling. If we were radically feelingless, and if ideas were the only things our mind could entertain, we should lose all our likes and dislikes at a stroke, and be unable to point to any one situation or experience in life more valuable or significant than any other. Now the blindness in human beings, of which this discourse will treat, is the blindness with which we all are afflicted in regard to the feelings of creatures and people different from ourselves. [3] |