=Sensuous Feeling.=--As already noted, while feelings vary in intensity according to the strength of the resistance, they also differ in kind according to the arcs traversed by the impulse. Experiencing a burn on the hand would involve nervous impulses, or currents, other than those involved in hearing of the death of a friend. The one experience also differs in feeling from the other. Our feeling states are thus able to be divided into certain important classes with more or less distinct characteristics for each. In one class are placed those feelings which accompany sensory impulses. The sensations arising from the stimulations of the sense organs, as a sweet or bitter taste, a strong smell, the touch of a hot, sharp, rough, or smooth object, etc., all present an affective, or feeling, side. So also feeling enters into the general or organic sensations arising from the conditions of the bodily organs; as breathing, the circulation of the blood, digestion, the tension of the muscles, hunger, thirst, etc. The feeling which thus enters as a factor into any sensation is known as sensuous feeling.
=Ideal Feeling.=--Other feelings enter into our ideas and thoughts. The perception or imagination of an accident is accompanied with a painful feeling, the memory or anticipation of success with a feeling of joy, the thought of some particular person with a thrill of love. Such feelings are known as ideal feelings. When a child tears his flesh on a nail, he experiences sensuous feeling, when he shrinks away, as he perceives the teeth of a snarling dog, he experiences an ideal feeling, known as the emotion of fear.
=Interest.=--A third type of feeling especially accompanies an active process of attention. In our study of attention, it was seen that any process of attention is accompanied by a concentration of nervous energy upon the paths or centres involved in the experience, thus organizing the paths more completely and thereby decreasing the resistance. The impulse to attend to any experience is, therefore, accompanied with a desirable feeling, because a new adjustment between nerve centres is taking place and resistance being overcome. This affective, or feeling, tone which accompanies a process of attention is known as the feeling of interest.