iously powerful, derivative of pleasure or
pain. This feeling-tone, however, is not as a rule an inherent value in
the word itself; it is rather a sentimental growth on the word's true
body, on its conceptual kernel. Not only may the feeling-tone change
from one age to another (this, of course, is true of the conceptual
content as well), but it varies remarkably from individual to individual
according to the personal associations of each, varies, indeed, from
time to time in a single individual's consciousness as his experiences
mold him and his moods change. To be sure, there are socially accepted
feeling-tones, or ranges of feeling-tone, for many words over and above
the force of individual association, but they are exceedingly variable
and elusive things at best. They rarely have the rigidity of the
central, primary fact. We all grant, for instance, that _storm_,
_tempest_, and _hurricane_, quite aside from their slight differences of
actual meaning, have distinct feeling-tones, tones that are felt by all
sensitive speakers and readers of English in a roughly equivalent
fashion. _Storm_, we feel, is a more general and a decidedly less
"magnificent" word than the other two; _tempest_ is not only associated
with the sea but is likely, in the minds of many, to have obtained a
softened glamour from a specific association with Shakespeare's great
play; _hurricane_ has a greater forthrightness, a directer ruthlessness
than its synonyms. Yet the individual's feeling-tones for these words
are likely to vary enormously. To some _tempest_ and _hurricane_ may
seem "soft," literary words, the simpler _storm_ having a fresh, rugged
value which the others do not possess (think of _storm and stress_). If
we have browsed much in our childhood days in books of the Spanish Main,
_hurricane_ is likely to have a pleasurably bracing tone; if we have had
the misfortune to be caught in one, we are not unlikely to feel the word
as cold, cheerless, sinister.

[Footnote 9: E.g., the brilliant Dutch writer, Jac van Ginneken.]

The feeling-tones of words are of no use, strictly speaking, to science;
the philosopher, if he desires to arrive at truth rather than merely to
persuade, finds them his most insidious enemies. But man is rarely
engaged in pure science, in solid thinking. Generally his mental
activities are bathed in a warm current of feeling and he seizes upon
the feeling-tones of words as gentle aids to the desired excitation.
They ar