Adele Frost feels something on a hot day about a blue and white flower; also about the hot day; also about matters in the hot day and outside of the hot day. There is a whole moving, interacting, constantly changing aggregate of feelings in Adele. She likes the blue and white coolness of the flower. That situation in Adele’s mind, taken by itself, is a feeling. The feeling is also a thing, since it affects her and could affect her friend Hester (maybe will), a hundred yards away. The feeling of Adele about the blue and white flower is one of pleasure. She is also knowing something about the flower, about the color of the flower, the shape of the flower, and—since she is touching it somewhat—about what is called the texture of the flower: its solidity as form.

Along with having pleasure and knowledge feelings about the flower, Adele has an uncomfortable feeling of approaching tiredness, of the heat, of misgivings about her mother, of doubt about Hester, of uncertainty about Luke, her friend; and deep in her, pain and pleasure feelings, truth and ignorance feelings about her study of French, her future work, religion, what America is, her body, death, food, and space; and many more things. If you mentioned any one of these things to Adele, she would immediately be aware that she has a feeling about it; but certainly the mentioning did not make the feeling, and certainly she could not be aware of the feeling if she did not, in a fashion, have it already.

This means that there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of other feelings in Adele, while she is thought of having the specific feeling of pleasure from a blue and white flower in a hot day.

If you asked Adele about French, and she said she liked French, especially where it was sly in Voltaire’s Candide, this feeling about French in conjunction with slyness and Voltaire and Candide, would be a situation of mind taken by itself; and as such would be one feeling in the way that Adele’s situation of mind about the blue and white flower was one feeling.

All the feelings of Adele, no matter how many, are in relation. They have to do with each other. They’re always having to do with each other. And a feeling that’s complex, or seen as complex, is one feeling—Adele’s feeling about French is complex. This feeling, though, has other feelings in it; which are just as much feelings in themselves as is the complex feeling of which they are a part.

Feelings in a mind are related to each other as things in the world are. All that is in a mind, taken at once, is one feeling—one big feeling, if you like. That general life situation we are aware of in ourselves at any one moment, is a feeling as a whole; but it can be endlessly divided into entities, groups, classes, kinds, and possibilities; and all of these can be added to, and subdivided in turn. There is an organized, tremendously gigantic and subtle maelstrom of situations of mind or feelings in us. They all have to do with things, and are things. They all have knowledge in them and pleasure or pain. They all are of ourselves and ever so much more. Each can be seen by itself. As soon as it is seen by itself, it is a situation of mind taken as one—that is, a feeling as such.