The crowd was alternately energized and passive, feeling its way by the minute.
Romney's group mapped "distances" between words, using their data on word similarities plotted against criteria of good versus bad feelings and active versus passive feelings; for instance, anger would tend toward an active, bad feeling and boredom toward a passive, bad feeling.
Echoing Lotze's distinction between passive and active feelings, Stumpf argues that emotions are passive feelings as opposed to active feelings which are directed towards a duty, a project or an intention to be achieved through voluntary actions.
Emotions belong to the subclass of passive feelings while desire and will belong to the subclass of active feelings.
Hutcheson's argument supposes that our affections and passions are not under our direct control; they are in large measure passive feelings.
The limitations of the technique lie in its fundamentally Pavlovian treatment of the spectator as a passive lump whose feelings can (and, as far as the more propagandistic filmmakers were concerned, should) be manipulated by the iron hand of the director.
Unfortunately, it can be rare in everyday clinical practice, where both the health care professional and person with diabetes often adopt traditional roles, which can result in the person with diabetes becoming a passive recipient of health care and feeling de-motivated.
I'm a dumb but necessary object, a passive supplier of image, and I get the feeling that I'm failing even at this.
And dancing became the opposite of performing: it's feeling and receiving, making oneself a passive conduit for life to flow.
As a longtime political organizer, I would never have believed it possible to get so many regular people so fired up about something as abstract and passive-feeling as the idea that we all might be wrong--and that our opponents deserve respect.
