Under the appropriate conditions, the mind applies such contents to a new object automatically and instantaneously, without the need of further conscious consideration. To many people, as a result, it seems as if men perceive and then feel, with no intervening factor. Most of this content at any time is not present in conscious awareness. But it is real and operative nonetheless. What makes emotions incomprehensible to many people is the fact that their ideas are not only largely subconscious, but also inconsistent.
Men have the ability to accept contradictions without knowing it.
This leads to the appearance of a conflict between thought and feelings. A man can hold ideas of which he is rarely or never aware and which clash with his professed beliefs. The former may be ideas which he has forgotten forming, or which he has accepted only by implication, without ever identifying the fact, or which he actively works not to know. If he then responds to an object in terms of such hidden mental contents, it will seem to him that his emotions are independent of his thinking and even at war with it. Emotion, by contrast, is a faculty not of perception, but of reaction to one's perceptions.