This is an interesting point about a speaker’s feelings.
You often project (want) the opposite of what you are feeling.
To say “that is peaceful” you show that you are not at peace.
It’s a statement of internal feeling that you put on something external.
But is that true? 🤔
Lewis has doubts. Why?
Because all value statements are not subjective and trivial!
Even if it were granted that such qualities as sublimity were simply and solely projected into things from our own emotions, yet the emotions which prompt the projection are the correlatives, and therefore almost the opposities, of the qualities projected. The feelings which make a man call an object sublime are not sublime feelings but feelings of veneration. If This is sublime is to be reduced at all to a statement about the speaker’s feelings, the proper translation would be I have humble feelings. If the view held by Gaius and Titius were consistently applied it would lead to obvious absurdities. It would force them to maintain that You are contemptible means I have contemptible feelings: in fact that Your feelings are contemptible means My feelings are contemptible.
-C.S. Lewis, The Abolition Of Man (Amazon)
