science views the world as an assemblage of objects having mutual relations. in this cosmos of interacting elements certain objects become endowed with mental powers by which they accomplish self-conservation. just what these objects are and how they attain mental quality is beyond our direct investigation. however, assuming consciousness as a purely biological function, as a mode for securing favourable reactions, we can discuss the probable course of its evolution under the law of self-conservation. mind, like all other vital function, must originate in some very simple and elementary form as demanded at some critical moment for the preservation of the organism. it is tolerably obvious that this could not be any objective consciousness, any cognitive act, like pure sensation, for this has no immediate value for life. it was not as awareness of object or in any discriminating activity that mind originated, for mere apprehension would not serve the being more than the property of reflection the mirror. the demand of the organism is for that which will accomplish immediate movement to the place of safety. the stone pressed upon by a heavy weight does not react at once to secure itself, but is crushed out of its identity; but the organism reacts at once through pain. it is certainly more consonant with the general law of evolution that mind start thus in pure subjective act rather than in mere objective acts, like bits of presentation or a manifold of sense. we shall now 13endeavour to elucidate this conception of pure pain as primitive mind, first from the general point of view of the law of self-conservation, and secondly from particular inductive considerations.
it is very difficult to conceive what this bare undifferentiated pain as original conscious act was, it being so foreign to our own mental acts. our psychoses have a certain connection one with the other, and a connection which is cognized as such, so that the whole of mental life is pervaded by an ego-sense. but primitive consciousness must have been by intermittent and isolated flashes. the primitive pain, moreover, was not a pain in any particular kind, but wholly undifferentiated or bare pain. there was no sense of the painful, but only pure pain. nor was there any consciousness of the pain, any knowledge or apperception of it. the pain stands alone and entirely by itself, and constituting by itself a genus.
now to assert that this general pain exists, is not, of course, realism. the pain is a particular act, though it is wholly without particular quality. it is not a pain as one of a kind distinct from other kinds, but it is comparable to a formless, unorganized mass of protoplasm which has in it potency of future development. pain may exist as such, but not a consciousness or a feeling. it is meaningless to say that the first psychosis may have been a consciousness in general form which was neither a feeling, a will, or a cognition, but the undifferentiated basis of these, nor can a feeling per se exist. the expressions, painful consciousness, and painful feeling are deceptive; there is no consciousness which pains, but consciousness is the pain, and the feeling is not pleasurable or painful, but is the pleasure or pain. “feeling,” as i have said (mind, vol. xiii., p. 244), “has no independent being apart from the attributes which in common usage are attached to it, nor is there any general act of consciousness with which these properties are to be connected.”
14further, the law of conservation requires us to associate with this primitive act of blind, formless pain the will act of struggle and effort which is as simple and undifferentiated as the feeling. and these two we must mark as the original elements of all mental life. strenuousness through and by pain is primal and is simplest force which can conduce to self-preservation. it is thus that active beings with a value in and for themselves are constituted. the earliest conscious response to outward things is purely central and has no cognitive value. the first consciousness was a flash of pain, of small intensity, yet sufficient to awaken struggle and preserve life.
pleasure, then, we have excluded from playing any r?le in absolutely primitive consciousness. pleasure and pain could not both be primitive functions, and of the two pain is fundamental in that the earliest function of consciousness must be purely monitory. pain alone fulfils primitive demands, and secures struggle which ends in the abatement of pain through change of environment or otherwise. pain lessens, but pleasure does not come, but unconsciousness instead, for no continuous organic psychic life is yet evolved. as long as pain continues there is effort and self-conserving action; when pain ceases, consciousness ceases, because the need for it is gone. each fit of pain subsides into unconsciousness as struggle succeeds, and there is no room for even the pleasure of relief, which, indeed, must be accounted a tolerably late feeling. as far as the lowest organisms have a conscious life it is a pain life, but they have a nirvana in a real unconsciousness. the evolution of pleasure must be accounted a distinct problem.
the law of evolution is, that origin of function and all progressive modification arise at critical stages. thus it is in painful circumstances that the origin of mind is to be traced, and the important steps in its development have been achieved in severest struggle and acutest pain at 15critical periods. pleasure is not then the original stimulant of will, but is a secondary form. pleasure has an obvious utility which is far from the absolutely primitive. the pleasure-mode early enters, however, to sharpen by contrast the pain-mode, and it is only by their interaction that any high grade of psychic life could be built up. the development of pleasure cannot be from pain, but as a polar opposite to it. we cannot bring the development of mind into a perfectly continuous evolution from a single germ, as is the case in biological evolution. in a sense we may say that pleasure and pain are complementary, like positive and negative electricity, but the comparison cannot be pressed. we cannot, indeed, carry it so far as to believe either absolutely essential to the other. we mention, then, the evolution of pleasure as a problem which is yet to be dealt with in full. however, that it is not original element in mind is easily seen from this. as we ascend the grades of psychic life the pleasure-pain gamut lengthens, and as we descend, it shortens, with pleasure always as the intermediate factor. thus, if we can represent it by a line,
pain pleasure pain
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any single element which can affect psychic life, as temperature, moves through a highest pain intensity, an intermediate region, then to pain again as effects in a range from a very high temperature to very low, or vice versa. now, this gamut in a human being, from the intensest agony from heat to the greatest suffering from cold, consists of very many notes, but the step to unconsciousness is always at one end of the scale. in lower psychic life it shortens, but always at the intermediate points where pain merges into pleasure and pleasure into pain, and thus in the lowest form the original element of consciousness as feeling is seen when only the two 16extremes remain, namely, primitive consciousness as pain reaction. as the step from feeling—consciousness to unconsciousness is through a pain, this certainly points to pain as the original feeling, and the first element of consciousness. we must suppose then that the first organism which attained consciousness felt pain, that if this came from temperature, for example, that intense heat and intense cold would both produce a pain one and the same in nature, bare pain, not sensation of heat or cold. and this pain-consciousness response came at first only at the application of these critical temperatures, all other degrees not bringing any response. if consciousness like other functions originated as an infinitesimal germ at some crisis in life, it must have been with pain. the pleasure function, unlike the pain, does not originate in life and death crises.
that pleasure is secondary is also suggested by this, that pleasure is mainly connected with such late formations as the special senses, whereas pain is prominent with earlier functions. thus we have pleasures of taste, but visceral pleasure is scarcely noticeable, though visceral pain, as colic, may be very acute. wild animals, which feed often under fear of interruption or in extreme hunger, bolt their food without tasting, and so miss taste pleasure, and this seems to be the type of primitive feeding.
the origin of pleasure is then, i think, to be traced as an intermediary feeling between pain as produced by excess, and pain from lack as differentiated form. pain as original and undifferentiated is the same whether resulting from excess or lack, but it is only after it has differentiated so far as to be in two modes that pleasure can enter as a mediate form of feeling and become a directing force to advantageous action. the primitive pleasure-pain gamut was this:
lack pain pure pleasure excess pain
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17a general survey from the point of view of self-conservation leads us then to regard the original psychic state as a pain-effort form. there is first a purely undifferentiated sense of pain and closely consequent a purely undifferentiated nisus. there is neither sense of objectivity in general, nor in any special mode, nor is there feeling of pleasure. and the study of what seem to be the earliest forms of mental life in the child and in the lower animals points toward this conclusion. preyer, in his studies on the mind of the child, expresses his conviction that the feelings “are the first of all psychical events to appear with definiteness,” and that at first in no manifold forms. he adds, “the first period of human life belongs to the least agreeable, inasmuch as not only the number of enjoyments is small, but the capacity for enjoyment is small likewise, and the unpleasant feelings predominate until sleep interrupts them” (mind of the child, part i., new york, 1888, p. 143, cf. p. 185). since in the embryology of the mind as in that of the body the individual repeats in condensed manner the evolution of life, we judge that these observations point toward the genesis of consciousness in a single feeling state, pure undifferentiated pain. the earliest consciousness we can discover seems to approach this type. the close observer of very young infants must feel that the meagre psychic life they may have consists mainly of intermittent pains interrupted by comparatively long periods of unconsciousness in sleep. of course, the earliest psychic life of the infant is not absolutely primitive both on account of heredity and on account of pre-natal experience; but in its general form it, no doubt, reverts toward the original status of mind. this original state, to which that of a very young infant is akin, was merely pain, which knew not itself nor its relation to other states, nor its relation to the external world, but was a wholly central subjective fact, and so was expressed only in wild and blind general movements. the very lowest types of 18psychic life which we can interpret seems to feel and nothing more. they do not feel at anything, and do not feel because they know, nor do they have definite kinds of feeling.
pure feeling as bare pain and as undifferentiated pleasure is certainly far removed from our ordinary conscious experience, yet it may sometimes appear in a survival form, especially in sluggish states, in waking from sleep, and in recovering from an?sthetics. we are sometimes awakened by a dull pain which was evidently in its inception mere bare pain without differentiation. but in all such cases the pure pain or pure pleasure is but momentary, and is quickly swallowed up in a flood of manifold sensations. many objects by many modes of sense at once invade and possess consciousness, and the early indefinite mode vanishes so quickly that we very rarely have time to note it by reflective consciousness.
but it is not merely in exceptional states of developed consciousness that we may trace the elementary form of feeling, but we may believe it to be fundamental to consciousness in general. it is natural for us who are so pervaded and dominated by sense of objectivity to see in it the causal element in mentality; feeling and will seem consequent to it, and we apprehend and feel accordingly. but the order of evolution was not from knowledge in any form to feeling, but the reverse, and we may suspect that in the completest analysis consciousness will still be found to obey its original law. if the rise of knowledge was at the instance of feeling, it is certainly unlikely that a fundamental order should be more than apparently reversed.
the order of consciousness is really the reverse of the order conceived by the objectifying consciousness, and this is a point where cognition by its very nature as objective may be said to obscure itself. to apprehend is to bring into relation, and the relation is very easily attributed to what is purely unrelated, to pure subjectivity. thus here 19in the interpretation of merely subjective facts knowledge tends to stand in its own way. it is only objectively that the objectifying can appear causative of feeling; subjectively sense of object must always be taken as subsequent to a pleasure-pain psychosis. the object communicates or causes the feeling, but the subjective order is as such of necessity the opposite; the object does not come in view; there is no relating, until feeling has incited to it, and gradually the mind reaches out to an objective order from the purely central fact. in every psychical reaction there must be the purely central disturbance before the rebound to the actuality occasioning the disturbance. i must feel before i can discriminate or have any sense of the communication of the feeling. this means that when external objects are brought into relation with a wholly unanticipating consciousness, the first element in psychosis is always pure pleasure or pure pain. thus, on a cold, dark day a sudden rush of sunlight on a blindfold man causes pleasure, then feeling warm, and then sense of warming object. the glow of pleasure and the pang of pain merely as such is in all cases precedent to any objective reference. pure centrality of response, i thus take to be the initial element of all psychosis, primitive or developed. the first tendency in every consciousness is pure pain-pleasure, complete subjectivity which, however, in higher consciousness is so quickly lost through practically consentaneous differentiation that all traces of it seem wholly extinguished. pure subjectivity must be pronounced the most evanescent of all characters in developed minds and yet the most constant. it is the inevitable precedent in every sensation and in every perception. we always experience pleasure or pain before the pleasurable or painful. a bright colour gives pleasure before we see it, and this pleasure incites to the seeing it. but so fully has the objective order been wrought into consciousness as a mode of interpretation that the great majority on reading 20the preceding sentence will mentally at first attribute sense of objectivity from the expression “bright colour gives pleasure,” as if there were pleasure at colour, a colour-pleasure, whereas is meant pleasure and nothing more,—bare, undifferentiated pleasure.
the objective statement, however true, is no measure of subjective fact, but this twisting of subjective fact to correspond with objective order is so embedded in language and common thought that it will perhaps always remain the form of ordinary thinking, like common-sense realism and geocentric appearance. the expressions, it pleased me, it pained me, and the common modes of speech in general, are fundamentally misleading. pleasure and pain bring their objects, not objects pleasures and pains. pleasure per se does not come for and in consciousness from the object,—though this is objective order—but the object for and in consciousness comes from the pleasure. pleasure and pain always precede any cognizance of the thing, and it is only the combination of the two elements that constitutes pleasure or pain of or at a thing. the primitive element, the original feeling movement, also excludes subject as real object; both the “it” and “me” are not yet apparent; there is not yet identification of experience with subject or object, and in fact no sense of experience at all. the psychologist must retain common expressions, however, but, like the astronomer who retains such phrases as the sun rises, the sun sets, he must reverse common interpretation and correct natural error.
guided by this principle we note an obvious error in the interpretation of child consciousness. if a bright-coloured object is passed before the eyes of a young infant we may conclude from its expression that a pleasure-consciousness is awakened, but we are probably quite at fault if we conceive it to have a consciousness of bright, and that this consciousness preceded and gave rise to pleasure and gave it a quale as pleasure-brightness. sense of pleasure-object 21is manifested by appropriative activities, but in the very young, where these activities are lacking, the response to object is best regarded not as in any wise sense of object, nor even any kind of sensation, but as a pure subjectivity of pleasure. of course the same remarks apply to the pain side of the child’s experience.
the purely subjective experience, while it becomes more and more evanescent factor as mind develops, yet always maintains its place as the initial point and vanishing-point of every psychosis. every psychosis beyond the most primitive must be accounted a feeling-will-knowing group. these psychic forces exist in a correlated union generally comparable with the correlated activity of physical forces like electricity and heat. each psychosis repeats in itself, in tendency form at least, the essential stages in the evolution of consciousness. every psychosis rises from the pure pleasure-pain as the lowest level of mentality like a wave, and like a wave falls back into it again. every wave of consciousness, whether it rises slowly or rapidly, whether it subsides gradually or violently, rises from pure subjectivity and comes back to it again. this absolutely simple feeling phase is accomplished so rapidly in ordinary human consciousness as to be rarely perceptible, but in lower consciousness it often exists as mood, as more or less permanent psychosis. the brahmans attain artificially a subjectivity akin to this through their expertness in mental control and manipulation. they succeed in reducing and keeping consciousness in some very simple type, and their nirvana may be considered as a state of pure subjectivity on the pleasure side. they, of course, cannot really attain this state or, at least, keep it, for pleasure is at bottom relative, yet they come to something approaching it. pain at its height just before unconsciousness is reached, is always of the pure subjective type. in slow torture pain increases to a maximum intensity in pure pain, beyond which there is a gradual loss of intensity 22and consciousness in general, till ultimate failure of all consciousness. from the maximum intensity on to the end, consciousness is entirely subjective. pleasure at its maximum attains only comparative subjectivity. such facts tend toward a theory of mind which makes its original and fundamental act purely central; mind starts as in a germ which pushes outward till it penetrates space and time, but not in any reverse motion a pushing inward of a series of presentation forms.
we shall now notice certain of mr. james ward’s statements on primordial mind—in the article psychology, encyclop?dia britannica—in which he controverts feeling as original and simplest unit in mentality. mr. ward regards “the simplest form of psychical life” as involving “qualitatively distinguishable presentations which are the occasions of the feeling.” presentation is primitive and initial in all consciousness, and cognition—feeling—will is the order for all mind. we always act as we are pleased or pained with the “changes in our sensations, thoughts, or circumstances” of which we are aware. some presentation form is, throughout all our experience, the precursor and cause of feeling, and feeling can never be said to exist in a pure state as bare pleasure and pain totally without cognitive value.
on the contrary, i conclude from general considerations and from special indications in our own minds that pure pain is the original element, and that pure pleasure and pain are fundamental in all mind. pure feeling arises from objects, indeed, but is still wholly unknowing of object and without qualitative aspect. pure feeling is the constant incentive to all knowing and will activity. to say that i am pleased with a thing is to transform objective order into subjective fact. pleasures and pains certainly come from things but this does not invariably rouse cognition of them as so coming, or of object as causative agent. the governing and essential fact of mind is always 23pure feeling, which, by reason of its perfect centrality, necessarily and naturally tends to elude observation. every act of consciousness begins and ends with pure feeling, but mind, as far as it minds itself, is most apt to see only culminating phases rather than the obscure and inner forces which constituted long outgrown stages. the prominent facts of late consciousness are always very complex. cognition as revealer unites with the known and inevitably, but strongly tends to regard itself as the determining and causative agent, whereas by its essence and function it is secondary. cognition does not create its object, except in the view of a transcendental philosophy.
mr. ward asserts that phenomena of pleasure and pain involve change in consciousness with consciousness of change whereby we are pleased or pained. a changing presentation continuum is impressed upon mind, and it is by awareness of these changes that feelings are caused. this is certainly a complex mode to be assigned to all consciousness. this asserts that primarily consciousness merely happens in presentation form as determined from without, but i take it that the evolution of faculty is always acquirement, not mind determined, but mind determining, achieving its own growth in blind struggle. mind is wholly an inward growth, not a series of givens; and presentations are accomplished not merely in it but by it. the fundamental principle is that while objects do determine conscious functions, it is only through self-conservative interest, through pleasure and pain reacting to them. all sensations, intuitions, presentations, are at bottom achievements as forced by law of struggle for existence. they do, indeed, seem to come of necessity and spontaneously to adult human consciousness, but developed faculty by virtue of being such does not have to attain beginnings.
but we note also this, that while all consciousness is 24change in the sense of being dynamic, of being an activity, this does not include consciousness of change. consciousness as a changing factor is very distinct from consciousness of that change, and does not necessarily include or imply it. that the forms of activity which we group under the general term consciousness have their existence wholly in movement and change is true, but this does not necessitate that the changing elements should be aware of the change as such. different things may be felt and known, but this does not always result in being known as different. this brings in comparison, consciousness of relation, which is certainly beyond primitive consciousness. in early mind we conceive that new elements are continually taking the place of the old, that change is incessant, yet without sense of the change. so far as the earliest consciousness is spasmodic and intermittent, appearing in isolated flashes, we cannot speak even of change in consciousness, much less of consciousness of change, for there is no continuous thread, no integration, consequently change is not in consciousness from a consciousness to a consciousness, but the only change is from a consciousness to unconsciousness. in the whole life of some organisms we may believe that only three or four pains or pleasures occur, entirely subjective and undifferentiated, and this collection of consciousnesses where state does not follow and influence state, where there is no complexity, is scarcely to be termed a consciousness which changes, much less that is aware of change. it is not improbable that even with civilized and educated men mind may sometimes lapse so far that changes occur with no awareness of change. in such sluggish conditions as when half asleep we may experience succession of consciousnesses without noting succession, each phase standing alone in itself and by itself. while consciousness is maintained as consciousness—that is, a continuance of conscious states—by the change, it is obviously not necessary to this that there 25should be awareness of change. here as elsewhere we must keep clear of the mistake of making consciousness more than a general term for a group of phenomena. consciousness as such has no reality or existence, but merely denominates a sum of consciousnesses. the phrase, change of consciousness, and similar expressions easily convey the impression that consciousness is a changing something. but we know that consciousness does not exist as a general indefinite something which changes or has other properties, but is merely a name for certain activities and functions.
the formula of mr. ward’s hardly applies to developed consciousness, much less to undeveloped. consciousness even in man cannot be regarded as a something which changes in sensation and presentation forms as pure givens, determined with immediate completeness from without, and these changes perceived, and pleasure and pain result. on the contrary the immediateness and spontaneity of presentation forms in our ordinary adult human consciousness are in appearance only; they stand first before us because they have reached a dominance through heredity and education, but still the latent and inward order is always from feeling to knowledge and not vice versa. the accomplishment of presentation is usually so marvellously rapid in perceptive beings, and acts upon such slight incentive that it is only under very rare conditions of regression, or when developing a new sense or new form of sense that we see that the moving element in mentality is pure feeling. thus, for example, in being awakened from sound sleep by a bright light suddenly brought into the room, the order of consciousness is, pure feeling of pain, sensation of light, perception of lighted object, and not the reverse; whenever we can catch consciousness gradually awakening we can always identify this order. the lighted lamp, objectively speaking, certainly caused the feeling of discomfort with which consciousness 26began, and this feeling roused the mind to both sensation of light and perception of lamp. i, of course, have a feeling as to the visible object only after seeing it, but this is altogether distinct from the feeling which incites to the seeing. a vague, undifferentiated pain or pleasure is always initiative, but pure pleasure-pain is often so low in intensity that it does not start any cognitive act.
in a general way the influence of feeling and emotion upon cognitive act in higher psychical life is acknowledged by common observation. the wish is father to the thought—we see what we want to see. what we observe depends upon prepossession, interest, and the whole pleasure-pain tone. the mind must be determined to cognitive act by interest of some kind, and even for advanced consciousness with all its strength of inherited aptitude total loss of interest ultimately leads to loss of perceptive power. the impetus of all previous cognitive effort will carry on cognition, of any high order, at least, but a comparatively short time. blot feeling out of life and all nature would soon become a dumb show and quickly fade into nothingness. absolute passionless receptivity is impossible under the conditions of reality, and pure presentation forms never come as antecedent and causative to feeling. we have constantly to bear in mind that in the nature of the case the simplest elements and fundamental laws are hidden and certainly far from conspicuous in highly developed mind, which is an intricate nexus of feeling, will, and cognition constantly acting and reacting on each other.
as a general statement, then, impliedly as to mind in general, and implicitly as to the developed human mind, the proposition that consciousness is fundamentally aware of changes in itself as the basis and cause of all feeling is an assertion which may well be questioned. certain it is that being “pleased or pained with the change” is not feeling in general, but a particular kind of feeling, namely, 27feeling of variety and novelty. further, to be pleased with a thing for itself alone is not to be referred to pleasure or pain “with the change.” there is intrinsic pleasurableness and painfulness which does not come under the head of pleasure or pain of change. from both an a priori point of view of the law of self-conservation, and also from a brief survey of certain forms in comparative and human psychology, we incline towards accepting pure pain as the original consciousness which is very soon differentiated into excess and lack pain with evolution of pure pleasure. will exists throughout as incited by feeling. much, indeed, is to be done before this theory of the nature of mind is either fully elucidated or proved; but i believe that the assumption of mind as life function leads toward such a theory. sensationalism and intuitionalism are both mistaken as to the origin and essence of mentality. consciousness is not at bottom any mode of cognition, either as more or less freely accomplished by a “mind,” or as more or less mechanical impression from “things,” but it is primitively and fundamentally pain and pleasure as serving the organism in the struggle for existence. it is strange that evolutionary psychologists have so generally missed this point of view, and maintain sensationalism.
comte, indeed, acutely remarks (positive philosophy, vol. 1, p. 463) that “daily experience shows that the affections, the propensities, the passions, are the great springs of human life; and that, so far from resulting from intelligence, their spontaneous and independent impulse is indispensable to the first awakening and continuous development of the various intellectual faculties.” he here assumes the introspection which he elsewhere denies as psychological method, and enunciates an important principle which he never carried out. horwicz has made a survey of feeling as fundamental aspect of mind, but his discussion is physiological.
our conclusions have been founded on general considerations 28and on the phenomena of growth of mind in general and particular. another line of evidence would be decadent mind. mental powers should decline and vanish in the reverse of the general order in which they arose; the order of disappearance should be the reverse of appearance, and if pain-pleasure be primitive, we should expect to find it both the first conscious element in infancy and the last in old age. the last stage of senility seems sensitive only to organic pleasures and pains. further, old age does not so much seek pleasure as guard against pains, and this fact is in line with our treatment of pain as prior to pleasure and more fundamental than it. we may consider it likely that conscious life in the individual begins with a pain and ends with a pain. senile psychology on this and other points is worthy of far more attention than it has received, for it is on the whole more accessible and trustworthy than infant psychology.
with regard to mr. h. r. marshall’s remarks (philosophical review, vol. 1, p. 632), it is sufficient to say that i lay no great emphasis on either pain or pleasure being the first fact of consciousness; but my main contention is that the primitive facts of consciousness are of the pain-pleasure type. while i have noticed some considerations as implying pain to be the first consciousness phenomenon, yet i am satisfied that pain and pleasure are correlative and complementary, each implying the other. further, i do not regard pain as “primal sense,” but as primal fact. pain is not in any wise a sense, and sense of pain can only mean capacity for pain, or actual pain experience.
again, i do not, as mr. marshall implies, regard pain as the differentiating basis of subsequent evolution, but rather as mere prius and impetus, and hence i do not look for pain-pleasure to disappear with mental evolution, nor yet to mark divisions in “sensational phenomena”; but it will ever remain in representative forms, at least, as increasingly complex stimulant of all mental life.
29the objection urged by h?ffding and others to the primitive nature of pure feeling is that we sense before we feel pain or pleasure; thus we have the sensation of touch before we feel the pain from contact with a hot stove; we feel the pin, then the pricking sensation, then the pain. this precedence has been measured by beau and others.
but what is the significance of these well-recognised facts? do they show that pain-pleasure originates always in sensation? what is the origin of tactile power? how and why was the first tactile effort made, if not at impulse of some pain-pleasure? when conscious life was at pre-tactile stage—before it had learned to touch—it had no pain from touch, but it had pain. we can scarcely deny that a pre-tactile stage exists, that all sensation was originally a sensing—an exertive act, that it did not come, but was attained; for all the growth of sensitive power in the race proceeds thus at present, and the law of present psychic development in this regard seems general. but it is pain-pleasure which forces all action; here is the impulse which brings exertion whether as sensing or otherwise. a doctrine of spontaneity is against the general law of development by struggle. it is certainly true that, standing with my back to the stove and inadvertently coming in contact, i, without any previous pain-pleasure impulse and without exertion, have sense of touch, then pain. but this spontaneity is not original factor; it is the result of inherited powers. when tactility has become a well-developed power and is handed down to descendants, then contact with things is immediately and spontaneously realized in the form of touch, which contact would originally have been unnoticed. that is, the severest condition—a red hot stove—would impress the lowest psychism only in terms of mere pain, and so result in general reactions of minimum service. the early psychism which is just in process of achieving sense of touch would have pain, and then with effort touch 30the object and thus attain some more special reaction of more particular service. but the tactile, like all sensing activity is anticipatory, it is a finder, an interpreter. suppose i bring a very fine needle toward your eye, you may see it and avoid it; but suppose your eyes are shut the eye comes in contact with the needle, and you have sensation of touch; but you are sound asleep, then pricking sensation may wake you as needle proceeds deeper, but in profoundest sleep undefined pain may be the first consciousness to result. now the needle might be so small as to be seen with great difficulty by the waking man, or invisible, or to be touched with great difficulty; but this stage of exertive action for the sense is only relative, and in the history of mind the very grossest forms were at one time only dimly seen by intensest effort, and lower still, touched only by intensest effort. seeing originated in looking, and passive touch in active touch, as moved by interest or direct pleasure-pain. now pain is not in the mere sight or touch, but is suggested by them. the whole order—seeing, touching, feeling prick, feeling pain—is the reverse of evolution order. the rational mode, then, of interpreting the origin of any sense, whether tactile, visual or other, is not by receptivity, but through struggle at critical stage when great pain is actual or imminent. thus, if the conditions of life required the development of a special sense of magnetism, it would surely arise by strongest effort, as, indeed, all progress in special sensitiveness is now being accomplished. thus, the anticipatory and premonitory function of sense does not make it original, rather the contrary; it is guide and significant of pain-pleasure.
it is obvious that the cognitive tendency once established becomes an instinct of objectivity and governs the whole mentality. this is obviously the case with man. he does not exist in that sluggishness and semi-consciousness where pain-pleasure must arise as primitive impulse, 31but by habit and instinct he is passively and actively cognitive. the eye is continually seeing things spontaneously, the hand touching, but as to some very small object we have to exert effort to see or touch, and this was undoubtedly the mode by which all seeing and touching arose. it is because generations of ancestors actively sensed, that we automatically sense; the tendency has become ingrained in mind. so it is that man is predominantly sensing, is continually and naturally awake to objective conditions, is constantly anticipatory, and so normally senses before he feels pain-pleasure. however, a man in a “brown study,” inadvertently touching a hot stove, has pain, then warmth, then touch sensation, and actively realizes these. so in deep slumber mentality often begins with pain-pleasure. at bottom the reason we have pain from a sensing is because we had originally pain-impulse to that sensing, and the pain therewith. thus tactility, arising as effortful sensing, was produced by pain from thing to be touched, to be sensed in its experimental value. by innumerable painful experiences with hot things, the hot thing is tactilily appreciated; and as touching is actively pursued by organism on the alert, the associated pain is more and more quickly realized from given object. in origin pain was felt from the hot thing in contact, before either sense of warmth or contact was sensed; it was this pain that forced to sensing and development of cognition, which, however, ultimately became habit, and things were constantly appreciated and anticipated. thus the touch-warmth-pain order is established. sense is significant of pain-pleasure, but the pain-pleasure came not at first from the sensing, but the contrary; sensing was determined by it, and became correlated with it, and became sign of it. the progress is from initial subjectivity to an instinctive constant objectivity. this objectivity is reflected in all objective expression as language; “the heat was painful,” “it hurt”; the “it” being 32tactual thing, etc., etc. however, if we look for primitive consciousness, we must find it only in primitive organisms in their primitive stage, and in man most rarely only as tendency in profound relapse. we must mark this, that cognition is not to be evolved out of feeling, but at instance of feeling as impelling the knowing effort or volition.
we may suppose that primitive consciousness still exists in the lowest types of life, but it may also be the sub-consciousness in the higher types. viewed biologically, what is sub-consciousness?
the earliest living aggregations attain but a very slight degree of common life, and very slowly do the cells, under the pressure of serviceability in the struggle for existence, give up their independency and become interdependent, each thereby giving up some functioning to be done for it by others, and in turn functioning for others. thus it is but slowly that a stomach is specialised, the cells in general in the organism long retaining and exercising some digestive function, which is properly termed sub-digestion. in this way a soup bath gives nourishment. if psychic function specializes gradually like other functions, we shall have in the same way a sub-form here, a sub-consciousness which stands for lower centres, and not for the whole organism as such. the wider, higher, and more specialized psychic centre does not at once extinguish the lower.
now what is a high organism but an involved series of combinations of combinations? with every new integration a higher plane is achieved, and the vital process has a wider functioning: but the physical or psychical activity so far as it does not pass over into the service of the new and higher whole remains as sub-function. with every new stage in evolution the integrating psychic factors only partially lose themselves in effecting a common psychism for the new whole, a sub-consciousness and a sub-sub-consciousness, etc., are still carried on in survival. in man, 33physiologically speaking, it is the brain consciousness which is general. but we need not suppose this to extinguish all the lower ganglionic consciousness from which and by which it arose. if psychic function be correlative with other function, we must expect in man a vast amount of survival sub-mentality which, while not the mind of the man, is yet mind in the man. the individual knows necessarily only the general consciousness, for this only is his consciousness and constitutes his individuality, yet the doctrine of evolution would call for a vast deal of undiscoverable simple consciousness which never rises to the level of the whole organism’s consciousness. a cell or a group of cells may be in pain and yet there be no pain in the individual’s consciousness, and so unknown to this general consciousness.
we have intimated that primitive consciousness may occur in a sub-conscious way in the highest organisms. but can this sub-consciousness ever be more than mere survival in its nature? or may it play essential part as basis of higher manifestations? if the integration of mentality is like other integration,—e.g. material which is based on molecular and atomic activity—it will be bound up in the activity of psychic units, which can be none other than sub-consciousness. that is, any common or general consciousness when looked at from below, and analytically is the dynamic organic whole of elements; it is a product of activities which are on another plane from itself. roughly illustrated, i may say that my finger feels pain before i do. we conceive that at a certain intensity a sub-consciousness tends to rouse a general consciousness, and for a time maintain it; and losing intensity, the general consciousness disappears leaving only the sub-consciousness, which may long outlast the general form.
sub-consciousness, whether as survival or basal, is put beyond our direct observation, but it remains a necessary 34biological and psychological hypothesis. here is exemplified for psychosis that law of the aggregation of units in hierarchical order, that wheel within wheel structure of the universe, upon which i have touched in mind, ix. pp. 272-3.
