I have endeavoured to set forth the real nature of certain so-called neutral feelings; but at the bottom the question is, as was at first intimated, a matter of definition. Is it best to restrict the term Feeling to pleasurable and painful states of consciousness, or is it advisable for clearness and definiteness to widen the use of the term so as to include certain neutral states? From such analysis as has been made, I doubt the advisability. Appeal in such matters must always be made to analysis, and the advantage must be shown for a concrete example. The a priori idea or general impression that pleasure and pain is too small a basis for all feeling has no real weight. Moreover, it must always be borne in mind that psychology, like all other sciences, deals only with phenomena and not with essences, not with mind but with mental manifestations, not with feeling as mental entity having properties, being pleasurable, painful, etc., but with these qualities in and for themselves. Thus the metaphysical fallacy hidden in such common expressions as “pleasurable and painful feelings” is to be constantly guarded against. The feeling is not pleasurable or painful, but is the pleasure or the pain. The feeling 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. As indicated at the beginning of this paper, this common tendency has its psychological basis in the bringing under the term Feeling some of the more permanent elements of consciousness—especially the Ego-sense—which stand for metaphysics as beings and entities having properties. Knowledge, Feeling, Will, are for nominalistic science simply general terms denoting the three groups of mental phenomena which seem to stand off most clearly and fundamentally from each other, and Pleasure and Pain are most clearly and fundamentally set over against Knowing and Willing. It does not seem that Professor Bain and others have made plain to us any better differentia.
If this definition of Feeling seems the best that descriptive classification can give us, it is certainly enforced by genetic considerations. The key to a really scientific classification lies in the history of mind in the individual and race. The greatest progress in psychology is not to be attained by the psychologist continually reverting to his own highly developed consciousness, but, as in all sciences, the study of the simple must be made to throw light upon the complex. Mentality like life is a body of phenomena whose forms cannot be separated by hard and fast lines into orders, genera, species; but there is a continuous development of radical factors. In the earliest forms of mind we find the most radical distinctions most clearly and simply set forth, and what Feeling is at first, it is by continuity of development the same for ever after. The earliest indications of conscious life show merest trace of apprehension of object, some organic pleasure and pain, considerable striving and effort. Mental evolution, like all evolution, is not by the elimination but by the expansion of its primal factors; and by the continuous amplification and intensification of these the highest development is reached. Pleasure and pain remain then for all consciousness as constant factors; and if the term Feeling is to indicate one element in tripartite mind, it must be held to this meaning of pleasure and pain. Pleasure and pain in their most complicated colourings from developed knowledge and will, and in their most subtle interactions, remain true to the primal type; and when we find a state of consciousness in which neither is a dominant factor, we had best denote it by some other term than Feeling. This evolutionary reason seems to me the strongest one for making the term Feeling signify states of pleasure or pain, and, as I have suggested (Mind, xi. 74-5), a genetic classification of the feelings must proceed upon this basis.
CHAPTER V
EARLY DIFFERENTIATION
A blind psychic life of pure feeling cannot long avail in the sharp struggle of existence, for to all stimulations it secures only two crude reactions, a spasmodic, defensive activity from pain, and an appropriative motion from pleasure. This perfectly subjective consciousness can serve only the earliest and crudest demands of life; but as the struggle for existence becomes fiercer, the more delicate and definite reactions, which can only come through cognition, are required. All that we can say as to the origin of knowledge in general is that it arose, or rather was achieved, like other conscious and extra-conscious functions, in answer to the pressing demands of the organism; and so far as we can see, it does not seem to be evolved from any pre-existing consciousness or any common basis of mind. It is a distinct type of consciousness, and so utterly diverse that we cannot trace any psychical continuity. However, we can remark this,—that perfect objectifying is not at once achieved, but cognition must be regarded as beginning in a very minute and obscure germ in some intense feeling state. Yet this germ does not seem to have a direct psychical connection with the pure feeling by which it is excited into existence, but it is a reaction to an opposite mode more diverse from pleasure and pain than these are from each other. Moreover, according to the law of evolution by struggle, this first cognition does not come to mind, but is achieved only in most intense will act, comparable for relative intensity to the knowledge originated by severest effort of a man in danger of his life listening to a barely audible sound, or watching a barely visible object on a distant horizon. The evolution point for all life is in stress and strain, and this is the law of the development of sensation at all times in psychic history.[[A]]
[A]. Cf. my remarks in Psychological Review, vol. ii. pp. 53 ff.
Cognition undoubtedly began as a very crude sensation, as the barest movement towards objectifying sense, as a pure sensation without any image form, any direct perception of an object. In the order of disappearance of elements from consciousness, we note that sensation maintains itself through a long series, and is the last stage before pure feeling sets in. As heat stimulus is increased, sense of heat begins at a certain point, and increases up to a certain intensity of the stimulus and to a certain intensity of its own, when it rapidly vanishes, and in the agony on the verge of unconsciousness is lost in pure pain. We note also that the cognition of object, of thing, disappears before the sensation of heat does. A person burning to death is for a time conscious of the fire, which consciousness at length is lost in intense painful sensations of heat; and this in turn, at the acme of consciousness entirely disappears, leaving only pure pain. Further, the rise to full consciousness, as well as the fall to unconsciousness, also suggests bare sensation as the original cognition. If a hot iron be applied to one in deep sleep, the order of waking consciousness—apart from any dream order—is pure pain, then sensation of heat, then awareness of hot object, and also of part heated and paining. In our ordinary consciousness it is certainly very hard to even partially isolate the various elements. Sometimes, however, a person will say, “I have such a queer pain; I do not know what it is.” The psychosis thus indicated is evidently pain with a movement towards a sensation which yet is not realized. Sensation does not come though it is looked for; there is pain only, and unqualified save by the peculiarity of being unidentified. The sense of lack of sensation bewilders, because sensation is so constant for our psychic life; but in primitive mind there is no such feeling of queerness when sensation does not come, or it is not able to attain it. This inwrought tendency to sense all our pains and pleasures, and to feel the lack if we do not, is evidently the result of a long evolution. Sensation is thus seen to be an activity which we exercise to give definition to our pure feelings; there is something unfulfilled for us if sensation does not come, and we may thus go out for it and interpret the pain in sense form by a will-effort. Primitive mind, however, does not achieve its sensations as incited by this indefinite sense of lack-queerness or strangeness, but through pain at some critical moment to obtain a suitable reaction. All sensation is at first, as we even now can faintly realize, by a severe effort, and is not a spontaneous, incoming impression. Paradoxical as is the expression, “we learn to know,” yet it contains a truth in that cognition is an attainment incited by the necessities of the organism. Necessity is the mother of invention, and knowledge is at first an invention which the organism hits upon to help it in the exigencies of experience. In early and even in later consciousness it is probable that the majority of pleasures and pains are so dull in intensity that they do not rouse sensation, and comparatively few incite as far as to perception. A close analysis of our own consciousness even will show many pleasures and pains, many vague states of uneasiness and discomfort, and many of organic pleasure and comfort, which lead to nothing and come to nothing for either sensation or perception. These states stand alone by themselves, and vanish with little effect on either mind or body. They constitute the outer fringe of consciousness where all mentality starts, and under sufficient pressure of life-interest develops into great fulness and complexity, or, when of comparatively little value to the organism, they disappear suddenly and completely. I am inclined also to think that close scrutiny will sometimes reveal for psychical life, as for the physical, certain entirely useless survivals, undifferentiated feelings of some types, and probably also some pure sensations.
I conceive then that the fundamental order of consciousness is not, as usually set forth, pure sensation with accompanying pleasure and pain, but the reverse—pure pleasure and pain with accompanying sensation; and only by a very gradual evolution indeed did pure feeling bring in sensation, which is thus always sequent and not accompaniment. We commonly inquire as to a sensation, Was it pleasurable or painful? but the true form of inquiry is, Was the pain or pleasure senseful? Did it attain to bringing in the qualifying element of a sensation, and in what form?
The qualifying of pure feeling to attain actions suitably differentiated for distinct forces must have proceeded very slowly, and have had the dimmest beginning. We cannot suppose that consciousness attained at once and easily to a manifold of sense, much less have had this brought to it, involuntarily received. The earliest forms of sensations were no doubt of those affections of the body produced by heat, pressure, and other elements which determine most vitally the existence of the organism. The first sensation indeed was undoubtedly not in any particular mode, but was a bare and undifferentiated form. It was some such indefinite and general sensation as we may sometimes detect near the vanishing-point of consciousness just before pure pain state occurs. For example, the sense of heat as such is lost at a given temperature for a given case, and there exists for a moment a vague general sensation, sensation per se, before mere pain absorbs all consciousness. Sensation at its very origin was not sense of any kind, sense of heat, pressure, etc., but a mere undifferentiated sense of bodily affection. The body is not, of course, apprehended as object, but there is a vague attributing and qualifying which marks the state as more than purely central, as being a real objectifying. Toothache, for instance, implies ache before the toothache, and this general aching is the type of early unorganized sensation. Pain is the essence of the state, and is throughout dominant, the cognition in mere aching being a very minor element. “I was awakened in the night by a toothache,” is the objective description of a triple movement in consciousness, pain, ache, toothache. The earliest cognitive experiences were all of this very general type of sensation, which becomes gradually more definitely localized and qualified as distinct modes of sensation; pain-hunger, pain-heat, pain-pressure, and corresponding pleasure-sensations are differentiated. Subtract the mere pain from hunger state and from painful sensation of heat, and we have certain quales which are difficult to analyse, but which are cognitive in nature. Diverse bodily affections are sensed diversely instead of being felt in one mode, pure feeling.