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 |
| ──────────────┼──────────────┼────────────── | ||
A 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 psychic 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 anæsthetics. 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 in 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 the 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 is 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 and 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.