We shall now notice certain of Mr. James Ward’s statements on primordial mind—in the article Psychology, Encyclopædia 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 pure 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 change 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 should 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 versâ. 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 began, 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, feeling 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 and 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.