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.
The objection urged by Höffding 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 the 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, but 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 tactual 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, physiologically 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 biological 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.