If we observe one of the most familiar instances of voluntary action—the process of eating, for example, we find that what happens is as follows:—The contact of the food with the tongue and palate stimulates, by an immediate impulse, all the movements of mastication and swallowing (in its first stage), and the further movements for placing more food in the mouth. We find that the intensity of the stimulation is in proportion to the degree of the pleasurable excitement, being highest at the commencement, and sinking gradually in the approach to satiety. There is no fact that can be produced more exactly typifying the primary action of the will. A tasted pleasure, everywhere, at all times, from the beginning to the close of life, is an immediate inducement to activity. Coming out of a chilling atmosphere into a place of genial warmth, our energy is at once aroused to follow the cue. The striking up of a band attracts and detains all listeners susceptible to the charm. There is, in such instances, no intermediate process of reflection, deliberation, or resolution; a 386 simple, an indivisible, link unites a burst of pleasure and a burst of activity following up the pleasure.
Reverting to the first example, the act of eating, we may detect another phase of the voluntary sequences. Suppose a morsel, admitted in good faith, to disclose a very bad taste, say the taste of soot; what is the immediate, unreflecting, response? The first effect is a collapse and suspension of all the masticating movements. From the earliest infancy, this consequence would be shown. There commonly succeeds, and often with great rapidity, a second effect, which we shall consider under another head—the energetic discharge of the morsel from the mouth; but long before children are capable of the second act, they fall into the first—the suspension of the activity at the time.
On extending our survey to the analogous cases, we are enabled to announce this also, as a typical situation of the Will, namely:—That, as pleasure furthers activity in its own direction, pain arrests activity in its own direction. Turning a street corner, we encounter suddenly a bitter wintry blast; we feel at once an arrest upon our movements. An ill odour, a painful contact, a grating noise, a disagreeable spectacle, have all the same immediate efficacy. The proper, the direct consequent of an incursion of pain, is suspended activity. Not only is this second law conformable to observation, it is the implication, the obverse, of the previous law connecting pleasure with increased activity.
The apparent exceptions to the second law need to be adverted to. The most obvious is the exciting effect of a smarting sensation, as the stroke of a whip. A light, smarting, pungent, stimulus, amounting to pain, quickens the general activity of the system for the time; while a more severe blow operates according to the general principle, and suspends activity. To quicken an animal’s pace, the light smart is often the best application; to arrest an access of action, there must be greater severity. The excitement of an acute smart is due not to the pain of it, but to the mere shock imparted to the nerves; if a similar intensity of nervous shock were also a 387 cause of pleasure, the stimulating effect would be far greater, and more prolonged; for the element of pain, in the case of the painful smart, destroys the activity in the second stage, when the nervous excitement has subsided. Any one walking at a certain pace, and suddenly jolted, is momentarily awakened to a higher pitch of nervous excitement; but goes on, after the shock, at a slackened pace. An acute smart has thus a twofold efficacy; it is both a temporary stimulant of activity, and a cause of reduced energy on the whole, according to the second law of the Will.
Another apparent exception is the vehemence manifested in escaping from pain; a mode of activity almost indistinguishably mixed up with the writhings and contortions of a creature under suffering, in other words, with the physical embodiments of the state of pain. The sudden excitement just adverted to also enters into the complex effect; being brought out at the first moment of the infliction, and at every new twinge in fitful modes of suffering. This energetic activity for escape is a distinct aspect of voluntary power. It is Locke’s typical form of the Will, but is here regarded as secondary or circuitous, and not as the primitive situation.
Thirdly. We must now then consider expressly the influence of pain in stimulating action for alleviation or escape, as when we draw back from anything that pains or offends us. To call the pain the direct stimulant in this situation, would be to connect pain and pleasure equally with the exaltation of our energies; which would be a contradiction, or else would tend to show that there is no casual connexion between pleasure or pain and our active exertions. The real motive force of pain, however, is not the state of suffering, but the relief; and relief from pain is another form of pleasure. That pleasure stimulates, that pain depresses, that alleviation of pain stimulates, are all one and the same phenomenon—statements of the same law.
There are two stages in the operation of pain. The first is, when under a present pain, something happens to give us relief; in which case, we experience on the instant, a burst of 388 physical elation, exactly as from a sudden access of pleasure. In exposure to a cold wind, we have the depression accompanying a massive pain; in coming gradually under shelter, we feel buoyed and elated, our movements are quickened, and we follow the lead with growing energy. Every one has experienced the stimulus of success, and the damping effect of failure; although, practically viewed, the success should dispense with the newborn energy, and the failure should bring about an increase of exertion. It takes a mind of unusual strength, to resist these natural tendencies.
In the second stage, pain is found acting as a stimulant, without present alleviation, and therefore without the benefit of the law of pleasure. How is this? The answer is, that the idea of the relief is the operative circumstance. The pedestrian exposed to a freezing wind is urged to an accelerated pace, by the secondary or derived impulse, growing out of the idea or anticipation of relief through a certain amount of exertion. That this idea is the real source of the new strength, is attested by the known facts and circumstances of the situation. A sufferer, having no idea, prospect, or hope of alleviation, flags and succumbs, in accordance with the proper tendency of pain; the stimulation of the active powers does not follow the degree of the misery, but the openings of a better lot. What was noted above as the strength of mind that induces a successful man to refrain from pushing on still farther, and an unsuccessful man to struggle the more, means the firm possession of an idea, to oppose the power of the present,—under success, an idea of moderation, and, under misery, an idea of relief to supply the active spur that the situation restrains. We call a man strong-minded, if he resists the pressure of the actual in favour of an ideal. This is the highest manifestation of energy of will. It owes its merit, and even its meaning, to the fact that a present pleasure inflames and a present pain quenches the activities; and that, to counterwork these tendencies, there must be a strong conception of ideal pain in the one case, and of ideal pleasure in the other; which is the same law of the mind in another form. We 389 cannot remain quiescent under a vivid and growing pleasure, unless by the prospect of pain in the distance; nor do we rouse up under pain without some idea of relief, that is, pleasure in the distance.
No general law of the mind is more thoroughly confirmed by the experience of human actions than the principle now stated in its three several aspects. There is, as has been seen, something to be accounted for, in the lively stimulus under acute smarts; there is, also, an obverse of this fact, in certain forms of pleasure (as gentle warmth) which are lulling and soporific; but these are the consequence of another law of the mind, in some degree complicating the phenomena, without disproving the main law of the Will.
Possibly, this principle, wide as it is, may be subsumed under a still wider:—namely, a principle connecting pleasure with nutrition, or the supply of vital power and stimulus, and, by implication, pain with the abatement or loss of vital energy; from which the law of the will would be a consequence. The attempt to resolve it so is highly interesting; but, in the psychological explanation of the will, we may be satisfied, for the present, to start from the less imposing, but well-grounded generality now given. At the same time, it will be found that, having once caught a glimpse of the higher law, we cannot avoid occasionally falling into the language suggested by it; so suitable does it often appear to the expression of the facts.