The Philosophy of Health; Volume 1 (of 2) / or, an exposition of the physical and mental constitution of man

by Southwood Smith

But if the communication of sensibility to processes in their own nature incapable of exciting feeling, for the purpose of converting them into sources of pleasurable consciousness, indicate an express provision for the production of enjoyment, that provision is no less exemplified in the point at which this superadded sensibility is made to cease.

Some of the consequences of a direct communication of consciousness to an organic process have been already adverted to. Had the eye, besides transmitting rays of light to the optic nerve, been rendered sensible of the successive passage of each ray through its substance, the impression excited by luminous bodies, which is indispensable to vision, the ultimate object of the instrument, if not wholly lost, must necessarily have become obscure, in direct proportion to the acuteness of this sensibility. The hand of the musician could scarcely have executed its varied and rapid movements upon his instrument, had his mind been occupied at one and the same instant with the process of muscular contraction in the finger, and the idea of music in the brain. Had the communication of such a twofold consciousness been possible, in no respect would it have been beneficial, in many it would have been highly pernicious; and the least of the evils resulting from it would have been, that the inferior would have interrupted the superior faculty, and the means deteriorated the end. But in some cases the evil would have been of a much more serious nature. Had we been rendered sensible of the flow of the vital current through the engine that propels it; were the distension of the delicate valves that direct the current ever present to our view; by some inward feeling were we reminded, minute by minute, of the progress of the aliment through the digestive apparatus, and were the mysterious operations of the organic nerves palpable to sight, the terror of the maniac, who conceived that his body was composed of unannealed glass, would be the ordinary feeling of life. Every movement would be a matter of anxious deliberation; and the approach of every body to our own would fill us with dismay. But adjusted as our consciousness actually is, invariably the point at which the organic process begins is that at which sensation ends. Had sensation been extended beyond this point, it would have been productive of pain: at this point it uniformly stops. Nevertheless, by the indirect connexion of sensation with the organic processes, a vast amount of pleasure might be created: a special apparatus is constructed for the express purpose of establishing the communication. There is thus the twofold proof, the positive and the negative, the evidence arising as well from what they do, as from what they abstain from doing, that the organic processes are, and are intended to be, sources of enjoyment.

But the production of pleasure, commencing at this the lowest point of conscious existence, increases with the progressive advancement of organization and function.

The appetite for food, and the voluntary actions dependent upon it, may be considered as the first advancement beyond a process purely organic. The function by which new matter is introduced into the system and converted into nutriment, is partly an animal and partly an organic operation. The animal part of it consists of the sensations of hunger and thirst, by which we are taught when the wants of the system require a fresh supply of aliment, together with the voluntary actions by which the aliment is introduced into the system. The organic part of the function consists of the changes which the aliment undergoes after its introduction into the system, by which it is converted into nutriment. Sensations always of a pleasurable nature arise indirectly in the manner already explained, from the due performance of the organic part of the function; but pleasure is also directly produced by the performance of the animal part of it. Wholesome food is grateful; the satisfaction of the appetite for food is pleasurable. Food is necessary to the support of life; but it is not indispensable to the maintenance of life that food should be agreeable. Appetite there must be, that food may be eaten; but the act of eating might have been secured without connecting it with pleasure. Pleasure, however, is connected with it, first directly, by the gratefulness of food, and secondly indirectly, by the due digestion of the food. And the annexation of pleasure in this twofold mode to the performance of the function of nutrition is another case of the gratuitous bestowment of pleasure; another instance in which pleasure is communicated for its own sake, and rested in as an ultimate object. Pleasures of this class are sometimes called low; they are comparatively low; but they are not the less pleasures, because they are exceeded in value by pleasures of a nobler nature. Man may regard them with comparative indifference, because he is endowed with faculties which afford him gratifications superior in kind and larger in amount; but it is no mark of wisdom to despise and neglect even these: for they are annexed to the exercise of a function which is the first to exalt us above a merely organic existence; they are the first pleasures of which, considered merely as sentient creatures, we are susceptible; they amount in the aggregate to an immense sum; and they mark the depth in our nature in which are laid the fountains of enjoyment.

Organs of sense, intellectual faculties, social affections, moral powers, are superadded endowments of a successively higher order: at the same time, they are the instruments of enjoyment of a nature progressively more and more exquisite.

An organ of sense is an instrument composed of a peculiar arrangement of organized matter, by which it is adapted to receive from specific agents definite impressions. Between the agent that produces and the organ that receives the impression, the adaptation is such, that the result of their mutual action is, in the first place, the production of sensation, and, in the second place, the production of pleasure. The pleasure is as much the result as the sensation. This is true of the eye in seeing, the ear in hearing, the hand in touching, the organ of smell in smelling, and the tongue in tasting. Pleasure is linked with the sense; but there might have been the sense without the pleasure. A slight difference in the construction of the organ, or in the intensity of the agent, would not merely have changed, it would even have reversed the result; would have rendered the habitual condition of the eye, the ear, the skin, not such as it now is in health, but such as it is in the state of inflammation. But the adjustment is such as habitually to secure that condition of the system in which every action that excites sensation produces pleasure as its ordinary concomitant; and the amount of enjoyment which is thus secured to every man, and which every man without exception actually experiences in the ordinary course of an ordinary life, it would be beyond his power to estimate were he always sensible of the boon; but the calculation is altogether impossible, when, as is generally the case, he merely enjoys without ever thinking of the provisions which enable him to do so.

But if the pleasures that arise from the ordinary operations of sense form, in the aggregate, an incalculable sum, how great is the accession brought to this stock by the endowments next in order in the ascending scale, namely, the intellectual faculties!

There is one effect resulting from the operation of the intellectual faculties on the senses that deserves particular attention. The higher faculties elevate the subordinate in such a manner as to make them altogether new endowments. In illustration of this, it will suffice to notice the change wrought, as if in the very nature of sensation, the moment it becomes combined with an intellectual operation, as exemplified in the difference between the intellectual conception of beauty, and the mere perception of sense. The grouping of the hills that bound that magnificent valley which I behold at this moment spread out before my view; the shadow of the trees at the base of some of them, stretching its deep and varied outline up the sides of others; the glancing light now brightening a hundred different hues of green on the broad meadows, and now dancing on the upland fallows; the ever-moving, ever-changing clouds; the scented air; the song of birds; the still more touching music which the breeze awakens in the scarcely trembling branches of those pine trees,—the elements of which this scene is composed, the mere objects of sense, the sun, the sky, the air, the hills, the woods, and the sounds poured out from them, impress the senses of the animals that graze in the midst of them; but on their senses they fall dull and without effect, exciting no perception of their loveliness, and giving no taste of the pleasures they are capable of affording. Nor even in the human being, whose intellectual faculties have been uncultivated, do they awaken either emotions or ideas; the clown sees them, hears them, feels them no more than the herds he tends: yet in him whose mind has been cultivated and unfolded, how numerous and varied the impressions, how manifold the combinations, how exquisite the pleasures produced by objects such as these!