_ON PRIMITIVE CONSCIOUSNESS_
Science views the world as an assemblage of objects having mutual
relations. In this cosmos of interacting elements certain objects become
endowed with mental powers by which they accomplish self-conservation.
Just what these objects are and how they attain mental quality is beyond
our direct investigation. However, assuming consciousness as a purely
biological function, as a mode for securing favourable reactions, we can
discuss the probable course of its evolution under the law of
self-conservation. Mind, like all other vital function, must originate
in some very simple and elementary form as demanded at some critical
moment for the preservation of the organism. It is tolerably obvious
that this could not be any objective consciousness, any cognitive act,
like pure sensation, for this has no immediate value for life. It was
not as awareness of object or in any discriminating activity that mind
originated, for mere apprehension would not serve the being more than
the property of reflection the mirror. The demand of the organism is for
that which will accomplish immediate movement to the place of safety.
The stone pressed upon by a heavy weight does not react at once to
secure itself, but is crushed out of its identity; but the organism
reacts at once through pain. It is certainly more consonant with the
general law of evolution that mind start thus in pure subjective act
rather than in mere objective acts, like bits of presentation or a
manifold of sense. We shall now endeavour to elucidate this conception
of pure pain as primitive mind, first from the general point of view of
the law of self-conservation, and secondly from particular inductive
considerations.
It is very difficult to conceive what this bare undifferentiated pain as
original conscious act was, it being so foreign to our own mental acts.
Our psychoses have a certain connection one with the other, and a
connection which is cognized as such, so that the whole of mental life
is pervaded by an ego-sense. But primitive consciousness must have been
by intermittent and isolated flashes. The primitive pain, moreover, was
not a pain in any particular kind, but wholly undifferentiated or bare
pain. There was no sense of the painful, but only pure pain. Nor was
there any consciousness of the pain, any knowledge or apperception of
it. The pain stands alone and entirely by itself, and constituting by
itself a genus.
Now to assert that this general pain exists, is not, of course, realism.
The pain is a particular act, though it is wholly without particular
quality. It is not a pain as one of a kind distinct from other kinds,
but it is comparable to a formless, unorganized mass of protoplasm which
has in it potency of future development. Pain may exist as such, but not
a consciousness or a feeling. It is meaningless to say that the first
psychosis may have been a consciousness in general form which was
neither a feeling, a will, or a cognition, but the undifferentiated
basis of these, nor can a feeling _per se_ exist. The expressions,
painful consciousness, and painful feeling are deceptive; there is no
consciousness which pains, but consciousness is the pain, and the
feeling is not pleasurable or painful, but is the pleasure or pain.
“Feeling,” as I have said (_Mind_, vol. xiii., p. 244), “has no
independent being apart from the attributes which in common usage are
attached to it, nor is there any general act of consciousness with which
these properties are to be connected.”
Further, the law of conservation requires us to associate with this
primitive act of blind, formless pain the will act of struggle and
effort which is as simple and undifferentiated as the feeling. And these
two we must mark as the original elements of all mental life.
Strenuousness through and by pain is primal and is simplest force which
can conduce to self-preservation. It is thus that active beings with a
value in and for themselves are constituted. The earliest conscious
response to outward things is purely central and has no cognitive value.
The first consciousness was a flash of pain, of small intensity, yet
sufficient to awaken struggle and preserve life.
Pleasure, then, we have excluded from playing any _rôle_ in absolutely
primitive consciousness. Pleasure and pain could not both be primitive
functions, and of the two pain is fundamental in that the earliest
function of consciousness must be purely monitory. Pain alone fulfils
primitive demands, and secures struggle which ends in the abatement of
pain through change of environment or otherwise. Pain lessens, but
pleasure does not come, but unconsciousness instead, for no continuous
organic psychic life is yet evolved. As long as pain continues there is
effort and self-conserving action; when pain ceases, consciousness
ceases, because the need for it is gone. Each fit of pain subsides into
unconsciousness as struggle succeeds, and there is no room for even the
pleasure of relief, which, indeed, must be accounted a tolerably late
feeling. As far as the lowest organisms have a conscious life it is a
pain life, but they have a Nirvana in a real unconsciousness. The
evolution of pleasure must be accounted a distinct problem.
The law of evolution is, that origin of function and all progressive
modification arise at critical stages. Thus it is in painful
circumstances that the origin of mind is to be traced, and the important
steps in its development have been achieved in severest struggle and
acutest pain at critical periods. Pleasure is not then the original
stimulant of will, but is a secondary form. Pleasure has an obvious
utility which is far from the absolutely primitive. The pleasure-mode
early enters, however, to sharpen by contrast the pain-mode, and it is
only by their interaction that any high grade of psychic life could be
built up. The development of pleasure cannot be from pain, but as a
polar opposite to it. We cannot bring the development of mind into a
perfectly continuous evolution from a single germ, as is the case in
biological evolution. In a sense we may say that pleasure and pain are
complementary, like positive and negative electricity, but the
comparison cannot be pressed. We cannot, indeed, carry it so far as to
believe either absolutely essential to the other. We mention, then, the
evolution of pleasure as a problem which is yet to be dealt with in
full. However, that it is not original element in mind is easily seen
from this. As we ascend the grades of psychic life the pleasure-pain
gamut lengthens, and as we descend, it shortens, with pleasure always as
the intermediate factor. Thus, if we can represent it by a line,
PAIN PLEASURE PAIN
───────────┼───────────┼───────────
any single element which can affect psychic life, as temperature, moves
through a highest pain intensity, an intermediate region, then to pain
again as effects in a range from a very high temperature to very low, or
_vice versâ_. Now, this gamut in a human being, from the intensest agony
from heat to the greatest suffering from cold, consists of very many
notes, but the step to unconsciousness is always at one end of the
scale. In lower psychic life it shortens, but always at the intermediate
points where pain merges into pleasure and pleasure into pain, and thus
in the lowest form the original element of consciousness as feeling is
seen when only the two extremes remain, namely, primitive consciousness
as pain reaction. As the step from feeling—consciousness to
unconsciousness is through a pain, this certainly points to pain as the
original feeling, and the first element of consciousness. We must
suppose then that the first organism which attained consciousness felt
pain, that if this came from temperature, for example, that intense heat
and intense cold would both produce a pain one and the same in nature,
bare pain, not sensation of heat or cold. And this pain-consciousness
response came at first only at the application of these critical
temperatures, all other degrees not bringing any response. If
consciousness like other functions originated as an infinitesimal germ
at some crisis in life, it must have been with pain. The pleasure
function, unlike the pain, does not originate in life and death crises.
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.
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.
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.