III.

THE UNCONSCIOUS IN FEELING.

IF I have toothache and a pain in my finger, there are apparently two kinds of feeling; for the one is in the tooth, the other in the finger. Did I not possess the ability to project my perceptions into space, I should not feel two separate pains, but a single compound one, just as with two pure tones (without upper tones), at the interval of an octave, only one is absolutely heard-the lower note-but with a different timbre. The local difference of the perception thus confers upon the mind the ability to dissect the pain-harmony into its elements in conformity with the differently localised perceptions-to combine one part with this, another with that space-perception, and thus to establish the duality. But now things may be spatially twofold and yet incapable of discrimination, as, e.g., two congruent triangles. This can certainly not be asserted of toothache and finger-ache. In the first place, they can only be discriminated in degree, i.e., in intensive quantity, and secondly by their quality; for with equal strength pain can be continuous or intermittent, burning, cooling, crushing, beating, stinging, biting, cutting, drawing, palpitating, itching, and exhibit an infinity of variations, baffling all description.

We have hitherto understood by pain the whole phenomenon, but it is a question whether this must not be philosophically prohibited, and whether we should not rather distinguish in this given whole the sensuous perception and the smart or pain in the narrower sense; for we

have often a kind of perception which produces neither pleasure nor pain, e.g., if I gently press my finger or brush my skin. Whilst this perception remains qualitatively unchanged, and only increases or diminishes in degree, pleasure or displeasure may be felt in addition; and is the perception to be all at once included in the pain or the pleasure? We are then compelled to separate them, and soon perceive that the twain are so little one that they rather stand in a causal relation; for the perception (or a part thereof) is the cause of the pain, since the latter comes into existence and disappears with it, and never appears in its absence, although the perception may undoubtedly occur without the pain under particular circumstances.

This separation having been made, the closely allied question arises, whether the distinctions just noticed really exist in the pleasure and pain, or merely in the producing and accompanying circumstances, namely, in the perception? That pain admits of differences in intensive quantity is clear, but does it also admit qualitative differences? Most of the distinctions expressed in words apply to different forms of intermittence, as beating, drawing, palpitating, stinging, cutting, biting, even tickling. Certainly the degree of pain here changes continuously with the degree of perception according to certain more or less regular types, but nothing is to be found of an originally qualitative difference of the pain itself. One would much sooner expect this in the pleasure or displeasure which is called. forth by different smells and tastes; but even there one may be convinced by careful introspection that the qualitative difference of pleasure or displeasure is altogether only apparent, and this illusion arises from the circumstance that the separation of pleasure or pain and perception has never hitherto been made, but both are wont to be comprehended with the perception as a single whole, so that now the differences of perception present themselves as differences of this single whole.-That this separa

tion has never been made is due to the fact that, out of the infinitely multifarious composition of psychical states, one always only learns to separate those groups as independent parts, the separation of which has a real utility for practical needs. Thus, e.g., in the accord of a full orchestra, not all tones of a certain pitch are separated out, no matter from what instrument they proceed, including their upper tones, but the upper tones of the most different parts of the scale produced by any instrument are fused with the fundamental tone of the instrument into its timbre, and the groups of tones thus formed, which represent the tones called forth from any single instrument, are alone blended. into the accord, simply for the reason that the knowledge of the upper tones possesses no practical interest, but rather the knowledge of the timbres of the instruments. And this practical mode of grasping the groups of tones has become so organised in us, that that, according to mere pitch, although it must manifestly be much easier, has become purely impossible to us-so impossible that only a few years have elapsed since Helmholtz strictly demonstrated the origin of timbres by actually combining the upper tones.

Almost as impossible does it also seem to us now, in self-observation to sharply separate and keep asunder the two elements in the totality of pleasure or pain and the perceptions following and accompanying them; but that such separation must be possible any one can see from this, that both parts are related as cause and effect, and are essentially different. Whoever succeeds in making the trial will find the assertion confirmed, that pleasure and displeasure have only intensively quantitative, but no qualitative differences. Success will be the easier the simpler the examples with which one begins, e.g., whether the pleasure is different in hearing a bell if the note is c, and if it is d. If insight has once been gained in such simple examples, the truth will be no less evident if one passes gradually to examples which contain greater differ

ences in the element of perception. A confirmation of the assertion may also be seen in this, that we are able to balance different sensual enjoyments or pains against one another (e.g., whether any one prefers to lay out his halfcrown in a bottle of wine, or cake and ice, or beefsteak and beer, or any other sensuous gratification; or whether one will endure the toothache all day long, or rather have the tooth drawn), which balancing would not be possible if pleasure and pain were not in all these things only quantitatively different and qualitatively alike; for like can only be measured by like.

It is now also clear that local differences by no means concern the pain directly, but only the perception, and that only through the perception does an ideal separation of the total pain occur, one part of it being causally referred to this, and another to that perception. If now, strictly speaking, pain has no locality, and only the perception has local relation, the duality established by the local difference can only have reference to the perception, but not to the pain, and pain is accordingly not merely qualitatively alike in all cases, but is always only single in the same

moment.

These considerations are confirmed by Wundt in his "Contributions to the Theory of Sense-Perception." He says (pp. 391, 392), "The essential part of pain is identical, whether it have its seat in one of the objective senseorgans, as the skin, or in some part of the viscera of the trunk. As pain, from whatever cause it may arise. -mechanical, chemical stimulus, heat or cold, &c.-is always of the same nature, so it exhibits no difference in its essential character, whatever nerves of the body sensitive to pain the pain-exciting stimulus may affect." He further shows "that pain, as it is manifested in the sense-organs proper as only the highest pitch of sensation, so in all the other sensitive organs it is nothing else but the most intense sensation, which follows on the strongest stimuli; that, on the other hand, all organs which are at

all capable of the sensation of pain have also power to serve as media of sensations, which cannot be termed pain, but which stand in respect of each organ for that which in the case of the sensory organs is the specific sensation" (p. 394). "If once attention be called to these precursors and successors of pain, they can also be distinctly perceived, if they do not stand in connection with preceding or succeeding pains" (p. 393). "As we only attend to them when they rise to the pitch of pain, language has also only distinctive designations for the peculiarity of the pain of different organs" (p. 395). It is, then, these specific organic sensations, corresponding to the sensations of the special senses, in conjunction with the secondary affection of adjoining tissues, which condition the different colouring of pain, without altering the identity of its essence.

Whoever has apprehended the similarity of pleasure and displeasure in sensuous, will soon admit it also in mental feelings. Whether my friend A or my friend B dies may possibly change the degree but not the kind of my pain, no more than if my wife or my child dies, although my love to both has been of quite a different. kind, and also the ideas and thoughts which I entertain. on the nature of the loss are quite different. As pain in general has been caused in this case through the representation of the loss, so also in the complex of feeling and thought which one usually comprehends under pain, a difference is introduced through the difference in respect of the loss; but if one again detaches what is pain and nothing but pain, not thought and not imagination, it will be found that this again is identical. The same holds good of the pain which I feel for the loss of a wife, the loss of property which makes me a beggar, and of the loss of my office and my honour owing to calumny. What is pain and nothing but pain is everywhere only different in degree. Likewise in the pleasure which I feel when another, after a long resistance, yields to my stubborn