or a property? We have already seen that all other pleasures and pains are derivative in the individual and in the race, and appear from the point of view. Is this true of physical pain?
First, we must consider whether pain is an essential or a relational element.
Is pain, like pleasure, the product of judgment? Am I conscious of a pain, or do I infer it by an habitual judgment when the signs of pain appear in the body? Is the animal body endowed with pain as an essential, or is pain also the child of experience? In order that we may examine this subject somewhat critically, it becomes necessary to repeat briefly that which has been set forth more elaborately in a former work. There we begin with the definition of consciousness, inference, and verification. Consciousness is awareness of self, inference is awareness of the cause of the change in self, and verification is proof of the inference by experience. Now, we must especially call attention to the fact that the term consciousness is used only to signify awareness of self, and that it is not used to signify cognition. With this understanding we are prepared to proceed with the exposition. If we are conscious of physical pain, instead of cognitive, then pain itself is an essential; but if we are only cognitive of pain, it arises from inference and verification.
It is a well attested fact that a soldier receiving a musket-ball wound in battle may be so occupied with other occurring events,—so intent upon the progress of the battle,—that the wound itself may be unobserved and no pain for the time experienced. Then pain is not an essential inherent in animate matter itself, but something which arises from the point of view. It is within the experience of many men, perhaps all, that various injuries may be experienced without at once arising in consciousness, and that pain supervenes only on the cognition of the evil.
Again, physical pain grows with the experience of the individual. That which was a slight pain in childhood becomes an intense pain in adult life. In the history of races, bestial and
