Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/52

gQ F. H. BBADLBY : pain consists in the perceived, in objects given to and before the self This forms the whole content of the experienced, experienced in short is but one aspect of experience, and the other aspect consists in the activity of the self. This activity is itself not perceived and does not itself enter into the ex- perienced content, and is not and cannot itself be made into an object But beside these two sides of experience, one experienced and the other not experienced, we have also feeling in the sense of pleasure and pain. The position of this is to my mind so obscure that I cannot venture to state it. It is not an object, and cannot possibly be made into an object, it cannot be remembered, nor can we have an idea of it. "Whether we are to say that it is not experienced I how- ever do not know and must leave uncertain. Now this whole view, or any view which is like it, I venture to consider quite untenable and even absurd. Far from thinking the worse of genuine phenomenalism because it conflicts with such a view, I regard that conflict as a sign of truth and as a point in favour of phenomenalism. The view (i.) in the first place is in my judgment contrary to plain fact, and (ii.) in the second place it refuses wholly in the end to work, (i.) The position of our original awareness of pleasure and pain, for we somehow are aware of them, is to me so lost in obscurity that I can but point to it and pass on. But, when I am told that I cannot make an object of a pleasure and cannot attend to it, I must reply by a flat contradiction. So far as the pleasure is felt merely, it is, I agree, so far not an object and does not come before the the mind, and to urge that in being made an object it must to some extent be modified is at least a reasonable contention. But to insist that beside being felt it cannot also be made an object at all, seems in plain collision with fact. 1 And it is again in plain collision with fact to make the whole of what is at any moment experienced consist in objects before the mind. If you take a cross section through that of which at any one moment we in the widest sense are aware the whole way, I mean, in which we come to ourselves and feel ourselves at any given moment you will hardly find that everything experienced there has the form of an object over against and given to the self. For the self feels itself, and it feels itself as something concrete, and it feels the presence of an object or objects given to this self which is so far not an object and yet is experienced. Against my objects I surely may feel myself to 1 There are some remarks on the question of ideas of pleasure and pain at the end of this paper.