Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/382

ASvSOCIATION' AND THOUGHT. 369 becomes something not essential. Fire burns, warms and does neither ; an approaching body hurts or pleases, or again is indifferent. These other groups are not yet distinguished from the feeling they cause in me (this comes later) ; they are still one whole with my enjoyment or my suffering from them. But in comparison with the body-group their con- nexion is weakened. Because indirect and inconstant, it has failed to dominate. The body-group, upon the other hand, has grown together with that core of internal sensation which has been indifferent, either never or too seldom to affect the strength of the connexion. 1 Returning now from our digression we may have brought back some light. The foundation of the group which grows into the self is, and remains, those sensations which continue to be feeling in the sense of being one with pleasure and pain. 2 The real question is by what steps and in what degree and to what extent other groups are dissociated from this feeling-mass and qualify it by their contrast, and, on the other hand, what features are in various degrees con- nected with it. We have seen the way of dissociation. It lies in those repeated variations which by collision must loosen the feeling-aspects of some groups. On the other hand, we perceived how the direct and unceasing conjunction of the body-group with pleasure and pain made it inseparable 1 In order to simplify, I have dwelt solely on pleasure and pain, because I think this the main point. If we may suppose them absent, I do not deny that a distinction of subject and object would be developed, but it would hardly be the same as that given now in experience. A complete account of the growth of our knowledge of our bodies would have, of course, to consider other points. The alteration of outer objects is not regularly a cause of further sensations (other than pleasure and pain), while the change of the body is so. This is illustrated further by double sensation, when two parts of the body touch. Again (at a much later date), change of the body is found a condition of the perception of fresh pheno- mena. From another side the body is controlled directly and regularly by the feelings and thoughts ; and outer objects, if at all, indirectly. I cannot pretend to deal here with the question fully and systematically. The problem of localisation I omit wholly, and, as to the perception of the extended in general, all I can say is that I do not think it essential to the distinction of self from other objects, though now it colours all relations. As to its originality, I think that clearly in its origin it could not have borne the relational character it now has, and could have been neither dis- crete nor (properly) continuous. But all the attempts which I have seen made to derive extension from what is quite non-extended in my opinion break down. The problem is unfortunately mixed up with metaphysical preconceptions, both as to the discrete nature of the elements, and again as to the intensive, not to say simple, character of the soul. On the subject of discrimination and the perception of relations, I shall be able to say some- thing when we deal with voluntary Analysis. 2 This is the main key to pathological states of the Ego. 24