Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/65

52 j. WAED : more. We seem then shut up to K, if " muscular conscious- ness " is to have any special characteristic, that is to say, the human being (M or N) is not only conscious of k but con- scious of producing it. This twofold relation of the human being to the two states, viz., the feeling that impels and the movement that results, is one we must keep in sight, while we turn to Prof. Bain's own account of "the link between feeling and action ". " At the outset," he says, " there happens a coincidence purely accidental between a pleasure and a movement (of Spontaneity) that maintains and increases it, or between a pain and a movement that alleviates or removes it ; by the link of Self-conservation, the movement bringing pleasure or removing pain, is sustained and augmented. Should this happen repeatedly, an adhesive growth takes place, through which the feeling can afterwards command the movement " (p. 325). In other words : At the outset a pleasure (say p) and a movement (say &) are presented together by chance and " after a few returns of the favourable accident the two are connected by an associating link " (p. 81). Now w T hat is the difference in Prof. Bain's view between the feeling "commanding" the movement and the feeling "being associated with " the movement ? The implications of the two phrases are widely different ; and yet it looks as if we were to understand that, when an " adhesive growth " has taken place between a feeling^, and a movement k l} between a feeling p 2 and a movement 4, and so on, we have then and there a " matured will ". Still it must not be forgotten that " the distinctive aptitude of the mature will is to select at once the movements necessary to attain a pleasure," &c. (p. 325). Let us turn to some passage in which Prof. Bain formulates "the law of Self-conservation"; for there, if anywhere, we ought to find this link outside and above mere associating links which is " requisite " to connect feeling and action as distinct from particular sensations and movements. The following is as explicit as any : " A state of pleasure, by its connexion with increased vitality in general, involves increased muscular activity in particular. A shock of pain, in lowering the collective forces of the system, saps the individual force of muscular movement " (p. 322). Here in addition to particular ps and k& we have 41 vitality in general" or "the collective forces of the system" as a new factor intervening between them ; and this is our " human being " : not a self in any psychological sense, but only an organism. If we are to avoid this confusion between the individual organism and the conscious subject who is