Page:The Science of Religion (1925).djvu/48

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THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION

being that in the first case want involved in desire is not satisfied, while in the second case want involved in desire seems to be satisfied by the presence of external objects. But this pleasurable experience, resulting from the fulfillment of the want by objects, does not remain long but dies away, and we retain only the memory of the objects that seemed to have removed the want. Hence, in future, desire for those objects brought in by memory revives, and there arises a feeling of want which, if unfulfilled, again leads to pain.

Pleasure is a double consciousness—made up of an “excitation” consciousness of possession of the thing desired and of the consciousness that pain for want of the thing is felt no more. That is, there is an element of both feeling and thought in it. This latter contrast consciousness, i.e., the entire consciousness (how much pain I felt when I did not have the thing and how I now have no pain, as I have got the thing I wanted), is what mainly constitutes for