Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/79

68 H. M. STANLEY : feeling as stimulating will. Feeling, as the egoistic, personal and subjective determination of mind, must increase according to law of self-preservation ; but, while the subjective bearing must always be kept in mind by the element of feeling, still the law seems to be that immediate personal reaction, impulsiveness, is rela- tively unsuccessful, and the objective side of mind, the intellectual, tells most in the conflict of life, though this becomes useful only through the element of feeling. Feeling in the progress of mind then takes up less and less space and time in consciousness, and the objective relational element more and more space and time ; but feeling always remains as deep and determining factor. The evolution of intense personalities can only be through subjective- ness of feeling. Dr. Nahlowsky, while emphasising feeling as subjective and knowledge as objective elements, would make will subjective-objective element of mind. But it is evident that will and feeling belong together as subjective. Will is subjective- objective only as it is teleological, or involves knowledge ; but this is true of most determinations of developed consciousness whether volitions or emotions. We cannot then, perhaps, reach a deeper analysis than this to consider feeling as subjective element in consciousness ; but we may inquire in what form feeling is primitive. Pleasure and pain have been considered primitive by many psychologists, and all feeling may be considered as developed pleasure and pain. Mr. Spencer views pleasure and pain as concomitants of emotions, and not the emotions themselves. But it seems more correct to regard pleasure and pain as primitive and fundamental feeling, out of which through differentiation by knowledge proceed all feelings. Psychical life in its lowest forms seems to be mainly pleasure and pain simply as such, without perception of the pleasurable and painful. There is merely pleasure and pain, and not the pleasurable and painful. Pleasure and pain appear in all feeling, and, as far as there is subjective reference, throughout all mental life, although often almost hidden in conscious] ; There is, indeed, mathematically considered, an indifference- point where pleasure and pain meet, but psychologically > sidered every state of consciousness is to be characterise.! pleasurable or painful. Feelings may be apparently and in the popular sense of the word indifferent, but never so psycho- logically and scientifically indifferent as Prof. Bain clai Careful analysis will, we think, show that absolute indil'tV-r. is nowhere to be found in consciousness. The subject alv has a certain tone, which, whether distinctly recognised or not, remains as an essential element of consciousness. That pleasure and pain seem concomitant to emotions, arises from the fact that most, if not all, the feelings in developed consciousness to whi<-h we naturally refer, are very complex. Anger, so far as it is feeling, is pain, to which is added the will-element of hostility and a quite distinct perception of object of the anger. How much know-