tions. This fact, if granted, is of course suggestive of the position maintained, but that it furnishes an argument of negative rather than positive force is apparent when one notes, first, that it is not claimed to relate to pleasure at all, but only to pain, and furthermore, that it can be asserted of only a very limited proportion of our pains.[1]
I think it will be granted that the great mass of our pains are not of this distinct and 'disparate' nature: 'floating pains,' as they are sometimes called, are certainly not distinct.[2] What is more, those which are markedly 'disparate' are in my observation, not pains pure and simple. There is always a something else than the pain by which we are likely to describe it. It is a cutting pain or a pricking pain or a crushing pain. One can always discern some differential where the pain is distinct, although the pain itself appears to me to be the same in all cases.
But even granting to pains this occasional 'disparateness' — this distinctness which enables them at times to usurp consciousness, — this fact seems to argue little for a sensational classification; for there are other states which appear to me to be equally distinct and which in moments of intensity equally usurp sway over the whole mental field, which, however, we
- ↑ Wundt, in a late study (Phil. Stud., Bd. VI., Hft. III., p. 359), states the relation thus: "Ein Unterschied freilich bleibt zwischen Gefühl und Empfindung, der auf wesentlich andere Bedingungen des ersteren hinweist. Die Empfindung ist nicht nur selbst ein einfaches, unzerlegbares Element unseres Bewusstseins, sondern auch ihre Entstehungsbedingungen sind relativ einfache, beruhend auf bestimmten psychophysischen Organisationsverhältnissen, die bei den verschiedenen Empfindungen als wesentlich übereinstimmende erscheinen. Ganz anders das Gefühl. Von dem sinnlichen Gefühl an, welches unter ähnlich einfachen Bedingungen zu stehen scheint wie die Empfindung, bis zu den höheren intellectuellen Gefühlen bietet sich hier eine Stufenreihe höchst mannigfaltiger und immer verwickelter sich gestaltender psychologischer Entstehungsbedingungen."
- ↑ It cannot be granted, as Dr. Nichols puts it (op. cit., p. 405), that we are unable to attach a floating pain "to some other sensation as a quale": for the very fact that these pains appear to shift is evidence that they are connected with other psychic elements, which, however, we are not accustomed to discriminate. Shifting either implies distinct localizations, which we clearly have not in such cases; or else an uncertainty of judgment in reference to obscure localizations: localizations we have in any case and these imply attachments to sensations or else definite local signs in the pains themselves, neither of which suppositions can be made use of by Dr. Nichols without logical weakness.
