Hiram M. Stanley

“ But it is not merely in exceptional states of developed consciousness that we may trace the elementary form of feeling, but we may believe it to be fundamental to consciousness in general. It is natural for us who are so pervaded and dominated by sense of objectivity to see in it the causal element in mentality; feeling and will seem consequent to it, and we apprehend and feel accordingly. But the order of evolution was not from knowledge in any form to feeling, but the reverse, and we may suspect that in the completest analysis consciousness will still be found to obey its original law. ”

“ Pleasure and pain could not both be primitive functions, and of the two pain is fundamental, in that the earliest function of consciousness must be purely monitory. Pain alone fulfils primitive demands, and secures struggle which ends in the abatement of pain through change of environment or otherwise. Pain lessens, but pleasure does not come, but unconsciousness instead, for no continuous organic psychic life is yet evolved. As long as pain continues there is effort and self-conserving action; when pain ceases, consciousness ceases, because the need for it is gone. ”

“ However, assuming consciousness as a purely biological function, as a mode for securing favorable reactions, we can discuss the probable course of its evolution under the law of self-conservation. Mind, like all other vital function, must originate in some very simple and elementary form as demanded at some critical moment for the preservation of the organism. It is tolerably obvious that this could not be any objective consciousness, any cognitive act, like pure sensation, for this has no immediate value for life. ”

“ In a certain sense we may say that pleasure and pain are complementary, like positive and negative electricity, but the comparison cannot be pressed. We cannot, indeed, carry it so far as to believe either absolutely essential to the other. We mention then the evolution of pleasure as a problem which is yet to be dealt with in full. However, that it is not original element in mind is easily seen from this. As we ascend the grades of psychic life the pleasure-pain gamut lengthens, and as we descend, it shortens, with pleasure always as the intermediate factor. ”

“ Pleasure and pain bring their objects, not objects pleasures and pains. Pleasure per se does not come for and in consciousness from the object, — though this is objective order, — but the object for and in consciousness comes from the pleasure. Pleasure and pain always precede any cognizance of the thing, and it is only the combination of the two elements that constitutes pleasure or pain of or at a thing. The primitive element, the original feeling movement, also excludes subject as real object ”

“ Pain may exist as such, but not a consciousness or a feeling. It is meaningless to say that the first psychosis may have been a consciousness in general form which was neither a feeling, a will, or a cognition, but the undifferentiated basis of these, nor can a feeling, per se, exist. The expressions, painful consciousness, and painful feeling are deceptive; there is no consciousness which pains, but consciousness is the pain, and the feeling is not pleasurable or painful, but is the pleasure or pain. ”

“ The stone pressed upon by a heavy weight does not react at once to secure itself, but is crushed out of its identity; but the organism reacts at once through pain. It is certainly more consonant with the general law of evolution that mind start thus in pure subjective act rather than in mere objective acts, like bits of presentation or a manifold of sense. We shall now endeavor to elucidate this conception of pure pain as primitive mind, first from the general point of view of the law of self-conservation, and secondly from particular inductive considerations. ”

“ We are sometimes awakened by a dull pain which was evidently in its inception mere bare pain without differentiation. But in all such cases the pure pain or pure pleasure is but momentary and is quickly swallowed up in a flood of manifold sensations. Many objects by many modes of sense at once invade and possess consciousness, and the early indefinite mode vanishes so quickly that we very rarely have time to note it by reflective consciousness. ”

“ Pain at its height just before unconsciousness is reached, is always of the pure subjective type. In slow torture pain increases to a maximum intensity in pure pain, beyond which there is a gradual loss of intensity and consciousness in general, till ultimate failure of all consciousness. From the maximum intensity on to the end, consciousness is entirely subjective. Pleasure at its maximum attains only comparative subjectivity. ”

“ Strenuousness through and by pain is primal and is simplest force which can conduce to self-preservation. It is thus that active beings with a value in and for themselves are constituted. The earliest conscious response to outward things is purely central and has no cognitive value. The first consciousness was a flash of pain, of small intensity, yet sufficient to awaken struggle and preserve life.
Pleasure, then, we have excluded from playing any rôle in absolutely primitive consciousness. ”

“ Since in the embryology of the mind as in that of the body the individual repeats in condensed manner the evolution of life, we judge that these observations point toward the genesis of consciousness in a single feeling state, pure undifferentiated pain. The earliest consciousness we can discover seems to approach this type. The close observer of very young infants must feel that the meagre psychic life they may have consists mainly of intermittent pains interrupted by comparatively long periods of unconsciousness in sleep. ”

“ To apprehend is to bring into relation, and the relation is very easily attributed to what is purely unrelated, to pure subjectivity. Thus here in the interpretation of merely subjective facts knowledge tends to stand in its own way. It is only objectively that the objectifying can appear causative of feeling, subjectively sense of object must always be taken as subsequent to a pleasure-pain psychosis. ”

“ A bright color gives pleasure before we see it, and this pleasure incites to the seeing it. But so fully has the objective order been wrought into consciousness as a mode of interpretation that the great majority on reading the preceding sentence will mentally at first attribute sense of objectivity from the expression "bright color gives pleasure" as if there were pleasure at color, a color-pleasure, whereas is meant pleasure and nothing more, — bare, undifferentiated pleasure. ”

“ The origin of pleasure is then, I think, to be traced as an intermediary feeling between pain as produced by excess, and pain from lack as differentiated form. Pain as original and undifferentiated is the same whether resulting from excess or lack, but it is only after it has differentiated so far as to be in two modes that pleasure can enter as a mediate form of feeling and become a directing force to advantageous action. ”

“ The pleasure-mode early enters, however, to sharpen by contrast the pain-mode, and it is only by their interaction that any high grade of psychic life could be built up. The development of pleasure cannot be from pain, but as a polar opposite to it. We cannot bring the development of mind into a perfectly continuous evolution from a single germ, as is the case with organs and tissues in biology where such very different elements as muscle and nerve may be traced to a common undifferentiated basis. ”

“ If the rise of knowledge was at the instance of feeling, it is certainly unlikely that a fundamental order should be more than apparently reversed.
The order of consciousness is really the reverse of the order conceived by the objectifying consciousness, and this is a point where cognition by its very nature as objective may be said to obscure itself. ”

“ This means that when external objects are brought into relation with a wholly unanticipating consciousness, the first element in psychosis is always pure pleasure or pure pain. Thus, on a cold dark day a sudden rush of sunlight on a blindfold man causes pleasure, then feeling warm, and then sense of warming object. The glow of pleasure and the pang of pain merely as such is in all cases precedent to any objective reference. ”

“ In lower psychic life it shortens, but always at the intermediate points where pain merges into pleasure and pleasure into pain, and thus in the lowest form the original element of consciousness as feeling is seen when only the two extremes remain, primitive consciousness as pain reaction. As the step from feeling consciousness to unconsciousness is through a pain, this certainly points to pain as the original feeling, and the first element in consciousness. ”

“ From both an a priori point of view of the law of self-conservation, and also from a brief survey of certain forms in comparative and human psychology, we incline toward accepting pure pain as the original consciousness. This is soon differentiated into pain of excess and pain of lack with the evolution of pure pleasure. Will exists throughout as sequent of feeling. ”

“ If a bright-colored object is passed before the eyes of a young infant we may conclude from its expression that a pleasure-consciousness is awakened, but we are probably quite at fault if we conceive it to have a consciousness of bright, and that this consciousness preceded and gave rise to pleasure and gave it a quale as pleasure-brightness. ”

“ Thus it is in painful circumstances that the origin of mind is to be traced, and the important steps in its development have been achieved in severest struggle and acutest pain at critical periods. Pleasure then is not the original stimulant of will, but is a secondary form. Pleasure has an obvious utility, especially as foreseen, but this is far from being primitive. ”

“ The very lowest types of psychic life which we can interpret seem to feel and nothing more. They do not feel at anything, and do not feel because they know, nor do they have definite kinds of feeling.
Pure feeling as bare pain and as undifferentiated pleasure is certainly far removed from our ordinary conscious experience, yet it may sometimes appear in a survival form, especially in sluggish states, in waking from sleep, and in recovering from anæsthetics. ”

“ This absolutely simple feeling phase is accomplished so rapidly in ordinary human consciousness as to be rarely perceptible, but in lower consciousness it often exists as mood, as more or less permanent psychosis. The Brahmans attain artificially a subjectivity akin to this through their expertness, in mental control and manipulation. They succeed in reducing and keeping consciousness in some very simple type, and their Nirvana may be considered as a state of pure subjectivity on the pleasure side. ”

“ ON PRIMITIVE CONSCIOUSNESS.
SCIENCE views the world as an assemblage of objects having mutual relations. In this cosmos of interacting elements certain objects are endowed with mental powers by which they accomplish self-conservation. ”

“ If consciousness like other functions originated as an infinitesimal germ at some crisis in life, it must have been with pain. The pleasure function unlike the pain does not originate in life and death crises. ”

“ We must suppose then that the first organism which attained consciousness felt pain, that if this came from temperature, for example, that intense heat and intense cold would both produce a pain one and the same in nature, bare pain, not sensation of heat or cold. ”

“ Every psychosis beyond the most primitive must be accounted a feeling will-knowing group. These physic forces exist in a correlated union generally comparable with the correlated activity of physical forces like electricity and heat. ”

“ Now to assert that this general pain exists, is not, of course, realism. The pain is a particular act though it is wholly without particular quality. It is not a pain as one of a kind distinct from other kinds, but it is comparable to a formless unorganized mass of protoplasm which has in it potency of future development. ”

“ The objective statement, however true, is no measure of subjective fact, but this twisting of subjective fact to correspond with objective order is so embedded in language and common thought that it will perhaps always remain the form of ordinary thinking, like common-sense realism and geocentric appearance. ”

“ Such facts tend toward a theory of mind which makes its original and fundamental act purely central; mind starts as in a germ which pushes outward till it penetrates space and time, but not in any reverse motion a pushing inward of a series of presentation forms. ”

“ It was not as awareness of object or in any discriminating activity that mind originated, for mere apprehension would not serve the being more than the property of reflection the mirror. The demand of the organism is for that which will accomplish immediate movement to the place of safety. ”

“ Much, indeed, is to be done before this theory of the nature of mind is either fully elucidated or completely proved, but I am persuaded that when we consider mind as a life function, we are led toward the doctrine maintained in the preceding pages. ”