Henry Rutgers Marshall

“ We are not surprised, when we consider the great variations of nutritive conditions, that a mental element which at one time brings us pleasure on some other day brings us pain, or vice versa, with no change of stimulation. The capacity to bring conscious pleasure or conscious pain after very long intervals is also quite explicable without supposing any such non-activity as would imply atrophy of the organ which finally acts pleasurably or painfully. ”

“ It is held that Pain is just as distinct, just as 'disparate,' as any of those mental states which we all agree to call sensations. 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. ”

“ Hypernormal activity in any special direction often produces pleasure at one moment and pain at another, the change occurring often within narrow time limits. Are we to suppose that under certain conditions the pain-sense organs are affected by a given stimulus and the pleasure organs not, while under some mysterious altered conditions with the same stimulus the pain organs become quiescent and those for pleasure become active? We surely are in a position to ask for some explanation of this mode of stimulation so different from that found with other senses. ”

“ Pleasure, under our hypothesis, involves a tendency to continuance of the activity which is producing the pleasure; and pain, a tendency to discontinuance of the activity which is producing the pain.
It is evident that, under the laws of elimination of the unfit and of survival, those individuals would prevail whose capacity to use stored force in reaction to a stimulus (or, in other words, whose pleasure-getting) was confined to organs producing activities the continuance of which would be advantageous to the individual. ”

“ Surely, if Pleasure and Pain are Sensations, developed probably early, perhaps earlier than any others, in the history of our race, we ought to be able to identify in the cortex the centres of their coincident activities, as we have done those of many of the other senses, or else some adequate explanation should be forthcoming for their non-appearance. ”

“ Nichols's theory, especially as it relates to pleasure, necessitates the existence of images of pleasure and of pain, similar to the images of sensations and objects which are grasped in revival. I think there is no ground in experience for supposing that pleasure and pain are 'represented' in this way. It seems to me to be an error to hold that there are images of pain or of pleasure, as it would be an error to speak of there being images of intensity, for example. The intensity of an image of a sensation, is not an image of the intensity of the sensation. ”

“ Under our theory no special localized organs should be looked for in the brain for Pleasure and for Pain, for each differentiation of pleasure or pain, except as to degree, implies a change of organ, so to speak. ”

“ Again, activities which are uniformly disagreeable when first experienced, if not too extreme or too long continued or too often stimulated, habitually become gradually less disagreeable and finally may be productive of pleasures. This process is commonly described as the 'acquisition of tastes.' The only explanation of these phenomena in terms of the sensational theory would seem to be that pain nerves become separated from activities or cease to act when the latter function, and that pleasure nerves begin to become connected with the same activities. ”

“ At the start I must say a word to show that the theory of 'specific energies,' so far as it is verified, is not in disaccord with the view I support. Sensations are psychoses of limitation — they are due to an emphasis of certain parts of consciousness and an obscuration of certain other parts; and on their physical side, so far as we can judge, they are determined by exclusive differentiation in the physical activities coincident with consciousness, — by the activities of definite parts of the nervous substance or organs. ”

“ The fact that the pain of pricking arises after the sensation of touch, when one operation produces both, is explicable if we suppose that a second set of nerves, viz. those producing the sense differentiation known as pricking or cutting, are brought into action after those of touch, and that they do not appear in pleasurable form under the method of experiment, and, maybe, that they have practically little storage capacity and are therefore little liable to appear in pleasurable phase at all. ”

“ The mind acts as a totality, and the relations between its special partial activities must be embodied in consciousness even though the functioning of no special distinct organ be coincident with the grasp by us of these relations. Intensity is such a psychosis of relation, for instance; and it is in this general category that Pleasure and Pain, under my theory, are conceived to belong. ”

“ It would seem that if pain nerves are so widely distributed as is implied by the sensational theory, there should be a more distinct localization of pains than is experienced; this localization, in general, however, is so very indistinct that the fact has been used to argue for that theory which makes Pleasure and Pain a special mode of conscious life distinctly removed from all other mental activity. ”

“ In certain directions we must have a summation of gentle stimulations if pleasure is to be noticed. The delicious softness of down and the agreeable smoothness of satin cannot be appreciated unless broad surfaces are affected at one time. It is even possible, indeed, that certain sensational nerves may be practically incapable of reacting under the conditions which pleasure implies. Surely from these facts we gain no convincing argument in favor of specific pain nerves. ”

“ Again, in the case of ordinary sensations, within the limits of normal activity, increasing or diminishing intensity of physical stimulation brings corresponding alterations of psychic activity, although the relation is complex and not simple. But with Pleasure-Pain the case is quite different. An increase of intensity of stimulus often at first increases a pleasure, then decreases it, then produces an increasing painfulness, — a series of which we have no counterpart in sensational experience. ”

“ But it seems to me that we may argue from the facts to a quite different conclusion, viz.: that the nature of the electrical or mechanical stimulus applied is such that it is always productive of the conditions of pain and that therefore pleasure cannot be reached through the activity of these particular nerve trunks or terminals unless they be stimulated by other less abnormal methods than those thus far adopted by the ordinary experimenter. ”

“ Sufficient ground for these statements of relation appears in the fact that Pleasure and Pain arise in consciousness as disparate parts of a continuum. One fades into the other, when there is no other observed change in the nature of the mental elements presented at the same time. Strong stimuli, if continuous, gradually fail in the production of pleasure and as gradually become pain producers. One displaces the other. ”

“ Under the physical theory, as I have elsewhere argued, we should expect to find that organs which are regular in their rhythm of action and are not called upon at intervals to act powerfully would come to be supplied with just enough nutrition to enable them to function properly and would have little capacity to store or to use stored force, and little ability, therefore, to function pleasurably. ”

“ Under our hypothesis we do not need to look for any special environmental stimulus-differentiation corresponding with pleasure and pain, as we did under the sensational view, if the hypothetical pleasure and pain senses are to fall in line with all other sensations; for under our hypothesis pleasure and pain are determined by relations within the organism which are general and which occur with all differentiations of environmental action upon us. ”

“ The pains which first bring to our notice the existence of inner sensations are accounted for by supposing that these organs, being very regular in their action and not ordinarily called upon to react to unusual stimuli, lose practically the storage capacity; so that a strong stimulus always brings pain, as it also first brings into prominence in consciousness the psychic elements to which the pain is attached. The theory accounts for the fact that the well-rested and vigorous man finds pleasure-getting easy ”

“ But what has kept these pleasure nerves from atrophy during the long periods they have been inactive? And after the new connection of the activities with pleasure why do not the pain nerves suffer atrophy, as they certainly do not? For we find that a man who has learned to enjoy the taste of olives, at first disagreeable to him, may eat a few with his dinner every day for years and always with enjoyment ”

“ The man who walks little may find the action of his muscles on a five-mile walk very painful, but if he persevere he may come to find that definite amount of action in those muscles enjoyable and regularly required for his comfort. If, some day, however, he use these muscles in a twenty-mile walk, he will find that his capacity for pain in them has not disappeared. The hypothetical pain nerves have not become in the least disabled by disuse. ”

“ In the experiments which are commonly made in the laboratory, it is found that electrical and direct mechanical stimulations of nerve trunks, or of their terminals in certain spots, give pain, but that no sort of manipulation of these stimulations which has been tried has brought pleasure. From this it is argued that, as pleasure cannot be obtained by the activities of the nerves in question and as pain can be, there must be specific nerves for pain. ”

“ If we accept this notion, we are confronted with the further difficulty that those of our activities which occur after rest are most vivid and widely effective, and yet are our most pleasurable experiences. ”

“ This tendency is often manifest in the writings of scientific men who are not psychologists, but who deal directly or indirectly with neural anatomy and pathology, in which writings it is common to find casual statements which imply a classification of Pain with Sensation, although one finds no similar classification of Pleasure. ”

“ Under continuation of stimulative conditions, the typical sensations do not habitually change from one form to another. A definite stimulus does not habitually alter from a pressure into a sound, nor from a sound into a brightness. ”

“ For such organs, practically any hypernormal stimulus would produce the conditions of painfulness. This may account for the fact that certain organs appear to be incapable of pleasurable stimulations, although in such cases the lack may be connected with the nature of the stimulus, as above suggested; it certainly accounts, without too great a stretch of the hypothesis, for the common observation that the functioning of certain internal organs scarcely appears in consciousness unless in the painful phase. ”

“ Since the sensations of heat and cold, which are held in relation, have been found to have specific nerves and corresponding terminals, the fact of the relation between Pleasure and Pain would be no objection to the Sensational view were it not for the fact that while the discovery of pain nerves has been claimed, there is not the slightest indication of the existence of pleasure nerves. ”

“ Finally we have the argument from the important experiments made by Goldscheider, in which it is claimed that he has isolated pain nerves and terminals. This argument rests thus far upon the observation of one man; and in no field of science is it more likely than in that of neural anatomy that subsequent observers will find ground for modification of a first investigator's results. Goldscheider's early experiments led him to the important discovery of pressure spots, cold spots, heat spots, in the skin surfaces, but did not lead him to believe that his observations told of pain spots ”

“ If it could be shown that an organ, when stimulated with such excess that it resulted in its deterioration, produced its specific sensation and yet no pain in connection with the stimulation, a valid argument would certainly be had against the theory I defend ”

“ 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. ”

“ In those morbid cases where several seconds elapse after the sensations of touch and cold are felt before the pricking pain arises, we may surmise that some disturbance has occurred which has delayed the action of the nerves affected by the laceration or cutting or pricking of painful degree. ”

“ This failure casts further doubt upon the claim of Goldscheider as to pain nerves, the existence of which is already denied by other authoritative observers; for surely if the pain nerves are isolated, we should expect to find some evidence of these related pleasure nerves. Dr. Nichols attempts to overcome this objection by the somewhat summary process of referring almost all pleasures to the region of representation, which he considers may have a coincident of organic activity, although the original pleasure sensations and their organic basis be no longer traceable. ”

“ Certainly we have here phenomena very different from anything noticeable with the recognized sensations. We never, for instance, have a cold thought as we have a painful thought or a sonorous emotion as we have a pleasurable emotion. ”