Page:Appearance and Reality (1916).djvu/126

 make little metaphysical use of the doctrine that pleasure and pain belong solely to the self as distinct from the not-self. And the doctrine itself is quite without foundation. It is not even true that at first self and not-self exist. And though it is true that pleasure and pain are the main feature on which later this distinction is based, yet it is even then false that they may not belong to the object.

But, if we leave this error and return once more to feeling, in the sense of that which comes undifferentiated, we are forced to see that it cannot give the knowledge which we seek. It is an apprehension too defective to lay hold on reality. In the first place, its content and its form are not in agreement; and this is manifest when feeling changes from moment to moment. Then the matter, which ought to come to us harmoniously and as one whole, becomes plainly discrepant within itself. The content exhibits its essential relativity. It depends, that is to say—in order to be what it is—upon something not itself. Feeling ought to be something all in one and self-contained, if not simple. Its essence ought not to include matter the adjective of, and with a reference to, a foreign existence. It should be real, and should not be, in this sense, partly ideal. And the form of immediacy, in which it offers itself, implies this self-subsistent character. But in change the content slips away, and becomes something else; while, again, change appears necessary and implied in its being. Mutability is a fact in the actual feeling which we experience, for that never continues at rest. And, if we examine the content at any one given moment, we perceive that, though it presents itself as self-subsistent, it is infected by a deep-seated relativity. And this will force itself into view, first in the experience of change, and later, for reflection. Again, in the second place, apart from this objection, and even if feeling were