Page:Philosophical Review Volume 1.djvu/430

414 of all modes of sense we shall hope to find, presently, in the separateness of their origins and functions.

Preparatory thereto we yet have numerous things to consider. We have noted a correspondence between the bodily distribution of our pains and their functions as warnings. We may now observe a similar relationship between pleasures and their functions. We will not stop here to show the particular physical relationship between our pleasures and our desires, impulses, and motives which will make these functions clearer presently. But, assuming for the present that the function of pleasure is to prompt to certain conduct, we may note that our pleasures are most intense and most constant just in proportion as the act to which they prompt is vital or important. The functions of sex are the most requisite, yet the most precarious, in animal life. The destiny of the race is staked upon a single act performed with great relative infrequency and difficulty. The incitement thereto should be the more unerring and sufficient. Accordingly the pleasures of sex above all others are most instinctive and most pronounced in intensity, in certainty, and in location. Eating is the next most vital of the sensual functions, and the pleasures of eating are next in prominence. Its sensations are located just where they would be most aptly stimulated, and most surely prompt to the needed conduct. If pleasure nerves are the basis of its pleasures, they are placed just where for best service they ought to be placed. Conceive them to be well supplied to the masticating and digestive organs. The alimentary canal cannot of itself go about for food, cannot even swallow. It must be taken to the dining-room and the whole of life's sustenance put into one little hole. A good share of life's conduct must be shaped to this end. By what means is this prompted? When the acts of eating and of digesting are performed, nerves of pleasure are so adjusted in the proper organs as to be stimulated by such normal performances. Their pleasures become associated with the whole line of conduct common to these performances — with the premonitory symptoms usually preceding eating, and with the ordinary processes leading up to their satisfaction. Thus knit up in a way to be revived by the