Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/706

683 descent below the ideal point of indifference into the lower region of pain. Pleasure, then, is felt directly as such, and not indirectly through a pain which it replaces; and the sight enjoys without having suffered.

Modern physiology teaches us that the higher sensibility is connected with special organs, like the eye, the ear, the nose, and the mouth, while inferior sensibility is diffused through the body, without connection with well-differentiated organs. Inferior sensibility informs us of conditions that are material to our existence, as contact, hunger, thirst, etc., and it has been organized through natural selection so as to be alarmed when these conditions are threatened. Hence, inferior sensibility is better adapted to suffering than to enjoyment. The higher senses, on the other hand, particularly sight and hearing, respond less to the needs of life than to superfluity, to conservation than to progress, and are better adapted to pleasure than to pain. It results from this that the mutual relations of enjoyment and suffering are inverse for the higher and the lower senses. For general and internal sensibility, for the sense of temperature or of touch, a distinct pleasure presupposes some antecedent uneasiness or want. It is pleasant to eat or drink when we are hungry or thirsty, and to plunge into fresh water when the skin feels hot; but, if, when we eat or drink without previous hunger or thirst, we feel pleasure, it is because of some particular effect of the aliment on the specialized sense of taste. So, when the body is at the normal temperature, heat or cold will give it but a slight gratification. Contrast with antecedent pain seems in these cases to be necessary to present pleasure. On the other hand, only a slight degree of divergence on the side of pain, as in the case of a burn, a blow, or a colic, is enough to cause considerable suffering.

An opposite law rules in the higher senses, and particularly in those which have very specialized organs. In them pleasure arises immediately, and is capable of acquiring a notable degree of distinction at the very start from the point of indifference. This takes place in excitations of the sight, hearing, smell, and tasetaste [sic]. In return, the higher senses are less subject to suffering than to simple annoyance. A discord, a piercing whistle, inharmonious colors, a dazzling light, and a disagreeable odor, do not provoke any pain of the hearing or vision comparable in intensity to that of a wound or a burn. These, we believe, are the real scientific reasons why the higher sensibility is free from necessity and "hunger," while the lower sensibility is enslaved to them.

If we compare the higher with the lower senses in respect to their activity, we shall find that a greater specialization corresponds with a lessened passivity, and a greater share of central activity and willpower. We have but little control over our internal organs; we can not, for example, put our stomach or our heart into the active attitude