Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/709

Rh he is under the influence of love—may seek a greater pleasure than the one that is present, and that the object of his action, in that case, consciously or unconsciously, is certainly pleasure, he replies, "Yes, but the actual motive is a feeling of non-satisfaction, which is the same as pain." This theory touches what are the most obscure as well as most important problems of psychology and morals. In our opinion, the doctrine of pain, as the motive of action, could be true only if all activity were solely applied to change toward another condition. Of this character are effort, want, and desire; hunger, thirst, hope, and anger. But is it certain that all activity consists thus exclusively in moving toward another condition, as a mobile material object moves toward another point in space? Is change, or unquiet, as the ancients said, the essence of action, or is it only the result of the limits of action, of its deficiency, or of the external resistance which it meets? Present enjoyment, such as the enjoyment of agreeable sounds or beautiful colors, so far as it is complete, and considered in itself, does not provoke the desire for anything else, is satisfied with itself. Does that mean that it is constantly passive and inert? From the circumstance that the action of the living being, being never solitary, is always exerted toward a point of application which itself reacts, it results that change is attached to activity, as a necessity of the resistances of the medium, if not of its essence. At the precise moment and in the measure that we are enjoying our active state, as in the contemplation of a scene of nature, we cease to desire change as Mr. Rolph and Leslie Stephen maintain; but no enjoyment and no action can continue long at the same level of intensity. The prolongation of the exercise and agreeable stimulation of the nerves tends to diminish the effect, according to the law of wear-and-tear. It is the feeling of this diminution, of this constant decline, in which pleasure betrays itself, which is the real excitant of the always reviving desire or hunger. But in this case the hunger is revived, because the former comfort, which existed independently of it, feels itself menaced, diminished, exhausted, and escaping as it were from itself. The pain is pleasure's cry of alarm, but pleasure does not essentially imply pain.

We see then, anew, that what is really primary is the action, the same in being and in comfort, from which arise, with external resistance, distinct pain, and, with victory over the resistance, distinct pleasure. Change, motion, and progress have their reason in the perfection of activity; but enjoyment is, as Descartes, Leibnitz, and Spinoza believed, the feeling of some actual perfection come to realization of some power.

In wholly absorbing activity into disquiet, want, or hunger, Mr. Rolph has only discerned half of the truth. He has not insisted enough on the counterpart of hunger and nutrition, which is the disengagement of force and movement. Like Darwin, whose doctrine he desired to perfect, he has considered principally the support and