Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 3.djvu/697

Rh recognize as a datum the direct connection of action with feeling. That feeling and action bear a constant ratio, is a statement needing qualification; for at the one extreme there are automatic actions which take place without feeling, and at the other extreme there are feelings so intense that, by deranging the vital functions, they impede or arrest action. But, speaking of those activities which life in general presents, it is a law tacitly recognized by all, though not distinctly formulated, that action and feeling vary together in their amounts. Passivity and absence of facial expression, both implying rest of the muscles, are held to show that there is being experienced neither much sensation nor much emotion, while the degree of external demonstration, be it in movements that rise finally to spasms and contortions, or be it in sounds that end in laughter, and shrieks, and groans, is habitually accepted as a measure of the pleasure or pain, sensational or emotional. And so, too, where continued expenditure of energy is seen, be it in a violent struggle to escape, or be it in the persevering pursuit of an object, the quantity of effort is held to show the quantity of feeling.

This truth, undeniable in its generality, whatever qualifications secondary truths make in it, must be joined with the truth that cognition does not produce action. If I tread on a pin, or unawares dip my hand into very hot water, I start: the strong sensation produces motion without any thought intervening. Conversely, the proposition that a pin pricks, or that hot water scalds, leaves me quite unmoved. True, if to one of these propositions is joined the idea that a pin is about to pierce my skin, or to the other the idea that some hot water will fall on it, there results a tendency, more or less decided, to shrink. But that which causes shrinking is the ideal pain. The statement that the pin will hurt or the water scald produces no effect, so long as there is nothing beyond a recognition of its meaning: it produces an effect only when the pain verbally asserted becomes a pain actually conceived as impending—only when there rises in consciousness a representation of the pain, which is a faint form of the pain as before felt. That is to say, the cause of movement here, as in other cases, is a feeling and not a cognition. What we see even in these simplest actions, runs through actions of all degrees of complexity. It is never the knowledge which is the moving agent in conduct, but it is always the feeling which goes along with that knowledge, or is excited by it. Though the drunkard knows that after to-day's debauch will come tomorrow's headache, yet he is not deterred by consciousness of this truth, unless the penalty is distinctly represented—unless there rises in his consciousness a vivid idea of the misery to be borne—unless there is excited in him an adequate amount of feeling antagonistic to his desire for drink. Similarly with improvidence in general. If coming evils are imagined with clearness and the threatened sufferings ideally felt, there is a due check on the tendency to take immediate