Page:Some New Philosophical Views.djvu/14

10 an acquired power of volitionally and automatically controlling this coincidence in activity between any sense and the muscular machinery having connection with it. In the dissociation of this conjoint activity through over-use, the influence of narcotics, &c., he finds the explanation of fatigue, swoon, sleep, &c.

As forming the second novelty of importance may be named the striking hypothesis on the subjects of Pleasure and Pain, propounded in Chapter III. So far as the problem of the phenomenon of Pain is not wholly shirked by the modern philosophers who found their psychology on physiology, the solution hinted at is that pain is the accompaniment of any abatement of vitality. This is the view of both Professor Bain and Mr. Spencer. But the explanation has not satisfied Mr. Cyples. In a long passage he points out what he terms the "irrationality" and irrelevancy which pain shows when it occurs. He says that some injuries and some diseases do not cause pain in anything like a degree proportionate to their abatement of vitality; while, on the other hand, the tortures of corns and toothache are, he affirms, penalties great enough for bad emperors who have abused the purple by all excesses of wrong indulgence. He points also to the fact, that anæsthetics, &c, can blot out pain. The hypothesis put forward by himself is to the effect that pain arises whenever a nervous grouping is "disintegrated" by being made to act in a way of partial non-repetition of its former full activity.

The view is followed out into minute detail; eight sub-laws being traced as operating in the occurrence of pain. I must confine myself to quoting a single passage:—

The working of this alleged law is exemplified by instances given of all kinds, taken from the mental and moral as well as the sensory regions of our experience. That the reviewers of the book in publications whose main business is the defence of spiritual beliefs have not seen the favourable significance of this new speculation for their side, is one of the things which I have before said is to me surprising. Mr. Cyples, with the reticence in that direction which is a characteristic of his volume, stops short of urging the theory to its extreme point; but there is no question that if this hypothesis can be established, it cuts right into the heart of Materialism, striking at the very key of its chief position. I will cite just two or three sentences scattered in this and