PAIN AND PLEASURE 259 



reactions. One is almost emboldened to figuratively imagine them as con- 

 nate memories of the spinal cord. The majority of them seem to be pro- 

 tective reactions that in organisms of high neural type are accompanied by 

 'pain.'" 



But even in this case the apparatus for pain is incapable of acting as 

 rapidly as are those of some other sensations. If a sensitive corn on the foot 

 is struck a sharp blow, one will often feel a very distinct tactile sensation an 

 appreciable interval before the painful quality is perceived, the latter, how- 

 ever, soon welling up into consciousness and obscuring the tactile quality 

 entirely. This is an illustration of the fact that even the highly protective 

 exteroceptive painful stimuli pass through a mechanism of slower reaction 

 time than the primary exteroceptive sensations with which they may be 

 associated. 



We cannot here enter into a full discussion of the larger questions center- 

 ing about the physiological correlates of the higher affective life, the emotions 

 and esthetics. It has often been pointed out that the conscious processes 

 resulting from exteroceptive stimulation tend to be directed outward, the 

 attention being focussed on the external objects giving rise to the stimuli 

 with a minimum of personal reference. The deep sensations, both of the 

 proprioceptive and the interoceptive group, on the other hand, have a less 

 clearly defined local sign and the mental attitude toward them is not one of 

 outwardly directed attention to the source of the stimulus, but rather a 

 change in the subjective state and an alteration, of the general feeling tone 

 of the body as a whole. Under ordinary circumstances the visceral afferent 

 and other deep nervous impulses do not come into clear consciousness sepa- 

 rately, but in the aggregate these complexes (often termed as a whole com- 

 mon sensation) profoundly modify the general mental attitude and equilib- 

 rium. The generalized feelings of both the pleasurable and the painful type 

 share this subjective reference with the common sensations. They are very 

 important factors in that sensory continuum which lies at the basis of the 

 maintenance of personal identity which the older psychologists sometimes 

 called the empirical ego. Only the pains associated with the sharply local- 

 ized cutaneous sensation qualities with a high adaptive value as warning 

 signs of external danger have a distinct peripheral reference, and even this is 

 less clearly defined than that of the accompanying sensations of pressure, 

 and so forth. The deep pains are imperfectly localized and have more of the 

 general subjective- reference which has just been mentioned, and all of the 

 pleasurable qualities are of this type. 



The simpler affective types of experience, accordingly, seem to be most 

 intimately associated with the "common sensation" complex, especially 

 with the visceral sensation components of this complex. From this it has 

 been argued that the coarser emotions, as well as the elementary feelings, are 

 the direct expression in consciousness of these visceral activities, that the 

 well-known visceral changes associated with the emotions are not the results, 

 but the causes of the emotions (Lange and James). This hypothesis has 

 been attacked experimentally by Sherrington (see The Integrative Action 

 of the Nervous System, 1906, p. 260), who found that cutting the afferent 

 sympathetic fibers from the abdominal viscera in dogs made no apparent 

 difference in the emotional reactions of the animals ; but the experiments are 

 not very convincing, and the question is probably too complex for solution 

 by so simple means as those here employed. 



The probability is that we have here a circular type of reaction. The 

 initial visceral afferent impulses, being heavily charged with affective quali- 



