THE NATURE OF PLEASURE AND PAIN. 681 



THE NATUKE OF PLEASUKE AND PAIN. 



By ALFRED FODILLEE. 



PLATO and Aristotle have well said that neither pure pleasure nor 

 unqualified displeasure exists in man. Both feelings are mixed 

 in unequal proportions by the subtile art of Nature, and the definite 

 impression on our consciousness is a resultant in which one or the 

 other of the elements predominates. The complexity of all emotion 

 may be deduced from the two dominant conceptions of modern physi- 

 ology. One of them is that our bodies are in reality societies of cells, 

 each of which has its own peculiar activity, and which contend with 

 one another for existence. Among the lower animals each part of the 

 organism appears to enjoy or suffer on its own account, as is exempli- 

 fied when a worm is cut in two. Among the higher animals a selec- 

 tion and final fusion of the impressions takes place, centering in the 

 brain. 



The rudiments of agreeable and disagreeable feeling probably issue 

 from all the parts, and are re-echoed in the general consciousness in 

 such a manner as to communicate to it a timbre of pleasure or pain, 

 according to which elements prevail. Our pains and pleasures would 

 thus be a kind of summary of the elementary affections of a myriad of 

 cells, and our individual comfort or discomfort a collective and social 

 comfort or discomfort. The doctrine of evolution, and of the accu- 

 mulative effects of heredity in the individual, also confirms this view 

 of the collective character of our sensibility. Not only the present, 

 but the past also, resounds in us ; our feelings, even apparently the 

 most novel ones, comprise the unconscious recollection and echo of the 

 experiences of a whole series of ancestors. 



Mr. Spencer remarks that the sight of a landscape excites within 

 us certain deep but now vague combinations of states of feeling 

 which were organized in the race during barbarous times, when its 

 pleasurable activities were chiefly among the woods and waters. Mr. 

 Schneider, in his " Freud und Leid des Menschengeschlechts," inquir- 

 ing why the contemplation of a sunset gives us an impression of calm 

 and peace, says : " There is but one answer : Because for unnumbered 

 generations the view of the setting sun has been associated with the 

 end of the day's work and a feeling of rest and satisfaction." This is 

 saying too much, for the intrinsic effects of the colors and the fresh- 

 ness of the evening air, and our personal recollections, have much to 

 do with these emotions. But it is safe to assume that the calm which 

 the hours of repose have brought to the human race for centuries is 

 reflected in us at the evening hour. 



The study of pleasure and pain is thus analogous in complication 

 and difficulty with social science, in which mutual actions and reac- 



