THE NATURE OF PLEASURE AND PAIN. 689 



of attention ; but we can at will look, hear, smell, taste, or touch. 

 Now, pleasure precisely corresponds with this higher activity. 



Between the higher and the lower senses is a kind of intermediate 

 class, the importance of which has not hitherto been sufficiently re- 

 marked we mean muscular sensations, or sensations of resistance, 

 which many philosophers regard as the base of all the other sensations. 

 Now, in the movement of our muscles, in which our activity is con- 

 tinually applied to overcoming a resistance, and in which, therefore, 

 we are perpetually active and passive, we see the pleasure of exercise 

 and the pain of fatigue drawn clearly one upon the other, according 

 to the exact relation that exists between our muscular force and the 

 external resistance. This essential fact clears up the rest. It shows 

 the intimate and primitive connection of pleasure with activity, and 

 of pain with passivity. The possible independence in respect to neces- 

 sity and pain manifested by the highest senses is still more remarkable 

 in the intellectual, aesthetic, and moral pleasures which may even come 

 without being sought. Of such is the pleasure of surprise. The first 

 shooting-star that passes before the eyes of a child charms it without 

 having been anticipated or desired. A discovery made without having 

 been sought is a happy chance, a pure gain, an unexpected inheritance. 

 For all these reasons we assume that there exist pleasures of surplus 

 which attend an excess of activity or stimulation. In them the same 

 cause excites activity and satisfies it, without the intercalation of any 

 want, of any "mechanical or mental hunger" or unsatisfied desire. 

 Kant's doctrine that one pleasure can not immediately succeed another 

 without the interposition of a want or a pain is contradicted by the facts. 

 If, while I am eating savory meats, I unexpectedly hear fine music and 

 am surprised by the spectacle of graceful dances, I experience an 

 increase in which pleasures are added to one another without my hav- 

 ing to go through the gate of suffering. Furthermore, a progressive' 

 increase of pleasure would be impossible under Kant's theory, which 

 supposes the necessity of successive breaks, or interrupting pains. Mr. 

 Schneider believes that we are conscious of an agreeable feeling only 

 when we perceive a change for the better, and of a disagreeable one 

 when we perceive a change for the worse. His theory ends in the 

 same vicious circle as Kant's : " We must suffer to be able to enjoy, 

 and must enjoy to be able to suffer." How, then, do we get joy or 

 suffering in the first place ? The theories of Schopenhauer and Hart- 

 mann involve similar fallacies. 



We have just shown that there exist direct pleasures, due to a sur- 

 plus of activity without previous pain, the simple object of which is 

 not the preservation of the organism in the struggle for life. We may 

 go further, and ask if all pleasures, even those which appear to origi- 

 nate in a want, even those seemingly the grossest, are not of the same 

 nature to one who looks to the bottom of the matter. 



Does the complete satisfaction of a want, even of a physical one, 

 vol. xxix. 44 



