MENTAL SCIENCE AND SOCIOLOGY. 679 



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 pre- 

 sents, it is a law tacitly recognized by all, though not distinctly formu- 

 lated, that action and feeling vary together in their amounts. Pas- 

 sivity and absence of facial expression, both implying rest of the mus- 

 cles, are held to show that there is being experienced neither much 

 sensation nor much emotion, while the degree of external demon- 

 stration, be it in movements that rise finally to spasms and contor- 

 tions, or be it in sounds that end in laughter, and shrieks, and groans, 

 is habitually accepted as a measure of the pleasure or pain, sensa- 

 tional 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 cog- 

 nition 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, 01* 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 con- 

 ceived as impending only when there rises in consciousness a repre 

 sentation 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 feel- 

 ing 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 to- 

 morrow'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 com- 

 ing evils are imagined with clearness and the threatened sufferings 

 ideally felt, there is a due check on the tendency to take immediate 



