A METAPHYSICAL DISCUSSION 223 



Or our mental struggle may be equivocal, so that there is no 

 choice or solution, or at least none that is satisfactory. Then 

 we are certainly impressed with the sense of failure and, it may 

 be, of acute dissatisfaction. 



Or, again, there may be persistent sensation that fails to result 

 in appropriate response, and then we experience pain. Between 

 our consciousness that we call mental dissatisfaction resulting 

 from the failure to find a solution and the consciousness that we 

 call "physical" pain there is no clear and essential distinction. 

 But in pain what we describe as " physical " consciousness attains 

 its maximum of intensity, fading away only when, at last, a 

 response (or healing process, or reaction) occurs, or when 

 there is partial or complete destruction of the receptors and 

 neural tracts that are involved in the physical process of 

 sensation. 



Life Intuition. — ^Clearly there is something in the living animal 

 that is additional to, or, at least, is not merely the physical 

 process of, sensation and response. Subject the latter to analysis, 

 and we find a mechanism, receptor organ, afferent nervous tract, 

 central nervous connections and tracts, efferent nervous tract, 

 and effector organ. This may be set in motion, so to speak, and 

 evoke nothing but processes that are certainly energetic ones, 

 although the behaviour that we can thus observe may be appro- 

 priate, purposeful, and complete. But it may set in motion 

 again, and then it may evoke response only after deliberation 

 and more or less acute consciousness. Something, then, is 

 operative which is not merely physical sensation and physically 

 actual or virtual response. This may be the exercise of pure 

 memory, the disciplined deliberation that we call reasoning, 

 " mental" and " physical" pain, pleasure, the unsustained and 

 desultory efforts of reverie and " day-dreaming," and so on. It 

 would be as foolish to deny this as to attempt to characterise it 

 all in terms of energy. 



Just what to call it we do not know. " Spirit " will be a term 

 that is objectionable to many; mind is only one aspect of the 

 thing that we mean; consciousness is inadequate, for we almost 

 seem compelled to postulate "subconscious" mentality; Berg- 

 son's " vital impetus " indicates a passage of some Idnd or other, 

 and is not just the term we require. In the meantime, at all 

 events, we may refer to it as simply " life intuition," suggesting 

 nothinsc more'than what is meant here in the context. We deal, 

 then, with something that is expressed in the functioning and 

 behaviour of the animal body. 



