CH. II.] PLEASURE AND SUFFERING. 53 



meditation, reflection. In abstraction, many material ideas cease 

 in the brain, or become weaker; the weaker, indeed, in proportion 

 as the abstraction is deep. In reflection, they follow each 

 other continuously, and each is immediately determined by its 

 predecessor. 



78, 79. Since material ideas of the understanding develope 

 actions in the organism, it follows that the acts of meditation, 

 abstraction, and attention, by causing those material ideas to 

 cease, will diminish, or abrogate those actions {77). 



Sensational Pleasure and Suffering. 



80. The mind has its own feeling of its present condition, 

 or a feeling of its own conceptions, which has been termed the 

 inner sense (" consciousness,^' " inner feeling,'' '' conscience," 

 "self-feeling," Baumgarten, § 396). Under circumstances 

 which metaphysical writers explain (ibid., § 478), many a con- 

 ception is agreeable or disagreeable, or in other words, pleases, 

 satisfies, gives pleasure or displeasure, dissatisfies, excites un- 

 easiness. This feeling is a property of the conceptions, and 

 may belong to all. Conceptions either please or displease ; that 

 which makes them agreeable or disagreeable is a sub-impression 

 in them [merkmal] , which the mind perceives at the same time. 

 But since no conception is at once both pleasing and dis- 

 pleasing, except when considered from another point of view, 

 or in other words, when it becomes a new conception, an 

 agreeable conception differs in its nature from a disagreeable 

 conception ; and each consequently makes its characteristic 

 impression at the point in the brain where the material ideas 

 of the conception are (25), and which can have also its peculiar 

 and distinct action in the animal economy (26). This is 

 termed the impression of pleasure (lust), or suffering (unlust). 



This difference in the impressions on the origin of the 

 nerves made by an agreeable or unpleasant conception, implies 

 that there is also a distinct external impression, when pleasure 

 or suffering accompanies external sensations, which it forms 

 in the brain as its material idea. A very strong pleasure of 

 the external senses is termed sensual gratification, or titilla- 

 tion [Kitzel], a very strong disagreeable impression is pain 

 [Schmertz]. Both are, therefore, external sensations, differing 



