Pleasure and Pain. 709 



translate as sympathy. This word, which signifies suffering with an- 

 other, expresses the literal fact. The pressure of the environment upon 

 the race has tended to consolidate it into a homogeneous whole. To 

 each one of us those next to us are pressed exceedingly close. We suf- 

 fer when they do, and can relieve ourselves only oy relieving them. 



While it is true that our instinctive actions are not reasoned out by us 

 beforehand, nevertheless they have been performed innumerable times 

 by our ancestors, and whether they ever consciously reasoned them out 

 or not, the logic of the events stamped and moulded their brains, and 

 heredity has transmitted the same kind of brains to us. To be re- 

 strained from going according to the bent of these inherited proclivities 

 is as surely productive of uneasiness and pain as would be the restraint 

 of the natural movements of the limbs. Every individual is born into 

 the world with a definite organization competent to be moved in various 

 ways by particular sorts of stimulation, and certain to be moved as 

 soon as it is exposed to them. There is at first no control or restraint, 

 but the stimulus which first gets access to the young animal, continues 

 to operate it till the particular tissues with which it deals are exhausted. 

 It is only after a certain amount of experience is attained that the con- 

 ditions of harmony and inharmony in cerebral interactions, which give 

 rise to pleasurable and painful qualities of sensation, begin to have an 

 influence in controlling the actions. The experience consists in the cul- 

 tivation and development in the individual, by stimulations from the en- 

 vironment, of certain activities, which, as they turn out to be in har- 

 mony or inharmony with the inherited bent, are productive of pleasur- 

 able or painful sensations. These sensations become subjects of mem- 

 ory, and as memories or recollections only, they enter into, or, rather, 

 they exclusively constitute the immediate stimuli concerned in conscious 

 voluntary action. Actions therefore tend to perpetuate their kind, and 

 we readily see how our movements of the present time are dominated by 

 those of the past, and how the present generation is ruled by those 

 which have gone before. 



CHAPTER LXVIL 



PLEASURE AND PAIN. 



The intimate nature of pleasure and pain is still a matter not settled 

 to the satisfaction of the Philosophers. Prol Bain quotes Kant as say- 

 ing that ' ' pleasure is the feeling of the furtherance, pain of the hin- 

 drance of life. " Following this view, Prof. Bain formulates what he 

 calls the law of self -conservation, thus : ' ' States of pleasure are con- 

 nected with an increase, states of pain with an abatement of some or 



