CHAP. XIV.] ASPECTS OF PAIN. 445 



cold, flat and sharp, green, bright, bitter, frouzy, and so on, 

 though they may sometimes excite in a very sympathetic mind 

 a faint image of some actual sensation, call up much more 

 vividly the idea of some external object or phenomenon. 

 Language, in fact, has become far more an instrument for con- 

 veying information and for recording facts than for awaken- 

 ing sympathy; and even thought, in articulately speaking 

 men, is occupied rather in methodising our perceptions than 

 in chewing the cud of our sensations. 



Of the few words which we have left to distinguish 

 states of feeling, most of the better sort, such as pleasure, 

 joy, happiness, are remarkably vague, so that the only 

 available part of the vocabulary of sensations consists of the 

 names of pains. 



Such words as toothache, headache, heartache, certainly 

 fulfil the condition of suggesting, at least to non- medical 

 persons, a state of feeling rather than an objective phe- 

 nomenon. 



Now, whatever we may think, each for ourselves, at the 

 time when we feel a pain or an ache, about consciousness or 

 subjectivity, we are compelled, when we have to speak about 

 it, or even to think about it, to view it from the outside, and 

 to adopt the objective method of treatment. 



A pain, then, in a sentient being other than ourselves is 

 a condition which that being ordinarily endeavours to put a 

 stop to, and the recurrence of which it tries to prevent; 

 just as a pleasurable sensation is one which it endeavours to 

 prolong, and afterwards to reproduce. 



The psychologist has therefore to study pleasures and 

 pains in their effects on a sentient being, just as the 

 naturalist studies forces in their effects on the motion of 

 a material system. The motion of the material system 

 would go on in a determinate manner though no forces were 

 in action. The actions of a living being, when not in a state 

 of conscious effort, and often, indeed, even when it supposes 

 itself to be exercising what it would call its will, go on in a 

 manner determined by habits established by long custom, 



