448 JAMES CLEKK MAXWELL. [CHAP. XIV. 



possible to the action which is expected of them. But in all 

 this the inconvenience or suffering which has to be endured 

 is by no means regarded as good in itself. It is treated 

 as a necessary concomitant of the act to be performed, just 

 as muscular effort, which may sometimes arise to the in- 

 tensity of a pain, is a necessary concomitant of an athletic 

 exercise in which we may find pleasure. 



Indeed the pleasurable or painful character of an elementary 

 sensation or thought cannot be determined without taking 

 into account all its surroundings. A sensation or a thought 

 when separated from its surroundings may be disagreeable 

 or painful; but when it occurs as a part of an act of perception, 

 we may not recognize it as painful. 



There may even be a pleasurable complex emotion into 

 which the painful elementary sensation enters as an essential 

 ingredient, so that if on any occasion the painful sensation 

 is deficient, we feel that the pleasurable emotion is thereby 

 marred and rendered incomplete. 



There is another class of cases, however, in which the pain 

 itself is the essential element. I mean penal suffering. The 

 aim of punishment, when not vindictive, is to prevent the 

 repetition of certain acts by associating with them penal 

 consequences. 



The painful consequences of an act may be associated 

 with it by the way of natural consequence, or through the 

 medium of some external punishing authority, or by the 

 determination of the actor to punish himself. 



When painful effects follow an act by way of natural 

 consequence, they are not generally called punishment, 

 because we do not attribute to nature any intention of punish- 

 ing the particular act. But there can be no better instances 

 of the conditions of efficacious punishment than those in 

 which an act is so immediately and so certainly followed by 

 a painful sensation, that the sensation becomes inseparably 

 associated with the act, as in the case in which we touch 

 red-hot iron. In such cases the act is hardly ever re- 

 peated. 



