396 Appendix 



lations, such as exists also in every other accumulation 

 of potential energy, and that therefore pain and pleasure, 

 pleasant and painful states, can be nothing but the super- 

 ficial and subjective side of this activation or of its 

 inhibition. 



VI. 



Before terminating these few notes upon the nature 

 of affective tendencies, we shall add a few remarks, 

 which seem to us indispensable, on the fundamental 

 character of these tendencies, according to which they 

 constitute a force, so to speak, with a definite end to be 

 attained but with the path to be followed left unde- 

 termined. 



Affective tendencies owe this property of gravitating 

 toward an end while the means remain undecided, to the 

 circumstance that they depend on the existence in a 

 potential state of a certain general or local physiological 

 system or state, which was determined in the past by the 

 outside world as a whole or by individual particular rela- 

 tions to this outside world, and which now like every 

 other potential energy simply endeavors to reactivate 

 itself as soon as it is released by the persistence or recur- 

 rence of even a small part of this environment or these 

 environmental relations. For the result of the existence 

 of this tendency is that the organism gravitates toward 

 this environment or these environmental relations ren- 

 dering possible the recurrence of this physiological state, 

 but it does not imply any "impulse" toward or "impinge- 

 ment" upon any one of the series of passing physiological 

 states or movements which, even if they were capable of 

 eventually bringing the organism back to the desired en- 

 vironment, nevertheless have nothing in common with 



