PLEASURE AND PAIN. 31 



isciousness from the rest of the system along with tho 

 severed limb, and produce death. Surgeons have ex- 

 perienced unaccountable instances of death under operations 

 which ought not of themselves to have been fatal, and some 

 of these cases this might possibly aid to explain ; and it 

 might admit of being proved by such an experiment as 

 amputating the diseased limb of some inferior animal 

 under anaesthesia, the extremity of the limb being tickled 

 to draw the consciousness of the animal to it while the 

 anaesthetic agent was being applied. The failure of 

 anesthesia in some instances in securing entire freedom 

 from pain might also admit of some explanation from the 

 fact that the previous pain in the injured part rendered 

 the Consciousness more resident in it, and enabled only 

 dormancy, but not absence of Consciousness, to be pro- 

 duced by the anaesthesia. But while these remarks are 

 by no means insisted in, save as suggesting a line of 

 inquiry, the limits of which, whatever they may be, it is 

 desirable to know, there can be no doubt about the fact 

 that physical pleasure and pain are purely sensations of 

 our Consciousness derived from its contact with the 

 particular arrangements or derangements of our physical 

 nature calculated to excite them, and it shows that the 

 Consciousness abstractly is capable of being both gratified 

 and injured. This is further proved by those sensations 

 of pleasure and pain which are not physical, but purely 

 peculiar to the Consciousness itself, such as sorrow, 

 remorse, regret, fear, anxiety, longing, anger, love, mental 

 joy, hope, confidence or trust, generosity, gratitude, 

 truthfulness, which are attributes, sensations, or capa- 

 bilities of our Consciousness, apart from physical pleasure 

 or pain, and not capable of being ascribed to any physical 

 faculty. For if what we usually call physical pain be 

 not, as we have shown, really physical, nor correctly de- 

 scribed as such, much less are these other sensations 



