60 SENSATION AND REACTION 



name of " sub-conscious self," has of recent years 

 been the subject of much discussion. 



If awareness, or consciousness, is possessed by 

 each nerve cell we cannot deny it to those primi- 

 tive creatures which are able without nerves to 

 exercise nervous activities ; we must, in fact, 

 admit that it is one of Life's characteristics. 

 Where, as in plants, living activity has been 

 cribbed by swathing upon swathing of lifeless 

 matter we should expect to find it nearly atrophied. 

 Yet we may believe, with some reason, that a 

 flower feels being picked, although dimly and 

 without touch of pain. 



The arousing of consciousness, or awareness, 

 by a sensory impression, or by a recollection, is 

 usually accompanied by the feeling of an emotion : 

 the sight of blood disgusts us : we are ashamed 

 at the recollection of a misbehaviour in society. 

 The awareness that is aroused need not be the 

 concentrated consciousness of the brain. It may 

 be the diffused consciousness that is styled " sub- 

 consciousness " by some writers ; we may feel 

 terrified in our dreams at times when the conscious 

 brain is dormant. These emotions may be 

 pleasurable or painful. But they are not all of 

 like origin. Pleasure and pain may be the direct 

 and simple products of sensations, or of recollec- 

 tion of sensations ; but they may also arise from 

 satisfying or not satisfying the craving of an 

 instinctive impulse. To the first class belong such 

 feelings as are aroused by the tastes of turtle soup 

 and of castor oil, by concords and by discords of 

 sound and colour. In the second class fall such 

 emotions as the pleasure of satisfying hunger and 

 thirst, the pain of suffering them, the pleasure of 

 success in social life, the pain of social failure. 



