62 SENSATION AND REACTION 



be compared with the extraordinary plumage and 

 colours of certain birds, the struggle for life would 

 leave them unobliterated. We may, then, hardly 

 affirm that pleasure or pain are evidences either of 

 design in our creation, or of the practical efficiency 

 of the evolutionary process. Pain leads us, in 

 some cases, to avoid the harmful to withdraw 

 a foot when it is being crushed. In other cases 

 it is merely an irremediable affliction : we cannot 

 voluntarily dispel a headache. Pleasure and pain 

 cannot logically be classed as impulses to action : 

 for an action must be performed before we can 

 become aware of the feeling which it will cause 

 to us. And we have already seen that action, in 

 its essence, precedes emotion. But they are of 

 immense importance in the formation of habits, 

 and in swaying the hesitating resolutions of the 

 will. We must confess that their interference is 

 often harmful. How many vicious habits does 

 man not owe to the pleasure of vice ! 



