316 SIR "WILLIAM Hamilton's philosophy: 



the cojiscioiis exercise of these powers that the phenomena of pleasure 

 and pain arise. When the energy of a power is perfect, pleasure is 

 the result ; on the contrary, pain is felt when the energy is imperfect. 

 Now an energy is perfect when it reaches the degree and duration of 

 which the power is spontaneously capable, imperfect when it is 

 strained beyond, or restrained within, that degree or duration. Plea- 

 sure is, therefore, a reflex of the spontaneous and unimpeded exertion 

 of a power, of whose energy we are conscious ; pain, a reflex of the 

 overstrained or repressed exertion of such a power (II., pp. 435-440.) 

 "With regard to the classification of our pleasures and pains, it is to 

 be observed in general, that for every form of pleasure there are two 

 of pain, one from restraint, the other from overstimulation. It is 

 also to be noticed that both pleasure and pain may be either positive 

 and absolute or negative and relative, the latter being pleasures and 

 pains only by relation or contrast to a previous feeling (II., p. 442.) 

 More specifically however the feelings may be divided into Sensations 

 or those which accompany the exercise of bodily functions and 

 Sentmenis or those of a purely mental character. The former may 

 be subdivided in accordance with the organs or senses through which 

 they are received ; the latter into contemplative, or those which 

 accompany cognition, and practical, or those which accompany cona- 

 tion. Each of these classes, moreover, is capable of further subdi- 

 vision corresponding to the distribution of our cognitive and conative 

 powers (II., pp. 476-520). 



THIRD PART OF PHENOMENAL PSYCHOLOGY— PHENOMENOLOGY 

 OF THE CONATIONS. 



The Conations are tendencies to action and are divisible into two 

 classes according as the tendency is blind and fatal or deliberate and 

 free. The former is desire, the latter volition (I., p. 185.) 



I. The desires may be subdivided according to their objects, for 

 they relate either (1) to Self-preservation, or (2) to the Enjoyment of 

 of Existence, or (3) to the Preservation of the Species, or (4) to our 

 Tendency towards Development and Perfection, or (5) to the Moral 

 Law (II., p. 517.) 



II. TT^ill is a free cause, a cause which is not also an effect, a power of 

 absolute origination. {Discussions, p. 623). That it is so, is not only 

 affirmed by an immediate testimony of our consciousness to the fact, 

 (I. p. 33 ; Reid's Works, p. 624, note, and pp. 61G-7, notes), but 

 is indirectly implied in our consciousness at once of an uncompromis- 



