144 PSYCHOLOGY. 



iug of suffocation would, if tliat pleasure were efficacious 

 enough to make liini immerse liis head in water, enjoy a 

 longevity of four or live minutes. But if pleasures and 

 pains have no efficacy, one does not see (without some- 

 such a priori rational harmony as would be scouted by the 

 * scientific ' champions of the automaton-theory) why the 

 most noxious acts, such as burning, might not give thrills- 

 of delight, and the most necessary ones, such as breathings 

 cause agony. The exceptions to the law are, it is true, 

 numerous, but relate to experiences that are either not vital 

 or not universal. Drunkenness, for instance, which though 

 noxious, is to many persons delightful, is a very excejjtional 

 experience. But, as the excellent physiologist Tick re- 

 marks, if all rivers and springs ran alcohol instead of water, 

 either all men would now be born to hate it or our nerves 

 would have been selected so as to drink it with impunity. 

 The only considerable attempt, in fact, that has been made 

 to explain the distribution of our feelings is that of Mr. Grant 

 Allen in his suggestive little work Physiological Esthetics ; 

 and his reasoning is based exclusively on that causal efl&cacy 

 of pleasures and pains which the * double-aspect ' partisans 

 so strenuously deny. 



Thus, then, from every point of view the circumstantial 

 evidence against that theory is strong. A priori analysis 

 of both brain-action and conscious action shows us that if 

 the latter were efficacious it would, by its selective emphasis, 

 make amends for the indeterminateness of the former; whilst 

 the study a posteriori of the distribution of consciousness 

 shows it to be exactly such as we might expect in an organ 

 added for the sake of steering a nervous system grown too 

 complex to regulate itself. The conclusion that it is use- 

 ful is, after all this, quite justifiable. But, if it is useful, 

 it must be so through its causal efficaciousness, and the 

 automaton-theory must succumb to the theory of common- 

 sense. I, at any rate (pending metaphysical reconstruc- 

 tions not yet successfully achieved), shall have no hesita- 

 tion in using the language of common-sense throughout this 

 book. 



