552 PSYCHOLOGY. 



It miglit be tliat to reflection sucli a narroAV teleology 

 would justify itself, that pleasures and pains might seem 

 the only comprehensible and reasonable motives for action, the 

 only motives on which we ought to act. That is an ethical 

 proposition, in favor of which a good deal may be said. 

 But it is not a psychological proposition ; and nothing fol- 

 lows from it as to the motives upon which as a matter of 

 fact we do act. These motives are supplied by innumerable 

 objects, which innervate our voluntary muscles by a process 

 as automatic as that by which they light a fever in our 

 breasts. If the thought of pleasure can impel to action, 

 surely other thoughts may. Experience only can decide 

 which thoughts do. The chapters on Instinct and Emotion 

 have shown us that their name is legion ; and with this 

 verdict we ought to remain contented, and not seek an illu- 

 sory simplification at the cost of half the facts. 



If in these our first acts pleasures and pains bear no 

 part, as little do they bear in our last acts, or those arti- 

 ficially acquired performances which have become habitual. 



amount of material benefit imparted is a condition of the full heartiness of a 

 responding embrace, the complete fruition of this primitive joy. In the 

 absence of those conditions the pleasure of giving . . . can scarcely be 

 accounted for ; we know full well that, without these helps, it would be a 

 very meagre sentiment in beings liiie ourselves. ... It seems to me that 

 there must be at the [parental instinct's] foundation that intense pleasure in 

 the embrace of the young which we tind to characterize the parental feeling 

 throughout. Such a pleasure once created would associate itself with the 

 prevailing features and aspects of the young, and give to all of these their 

 very great interest. For the sake of the pleasure, the parent discovers the 

 necessity of nourishing the subject of it, and comes to regard the minister- 

 ing function as a part or condition of the delight" (Emotions and Will, 

 pp. 126, 127, 132, 133, 140). Prof. Bain does not explain why a satin 

 cushion kept at about 98° F. Avould not on the whole give us the pleasure in 

 que.stion more cheaply than our friends and babies do. It is true that the 

 cushion might lack the 'occult magnetic influences.' Most of us would 

 say that neither a baby's nor a friend's skin would possess them, were not 

 a tenderness already there. The youth who feels ecstasy shoot through 

 him when by accident the silken palm or even the ' vesture's hem ' of his 

 idol touches him, would hardly feel it were he not hard hit by Cupid in 

 advance. The love creates the ecstasy, not the ecstasy the love. And for 

 the rest of us can it possibly be that all our social virtue springs from an 

 appetite for the sensual pleasure of having our hand shaken, or being 

 slapped on the back ? 



