THE WONDERS OF LIFE 



assumes that consciousness (or thought, in the Spinozis- 

 tic sense) always accompanies this universal property of 

 sensation. In my opinion, consciousness is a secondary 

 psychic function, only found in man and the higher 

 animals, and bound up with the centralization of the 

 nervous system. Hence it is better to speak of the un- 

 conscious sensation of the atoms as feeling (cssthesis), 

 and their unconscious will as inclination {tropesis). It 

 finds expression in the one-sided action of a stimulus as 

 a "directed movement" or "stimulated movement" 

 {tropismus or taxis). 



The familiar ideas of sensation and feeling are often 

 confused, and employed in very different ways in both 

 physiology and psychology. The metaphysical tendency 

 which so completely separates the two sciences, and the 

 physiological tendency which agrees with it, regard 

 feeling as a purely psychic or spiritual function, whereas 

 in the case of sensation they have to admit the connec- 

 tion with bodily functions, especially sense-action. In my 

 opinion, the two ideas are purely physiological and can- 

 not be sharply separated, or only in the sense that 

 sensation relates more to the external (objective) part of 

 the sensory nerve-process, and feeling to the internal 

 (subjective) part. Hence we may define the difference 

 in a general way by saying that sensation perceives the 

 different qualities of the stimuli, and feeling only the 

 quantity, the positive or negative action of the stimulus 

 (pleasure or pain). In this last and widest sense we 

 may ascribe the feeling of pleasure and pain (in the 

 contact with qualitatively differing atoms) to all atoms, 

 and so explain the elective affinity in chemistry (syn- 

 thesis of loving atoms, inclination; analysis of hating 

 atoms, disinclination). 



Our monistic system (whether it be taken as energism 

 or materialism, or more correctly as hylozoism) regards 

 all substance as having "soul" — that is to say, endowed 



296 



