iSyS.] 
Feeling and Energy. 
3S7 
seriously urged by thorough-going philosophers of the type 
of Herbert Spencer, is the absence of “ purposive ” adt ion 
in all inorganic forms of matter. The absence of purposive 
adtion in the operations of chemical combination, the propa- 
gation of heat, light, and eledtricity, the play of gravitation, 
and the distribution of forces by machinery, seem all to the 
common mind utterly inconsistent with the presence of 
feeling in the unorganised forms of matter in which these 
physical manifestations are displayed. The philosopher 
would reply to this objection that absence of purposive 
adtion did not necessarily imply the absence of feeling, any 
more than that the adtions of a madman destitute of purpose 
proved the madman to be without feeling, it is the charac- 
teristic of the speech and adtion accompanying insanity in 
its most acute forms to be purposeless. Indeed the adtions 
of a lunatic seem to be far more erratic and unexpedted than 
the ordinary physical adfivities going on in the inorganic 
world. Yet the absence of purpose in the lunatic is not 
taken to imply absence of feeling. No more would the 
inference be warranted in reference to ordinary physical 
forces. 
But some may think that actions even of the erratic kind are 
far more indicative of the presence of feeling than those that 
can be predidted and calculated with mathematical precision. 
The latter are so evidently subjedt to lawthat'it seems to 
reduce feeling to the position of a “ slave to blind forces ” if 
we regard ordinary physical forces to; be accompanied by 
feeling. This kind of reasoning I imagine would not have 
much weight with those philosophers who have come to the 
conclusion that all animal adtion is automatic ; the adtion of 
mankind not excepted. And the objedtion is clearly not a 
logical one, for the presence of law and order in the connec- 
tions of feeling with adtion cannot be shown to be either 
I r ~onceivable or inconsistent with psychological fadts. On 
the contrary, the regularity with which like feelings are ob- 
served to be followed by like adtions is so constant that the 
adtions not only of men, but of all animals, are generally 
calculated and predidted therefrom. If, then, the connedtion 
of all “ feeling-prompted adtions” with law is recognised, 
both by philosophers and by people in daily life who have no 
interest in psychological theories, what argument can be 
drawn therefrom against the connedtion of feeling with the 
orderly operation of physical processes ? Clearly none. If 
order and law be observed in the one case, why not in the 
other ? 
But this orderly operation of physiological adtivity has 
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