CHAPTER XIIPleasureThe poor benefit of a bewitching minute.—The Revenger’s Tragedy.Sensation, imagery, feeling, emotion, together with pleasure, unpleasure and pain are names for the conscious characteristics of impulses: How they may best be sorted out is a problem whose difficulty is much aggravated by the shortcomings of language at this point. We speak, for instance, of pleasures and pains in the same fashion, as though they were of the same order, but, strictly, although pains as single self-sufficing modifications of consciousness are easily enough obtainable, pleasures by themselves do not seem to occur. Pleasure seems to be a way in which something happens, rather than an independent happening which can occur by itself in a mind. We have, not pleasures, but experiences of one kind or another, visual, auditory, organic, motor, and so forth, which are pleasant. Similarly we have experiences which are unpleasant. If, however, we call them painful we give rise to an ambiguity. We may be saying that they are unpleasant or we may be saying that they are accompanied by pains, which is a different matter. The use of the term pleasure, as though like pain it was itself a complete experience, instead of being something which attaches to or follows along with or after other experiences, has led to a number of confusions; especially in those critical theses, to which objection has already been taken in Chapter IX, which identify value with pleasure.The twenty or more distinct kinds of sensations, into which modern psychology has elaborated the old five senses, can be observed to differ very widely in the degree to which they are susceptible of and accompanied by pleasantness and unpleasantness. The higher senses, sight and hearing, in most persons seem to yield sensations which vary much less from neutrality or indifference than the others. We must be careful to understand this difference correctly however. An arrangement of colours and shapes, a sequence of notes or a musical phrase may, of course, in suitable people, be as intensely toned, pleasantly or unpleasantly, as any organic or taste sensations, for example. But even this is not usual. The right experiment is to compare a single colour, say, or a single note, with such a sensation as a uniform touch or temperature gives rise to, a bath for example, or with a simple uniform taste or smell, or with hunger, or nausea. Fair comparison is difficult, equivalent levels of simplicity and uniformity being impossible to discover, but few will doubt that the degree of pleasure-unpleasure aroused by tastes, for example, far exceeds that which auditory or visual sensations excite by themselves. We must of course be careful here to avoid confusing the intrinsic pleasure-unpleasure of the sensations with that which arises through memory, through the effects of other sensations, pleasant or unpleasant, which may have accompanied them in the past, and through expectations agreeable or disagreeable.To speak of the intrinsic pleasure-unpleasure of a sensation is perhaps misleading. The pleasantness of a sensation as we know is a highly variable thing. It may alter completely while the strictly sensory characteristics of the sensation remain as before. The difference in the same smell of liquor, before and after an alcoholic excess is a striking example. A sound which is pleasant for a while may become very unpleasant if it continues and does not lapse from consciousness. And yet indisputably it may remainquasensation the same. A sound-sensation may remain unchanged in tone, volume and intensity yet vary widely in pleasure-unpleasure. This difference is important. It is one of the chief reasons which have caused feeling (pleasure-unpleasure) to be distinguished from sensation as altogether of a different nature. Tone, volume and intensity are features in the sound closely dependent upon the stimulus, pleasantness is dependent not on external stimulus but upon factors, very obscure at present, in us. All here is conjecture. The close connection of stimulus with sensation we know because it happens to be comparatively accessible to experiment. And introspection of sensations of external origin is for that reason much more easy than introspection of most visceral or organic sensations. We can practise it freely and repeat it and so control our results. To a lesser extent those sensations of internal origin which we can in part consciously control, those due to voluntary movements, share this double accessibility. But all the rest of the multifarious conscious goings on in the nervous system remain obscure. One broad fact, however, is important. The effects in the body of almost all stimuli of whatever nature are extraordinarily numerous and varied. “You cannot show the observer a wall-paper pattern without by that very fact disturbing his respiration and circulation.”†And no man knows what other disturbances do not join in. The whole body resounds in what would seem to be a fairly systematic way. Whether the outpouring of this tide of disturbance makes up a part of, gives a tone to consciousness, or whether only the incoming reports of the results can be conscious is a question upon which no conclusive evidence would seem to be yet available. The incoming reports of some at least of these disturbances certainly can become conscious. A lump in the throat, a yearning of the bowels, horripilation, breathlessness, these are their coarser and more obvious forms. Usually, they are less salient and fuse with the whole mass of internal sensations to form thecœnesthesia, the whole bodily consciousness, tinging it, altering its general character in some one of perhaps a thousand different ways.It has been much disputed whether pleasure-unpleasure is a quality of general bodily or organic consciousness, of some part of it perhaps, or whether it is something quite different from any quality of any sensation or set of sensations. As we have seen, it is not a quality of an auditory sensation in the sense in which its loudness, for instance, is a quality. There seem to be similar objections to making it a quality of any sensation of any kind. A sensation is what an impulse at a certain stage in its development feels like, and its sensory qualities are characters*of the impulse at that stage. The pleasure-unpleasure attaching to the impulse may be no character of the impulse itself, but of its fate, its success or failure in restoring equilibrium to the system to which it belongs.This is perhaps as good a guess at what pleasure and unpleasure are as can yet be made, pleasure being successful activity of some kind, not necessarily of a biologically useful kind, and unpleasure being frustrated, chaotic, mal-successful activity. We shall consider this theory again at a later stage (cf. Chapter XXIV). The point to be made here is that pleasure and unpleasure are complicated matters arising in the course of activities which are directed to other ends. The old controversies as to whether pleasure is the goal of all striving or whether avoidance of unpleasure the starting-point, are thus escaped. As Ribot pointed out†the exclusive quest of pleasure for itself,plaisir-passion, is a morbid form of activity and self-destructive. Pleasure on this view is originally aneffectsignifying that certain positive or negative tendencies have instinctively attained their aim and are satisfied. Later through experience it becomes a cause. Instructed by experience man and animal alike place themselves in circumstances which will arouse desire and so through satisfaction lead to pleasure. The gourmet, the libertine, the æsthete, the mystic do so alike. But when the pleasure which is the result of satisfying the tendency becomes the end pursued rather than the satisfying of the tendency itself, then an ‘inversionof the psychological mechanism’ comes about. In the one case the activity is propagated from below upwards, in the other from above downwards, from the brain to the organic functions. The result is often an exhaustion of the tendency, ‘disillusionment’ and theblasé, world-wearied attitude.The evil results, as Ribot remarks, are largely confined to those individuals in whom the quest for pleasure has the force of an obsession. But on the view of pleasure which we have indicated above, it is clear that all those doctrines, very common in critical literature, which set up pleasure as the goal of activity, are mistaken. Every activity has its own specific goal. Pleasure very probably ensues in most cases when this goal is reached, but that is a different matter. To read a poem for the sake of the pleasure which will ensue if it is successfully read is to approach it in an inadequate attitude. Obviously it is the poem in which we should be interested, not in a by-product of having managed successfully to read it. The orientation of attention is wrong if we put the pleasure in the forefront. Such a mistake is perhaps not common among instructed persons, but to judge by many remarks which appear in reviews and dramatic notices the percentage of instructed persons among reviewers and theatre-goers does not seem high. This error, a legacy in part from the criticism of an age which had a still poorer psychological vocabulary*than Our own, is one reason why Tragedy, for example, is so often misapproached. It is no less absurd to suppose that a competent reader sits down to read for the sake of pleasure, than to suppose that a mathematician sets out to solve an equation with a view to the pleasure its solution will afford him. The pleasure in both cases may, of course, be very great. But the pleasure, however great it may be, is no more the aim of the activity in the course of which it arises, than, for example, the noise made by a motor-cycle—useful though it is as an indication of the way the machine is running—is the reason in the normal case for its having been started.This very common mistake noted, the significance of pleasure and unpleasure may be insisted upon without misgiving. They are our most delicate signs of how our activities are thriving. But since even the most intense delight may indicate only a local success and the activity be generally detrimental, they are signs which need a very wary interpretation.
The poor benefit of a bewitching minute.—The Revenger’s Tragedy.
The poor benefit of a bewitching minute.—The Revenger’s Tragedy.
Sensation, imagery, feeling, emotion, together with pleasure, unpleasure and pain are names for the conscious characteristics of impulses: How they may best be sorted out is a problem whose difficulty is much aggravated by the shortcomings of language at this point. We speak, for instance, of pleasures and pains in the same fashion, as though they were of the same order, but, strictly, although pains as single self-sufficing modifications of consciousness are easily enough obtainable, pleasures by themselves do not seem to occur. Pleasure seems to be a way in which something happens, rather than an independent happening which can occur by itself in a mind. We have, not pleasures, but experiences of one kind or another, visual, auditory, organic, motor, and so forth, which are pleasant. Similarly we have experiences which are unpleasant. If, however, we call them painful we give rise to an ambiguity. We may be saying that they are unpleasant or we may be saying that they are accompanied by pains, which is a different matter. The use of the term pleasure, as though like pain it was itself a complete experience, instead of being something which attaches to or follows along with or after other experiences, has led to a number of confusions; especially in those critical theses, to which objection has already been taken in Chapter IX, which identify value with pleasure.
The twenty or more distinct kinds of sensations, into which modern psychology has elaborated the old five senses, can be observed to differ very widely in the degree to which they are susceptible of and accompanied by pleasantness and unpleasantness. The higher senses, sight and hearing, in most persons seem to yield sensations which vary much less from neutrality or indifference than the others. We must be careful to understand this difference correctly however. An arrangement of colours and shapes, a sequence of notes or a musical phrase may, of course, in suitable people, be as intensely toned, pleasantly or unpleasantly, as any organic or taste sensations, for example. But even this is not usual. The right experiment is to compare a single colour, say, or a single note, with such a sensation as a uniform touch or temperature gives rise to, a bath for example, or with a simple uniform taste or smell, or with hunger, or nausea. Fair comparison is difficult, equivalent levels of simplicity and uniformity being impossible to discover, but few will doubt that the degree of pleasure-unpleasure aroused by tastes, for example, far exceeds that which auditory or visual sensations excite by themselves. We must of course be careful here to avoid confusing the intrinsic pleasure-unpleasure of the sensations with that which arises through memory, through the effects of other sensations, pleasant or unpleasant, which may have accompanied them in the past, and through expectations agreeable or disagreeable.
To speak of the intrinsic pleasure-unpleasure of a sensation is perhaps misleading. The pleasantness of a sensation as we know is a highly variable thing. It may alter completely while the strictly sensory characteristics of the sensation remain as before. The difference in the same smell of liquor, before and after an alcoholic excess is a striking example. A sound which is pleasant for a while may become very unpleasant if it continues and does not lapse from consciousness. And yet indisputably it may remainquasensation the same. A sound-sensation may remain unchanged in tone, volume and intensity yet vary widely in pleasure-unpleasure. This difference is important. It is one of the chief reasons which have caused feeling (pleasure-unpleasure) to be distinguished from sensation as altogether of a different nature. Tone, volume and intensity are features in the sound closely dependent upon the stimulus, pleasantness is dependent not on external stimulus but upon factors, very obscure at present, in us. All here is conjecture. The close connection of stimulus with sensation we know because it happens to be comparatively accessible to experiment. And introspection of sensations of external origin is for that reason much more easy than introspection of most visceral or organic sensations. We can practise it freely and repeat it and so control our results. To a lesser extent those sensations of internal origin which we can in part consciously control, those due to voluntary movements, share this double accessibility. But all the rest of the multifarious conscious goings on in the nervous system remain obscure. One broad fact, however, is important. The effects in the body of almost all stimuli of whatever nature are extraordinarily numerous and varied. “You cannot show the observer a wall-paper pattern without by that very fact disturbing his respiration and circulation.”†And no man knows what other disturbances do not join in. The whole body resounds in what would seem to be a fairly systematic way. Whether the outpouring of this tide of disturbance makes up a part of, gives a tone to consciousness, or whether only the incoming reports of the results can be conscious is a question upon which no conclusive evidence would seem to be yet available. The incoming reports of some at least of these disturbances certainly can become conscious. A lump in the throat, a yearning of the bowels, horripilation, breathlessness, these are their coarser and more obvious forms. Usually, they are less salient and fuse with the whole mass of internal sensations to form thecœnesthesia, the whole bodily consciousness, tinging it, altering its general character in some one of perhaps a thousand different ways.
It has been much disputed whether pleasure-unpleasure is a quality of general bodily or organic consciousness, of some part of it perhaps, or whether it is something quite different from any quality of any sensation or set of sensations. As we have seen, it is not a quality of an auditory sensation in the sense in which its loudness, for instance, is a quality. There seem to be similar objections to making it a quality of any sensation of any kind. A sensation is what an impulse at a certain stage in its development feels like, and its sensory qualities are characters*of the impulse at that stage. The pleasure-unpleasure attaching to the impulse may be no character of the impulse itself, but of its fate, its success or failure in restoring equilibrium to the system to which it belongs.
This is perhaps as good a guess at what pleasure and unpleasure are as can yet be made, pleasure being successful activity of some kind, not necessarily of a biologically useful kind, and unpleasure being frustrated, chaotic, mal-successful activity. We shall consider this theory again at a later stage (cf. Chapter XXIV). The point to be made here is that pleasure and unpleasure are complicated matters arising in the course of activities which are directed to other ends. The old controversies as to whether pleasure is the goal of all striving or whether avoidance of unpleasure the starting-point, are thus escaped. As Ribot pointed out†the exclusive quest of pleasure for itself,plaisir-passion, is a morbid form of activity and self-destructive. Pleasure on this view is originally aneffectsignifying that certain positive or negative tendencies have instinctively attained their aim and are satisfied. Later through experience it becomes a cause. Instructed by experience man and animal alike place themselves in circumstances which will arouse desire and so through satisfaction lead to pleasure. The gourmet, the libertine, the æsthete, the mystic do so alike. But when the pleasure which is the result of satisfying the tendency becomes the end pursued rather than the satisfying of the tendency itself, then an ‘inversionof the psychological mechanism’ comes about. In the one case the activity is propagated from below upwards, in the other from above downwards, from the brain to the organic functions. The result is often an exhaustion of the tendency, ‘disillusionment’ and theblasé, world-wearied attitude.
The evil results, as Ribot remarks, are largely confined to those individuals in whom the quest for pleasure has the force of an obsession. But on the view of pleasure which we have indicated above, it is clear that all those doctrines, very common in critical literature, which set up pleasure as the goal of activity, are mistaken. Every activity has its own specific goal. Pleasure very probably ensues in most cases when this goal is reached, but that is a different matter. To read a poem for the sake of the pleasure which will ensue if it is successfully read is to approach it in an inadequate attitude. Obviously it is the poem in which we should be interested, not in a by-product of having managed successfully to read it. The orientation of attention is wrong if we put the pleasure in the forefront. Such a mistake is perhaps not common among instructed persons, but to judge by many remarks which appear in reviews and dramatic notices the percentage of instructed persons among reviewers and theatre-goers does not seem high. This error, a legacy in part from the criticism of an age which had a still poorer psychological vocabulary*than Our own, is one reason why Tragedy, for example, is so often misapproached. It is no less absurd to suppose that a competent reader sits down to read for the sake of pleasure, than to suppose that a mathematician sets out to solve an equation with a view to the pleasure its solution will afford him. The pleasure in both cases may, of course, be very great. But the pleasure, however great it may be, is no more the aim of the activity in the course of which it arises, than, for example, the noise made by a motor-cycle—useful though it is as an indication of the way the machine is running—is the reason in the normal case for its having been started.
This very common mistake noted, the significance of pleasure and unpleasure may be insisted upon without misgiving. They are our most delicate signs of how our activities are thriving. But since even the most intense delight may indicate only a local success and the activity be generally detrimental, they are signs which need a very wary interpretation.