The Principles of Psychology, Vols. 1-2

the latter do not make mistakes, or when they are always able to retrieve them, theirs is one of the most engaging and indispensable of human types.^ In infancy, and in certain conditions of exhaustion as well as in peculiar pathological states, the inhibitory power may fail to arrest the explosions of the impulsive discharge. We have then an explosive temperament temporarily realized in an individual who at other times may be of a rela= tively obstructed type. I cannot do better here than copy a few pages from Dr. Clouston's excellent work : f

" Take a child of six months, and there is absolutely no such brainpower existent as mental inhibition ; no desire or tendency is stopped l)y a mental act. ... At a year old the rudiments of the great faculty of self-control are clearly apparent in most children. They will resist the desire to seize the gas-flame, they will not upset the milkjug, they will obey orders to sit still when they want to run about, all through a higher mental inhibition. But the power of control is just as gradual a development as the motions of the hands. . . . Look at a more complicated act, that will be recognized by any competent physiologist to be automatic and beyond the control of any ordinary inhibitory power, e.g., irritate and tease a child of one or two years suflEiciently, and it will suddenly strike out at you ; suddenly strike at a man, and he will either perform an act of defence or offence, or both, quite automatically, and without power of controlling himself. Place a bright tempting toy before a child of a year, and it will be instantly appropriated. Place cold water before a man dying of thirst, and he will take and drink it without power of doing otherwise. Ex-

*In an excellent article on The ' Mental Qualities of an Athlete ' in the Harvard Monthly, vol. vi. p. 43, Mr. A. T. Dudley assigns the first place to the rapidly impulsive temperament. " Ask him how, in some complex trick, he performed a certain act, why he pushed or pulled at a certain instant, and he will tell you he does not know ; he did it by instinct ; or rather his nerves and muscles did it of themselves. . . . Here is the distinguishing feature of the good player ; the good player, confident in his training and his practice, in the critical game trusts entirely to his impulse, and does not think out every move. The poor player, unable to trust his impulsive actions, is compelled to think carefully all the time. He thus not only loses the opportunities through his slowness in comprehending the whole situation, but, being compelled to think rapidly all the time, at critical points becomes confused ; while the first rate player, not trying to reason, but acting as impulse directs, is continually distinguishing himself and plays the better under the greater pressure."

haustion of nervous energy always lessens the inhibitory power. Wk« is not conscious of this ? ' Irritability ' is one manifestation of this. Many persons have so small a stock of reserve brain-power— that most valuable of all brain-qualities — that it is soon used up, and you see at once that they lose their power of self-control very soon. They are angels or demons just as they are fresh or tired. That surplus store of energy or resistive force which provides, in persons normally constituted, that moderate excesses in all directions shall do no great harm so long as they are not too often repeated, not being present in these people, overwork, over-drinking, or small debauches leave them at the mercy of their morbid impulses without power of resistance. . . . Woe to the man who uses up his surplus stock of brain-inhibition too near the bitter end, or too often ! . . . The physiological word inhibition can be used synonymously with the psychological and ethical expression self-control, or with the will when exercised in certain directions. It is the characteristic of most forms of mental disease for self-control to be lost, but this loss is usually part of a general mental affection with melancholic, maniacal, demented, or delusional symptoms as the chief manifestation of the disease. There are other cases, not so numerous, where the loss of the power of inhibition is the chief and by far the most marked symptom. ...

I shall call this form 'Inhibitory Insanity.' Some of these cases have uncontrollable impulses to violence and destruction, others to homicide, others to suicide prompted by no depressed feelings, others to acts of animal gratification (satyriasis, nymphomania, erotomania, bestiality), others to drinking too much alcohol (dipsomania), others towards setting things on fire (pyromania), others to stealing (kleptomania), and others towards immoralities of aU sorts. The impulsive tendencies and morbid desires are innumerable in kind. Many of these varieties of Insanity have been distinguished by distinct names. To dig up and eat dead bodies (necrophilism), to wander from home and throw off the restraints of society (planomania), to act like a wild beast (lycanthropia), etc. Action from impulse in all these directions may take place from a loss of controlling power in the higher regions of the brain, or from an over-development of energy in certain portions of the brain, which the normal power of inhibition cannot control. The driver maybe so weak that he cannot control well-broken horses, or the horses may be so hard-mouthed that no driver can pull them up. Both conditions may arise from purely cerebral disorder .... or may be reflex. . . . The ego, the man, the will, may be non-existent for the time. The most perfect examples of this are murders done during somnambulism or epileptic unconsciousness, or acts done in the hypnotic state. There is no conscious desire to attain the object at all in such cases. In other cases there is consciousness and memory present, but no power of restraining action. The simplest example of this is where an imbecile or dement, seeing something glittering, appropriates it to himself, or when he commits indecent sexual acts. Through disease a previously sane and vigorous-minded person may get into the

same state. The motives that would lead other persons not to do such acts do not operate in such persons. I have known a man steal who said he had no intense longing for the article he appropriated at all, at least consciously, but his will was in abeyance, and he could not resist the ordinary desire of possession common to all human nature." It is not only those technically classed imbeciles and dements who exhibit this promptitude of impulse and tardiness of inhibition. Ask half the common drunkards you know why it is that they fall so often a prey to temptation, and they will say that most of the time they cannot tell. It is a sort of vertigo with them. Their nervous centres have become a sluice-way pathologically unlocked by every passing conception of a bottle and a glass. They do not thirst for the beverage ; the taste of it may even appear repugnant; and they perfectly foresee the morrow's remorse. But when they think of the liquor or see it, they find themselves preparing to drink, and do not stop themselves : and more than this they cannot say. Similarly a man may lead a life of incessant love-making or sexual indulgence, though what spurs him thereto seems rather to be suggestions and notions of possibility than any overweening strength in his affections or lusts. He may even be physically impotent all the while. The paths of natural (or it may be unnatural) impulse are so pervious in these characters that the slightest rise in the level of innervation produces an overflow. It is the condition recognized in pathology as * irritable weakness.' The phase known as nascency or latency is so short in the excitement of the neural tissues that there is no opportunity for strain or tension to accumulate within them; and the consequence is that with all the agitation and activity, the amount of real feeling engaged may be very small. The hysterical temperament is the playground par excellence of this unstable equilibrium. One of these subjects will be filled with what seems the most genuine and settled aversion to a certain line of conduct, and the very next instant follow the stirring of temptation and plunge in it up to the neck.

Professor Bibot well gives the name of *Le Regne des Caprices' to the chapter in which he describes the hysterical temperament in his interesting little monograph * The Diseases of the Will.' Disorderly and impulsive conduct may, on the other hand, come about where the neural tissues preserve their proper inward tone, and where the inhibitory power is normal or even unusually great. In such cases th£ strength of the impulsive idea is preternaturally exalted, and what would be for most people the passing suggestion of a possibility becomes a gnawing, craving urgency to act. Works on insanity are full of examples of these morbid insistent ideas, in obstinately struggling against which the unfortunate victim's soul often sweats with agony, ere at last it gets swept away. One instance will stand for many ; M. Eibot quotes it from Calmeil : ^

" Gl^nadal, having lost his father in infancy, was brought up by his mother, whom he adored. At sixteen, his character, till then good and docile, changed. He became gloomy and taciturn. Pressed with questions by his mother, he decided at last to make a confession. ' To you,' said he, ' I owe everything ; I love you with all my soul ; yet for some time past an incessant idea drives me to kill you. Prevent so terrible a misfortune from happening, in case some day the temptation should overpower me : allow me to enlist.' Notwithstanding pressing solicitations, he was firm in his resolve, went off, and was a good soldier. Still a secret impulse stimulated him without cessation to desert in order to come home and kill his mother. At the end of his term of service the idea was as strong as on the first day. He enlisted for another term. The murderous instinct persisted, but substituted another victim. He no longer thought of killing his mother — the horrible impulse pointed day and night towards his sister-in-law. In order to resist the second impulse, he condemned himself to perpetual exile. At this time one of his old neighbors arrived in the regiment. Gl^nadal confesses all his trouble. ' Be at rest,' said the other. ' Your crime is impossible; your sister-in-law has just died.' At these words Gl^nadal rises like a delivered captive. Joy fills his heart. He travels to the home of his childhood, un visited for so many years. But as he arrives he sees his sister-in-law living. He gives a cry, and the terrible impulse seizes him again as a prey. That very evening he makes his brother tie him fast. ' Take a solid rope, bind me like a wolf in the barn, and go and tell Dr. Calmeil. . . . ' From him he got admission to an insane asylum. The evening before his entrance he wrote to the director of the establishment: 'Sir, lam to become an inmate of your house.

I shall behave there as if I were in the regiment. You will think me cured. At moments perhaps I shall pretend to be so. Never believe me. Never let me out on any pretext. If 1 beg to be released, double your watchfulness ; the only use I shall make of my liberty will be to commit a crime which I abhor.' " * The craving for drink in real dipsomaniacs, or for opium or chloral in those subjugated, is of a strength of which normal persons can form no conception. "Were a keg of rum in one corner of a room and were a cannon constantly discharging balls between me and it, I could not refrain from passing before that cannon in order to get the rum ;" " If a bottle of brandy stood at one hand and the pit of hell yawned at the other, and I were convinced that I should be pushed in as sure as I took one glass, I could not refrain :" such statements abound in dipsomaniacs' mouths. Dr. Mussey of Cincinnati relates this case :

" A few years ago a tippler was put into an almshouse in this State. Within a few days he had devised various expedients to procure rum, but failed. At length, however, he hit upon one which was successful. He went into the wood-yard of the establishment, placed one hand upon the block, and with an axe in the other, struck it off at a single blow. With the stump raised and streaming he ran into the house and cried, ' Get some rum ! get some rum I my hand is off ! ' In the confusion and bustle of the occasion a bowl of rum was brought, into which he plunged the bleeding member of his body, then raising the bowl to his mouth, drank freely, and exultingly exclaimed, ' Now I am satisfied.' Dr. J. E. Turner tells of a man who, while under treatment for inebriety, during four weeks secretly drank the alcohol from six jars containing morbid specimens. On asking him why he had committed this loathsome act, he replied: ' Sir, it is as impossible for me to control this diseased appetite as it is for me to control the pulsations of my heart.' " f

The passion of love may be called a monomania to which all of us are subject, however otherwise sane. It can coexist with contempt and even hatred for the * object ' which inspires it, and whilst it lasts the whole life of the man is altered by its presence. Alfieri thus describes the struggles of his unusually powerful inhibitive power with his abnormally excited impulses toward a certain lady : "Contemptible in my own eyes, I fell into such a state of melancholy as would, if long continued, inevitably have led to insanity or

* For other cases of ' impulsive insanity,' see H. Maudsley's Responsibility in Mental Disease, pp. 133-170, and Forbes Winslow's Obscure Diseases of the Mind and Brain, chapters vr, vii, viii. t Quoted by G. Burr, in an article on the Insanity of Inebriety in the N. Y. Psychological and Medico-Legal Journal, Dec. 1874. death. I continued to wear my disgraceful fetters till towards the end of January, 1775, when my rage, which had hitherto so often been restrained within bounds, broke forth with the greatest violence. On returning one evening from the opera (the most insipid and tiresome amusement in Italy), where I had passed several hours in the box of the woman who was by turns the object of my antipathy and my love, I took the firm determination of emancipating myself forever from her yoke. Experience had taught me that flight, so far from enabling me to persevere in my resolutions, tended on the contrary to weaken and destroy them; I was inclined therefore to subject myself to a still more severe trial, imagining from the obstinacy and peculiarity of my character that I should succeed most certainly by the adoption of such measures as would compel me to make the greatest efforts. I determined never to leave the house, which, as I have already said, was exactly opposite that of the lady; to gaze at her windows, to see her go in and out every day, to listen to the sound of her voice, though firmly resolved that no advances on her part, either direct or indirect, no tender remembrances, nor in short any other means w^hich might be employed, should ever again tempt me to a revival of our friendship. I was determined to die or liberate myself from my disgraceful thraldom. In order to give stability to my purpose, and to render it impossible for me to waver without the imputation of dishonor, I communicated my determination to one of my friends, who was greatly attached to me, and whom I highly esteemed. He had lamented the state of mind into which I had fallen, but not wishing to give countenance to my conduct, and seeing the impossibility of inducing me to abandon it, he had for some time ceased to visit at my house.

In the few lines which I addressed to him, I briefly stated the resolution I had adopted, and as a pledge of my constancy I sent him a long tress of my ugly red hair. I had purposely caused it to be cut off in order to prevent my going out, as no one but clowns and sailors then appeared in public with short hair. I concluded my billet by conjuring him to strengthen and aid my fortitude by his presence and example. Isolated in this manner in my own house, I prohibited all species of intercourse, and passed the first fifteen days in uttering the most frightful lamentations and groans. Some of my friends came to visit me, and appeared to commiserate my situation, perhaps because I did not myself complain; but my figure and whole appearance bespoke my sufferings. Wishing to read something I had recourse to the gazettes, whole pages of which I frequently ran over without understanding a single word. . . I passed more than two months till the end of March 1775, in a state bordering on frenzy; but about this time a new idea darted into my mind, which tended to assuage my melancholy."

This was the idea of poetical composition, at which Alfieri describes his first attempts, made under these diseased circumstances, and goes on : *' The only good that occurred to me from this whim was that of gradually detaching me from love, and of awakening my reason which had so long lain dormant. I no longer found it necessary to cause myself to be tied with cords to a chair, in order to prevent me from leaving my house and returning to that of my lady. This had been one of the expedients I devised to render myself wise by force. The cords were concealed under a large mantle in which I was enveloped, and only one hand remained at liberty. Of all those who came to see me, not one suspected I was bound down in this manner. I remained in this situation for whole hours; Elias, who was my jailer, was alone intrusted with the secret. He always liberated me, as he had been enjoined, whenever the paroxysms of my rage subsided. Of all the whimsical methods which I employed, however, the most curious was that of appearing in masquerade at the theatre towards the end of the carnival. Habited as Apollo, I ventured to present myself with a lyre, on which I played as well as I was able and sang some bad verses of my own composing. Such effrontery was diametrically opposite to my natural character. The only excuse I can offer for such scenes was my inability to resist an imperious passion. I felt that it was necessary to place an insuperable barrier between its object and me; and I saw that the strongest of all was the shame to which 1 should expose myself by renewing an attachment which I had so publicly turned into ridicule." *

Often the insistent idea is of a trivial sort, but it may wear the patient's life out. His hands feel dirty, they must be washed. He knows they are not dirty ; yet to get rid of the teasing idea he washes them. The idea, however, returns in a moment, and the unfortunate victim, who is not in the least deluded intellectually, will end by spending the whole day at the wash-stand. Or his clothes are not * rightly' put on ; and to banish the thought he takes them off and puts them on again, till his toilet consumes two or three hours of time. Most people have the potentiality of this disease. To few has it not happened to conceive, after getting into bed, that they may have forgotten to lock the front door, or to turn out the entry gas. And few of us have not on some occasion got up to repeat the performance, less because they believed in the reality of its omission than because only so could they banish the worrying doubt and get to sleep, t

t See a paper on Insistent and Fixed Ideas by Dr. Cowles in American Journal of Psychology, i. 223 ; and another on the so-called Insanity of Doubt by Dr. Knapp, ibid. in. 1. The latter contains a partial bibliography of the iubject. In striking contrast with the cases in which inhibition is insufficient or impulsion in excess are those in which impulsion is insufficient or inhibition of in excess. We all know the condition described on p. 404 of Vol. I, in which the mind for a few moments seems to lose its focussing power and to be unable to rally its attention to any determinate thing. At such times we sit blankly staring and do nothing. The objects of consciousness fail to touch the quick or break the skin. They are there, but do not reach the level of effectiveness. This state of non-efficacious presence is the normal condition of some objects, in all of us. Great fatigue or exhaustion may make it the condition of almost all objects ; and an apathy resembling that then brought about is recognized in asylums under the name of abulia as a symptom of mental disease. The healthy state of the will requires, as aforesaid, both that vision should be right, and that action should obey its lead. But in the morbid condition in question the vision may be wholly unaffected, and the intellect clear, and yet the act either fails to follow or follows in some other way. " Video meliora prohoque, deteriora sequor " is the classic expression of the latter condition of mind. The former it is to which the name abvlia peculiarly applies. The patients, says Guislain,

*' are able to will inwardly, mentally, according to the dictates of reason. They experience the desire to act, but they are powerless to act as they should. . . . Their will cannot overpass certain limits : one would say that the force of action within them is blocked up : the I will does not transform itself into impulsive volition, into active determination. Some of these patients wonder themselves at the impotence with which their will is smitten. If you abandon them to themselves, they pass whole days in their bed or on a chair. If one speaks to them or excites them, they express themselves properly though briefly ; and judge of things pretty well. " *

In Chapter XXI, as will be remembered, it was said that the sentiment of reality with which an object appealed to the mind is proportionate (amongst other things) to its efficacy as a stimulus to the will. Here we get the obverse side of the truth. Those ideas, objects, considerations, which (in these lethargic states) fail to get to the will, fail to draw blood, seem, in so far forth, distant and unreal. The connection of the reality of things with their effectiveness as motives is a tale that has never yet been fully told. The moral tragedy of human life comes almost wholly from the fact that the link is ruptured which normally should hold between vision of the truth and action, and that this pungent sense of effective reality will not attach to certain ideas. Men do not differ so much in their mere feelings and conceptions. Their notions of possibility and their ideals are not as far apart as might be argued from their differing fates. No class of them have better sentiments or feel more constantly the difference between the higher and the lower path in life than the hopeless failures, the sentimentalists, the drunkards, the schemers, the * dead-beats,' whose life is one long contradiction between knowledge and action, and who, with full command of theory, never get to holding their limp characters erect. No one eats of the fruit of the tree of knowledge as they do ; as far as moral insight goes, in comparison with them, the orderly and prosperous philistines whom they scandalize are sucking babes. And yet their moral knowledge, always there grumbling and rumbling in the background, — discerning, commenting, protesting, longing, half resolving, — never wholly resolves, never gets its voice out of the minor into the major key, or its speech out of the subjunctive into the imperative mood, never breaks the spell, never takes the helm into its hands. In such characters as Rousseau and Restif it would seem as if the lower motives had all the impulsive efficacy in their hands. Like trains with the right of way, they retain exclusive possession of the track.

The more ideal motives exist alongside of them in profusion, but they never get switched on, and the man's conduct is no more influenced by them than an express train is influenced by a wayfarer standing by the roadside and calling to be taken aboard. They are an inert accompaniment to the end of time ; and the consciousness of inward hollowness that accrues from habitually seeing the better only to do the worse, is one of fclie saddest feelings one can bear with him through thia vale of tears.

We now see at one view when it is that effort complicates volition. It does so whenever a rarer and more ideal impulse is called upon to neutralize others of a more instinctive and habitual kind ; it does so whenever strongly explosive tendencies are checked, or strongly obstructive conditions overcome. The dme Men nee, the child of the sunshine, at whose birth the fairies made their gifts, does not need much of it in his life. The hero and the neurotic subject, on the other hand, do. Now our spontaneous way of conceiving the effort, under all these circumstances, is as an active force adding its strength to that of the motives which ultimately prevail. "When outer forces impinge upon a body, we say that the resultant motion is in the line of least resistance, or of greatest traction. But it is a curious fact that our spontaneous language never speaks of volition with effort in this way. Of course if we proceed a priori and define the line of least resistance as the line that is followed, the physical law must also hold good in the mental sphere. But we feel, in all hard cases of volition, as if the line taken, when the rarer and more ideal motives prevail, were the line of greater resistance, and as if the line of coarser motivation were the more pervious and easy one, even at the very moment when we refuse to follow it. He who under the surgeon's knife represses cries of pain, or he who exposes himself to social obloquy for duty's sake, feels as if he were following the line of greatest temporary resistance. He speaks of conquering and overcoming his impulses and temptations.

But the sluggard, the drunkard, the coward, never talk of their conduct in that way or say they resist their energy, overcome their sobriety, conquer their courage, and so forth. If in general we class all springs of action as propensities on the one hand and ideals on the other, the sensualist never says of his behavior that it results from a victory over his ideals, but the moralist always speaks of his as a victory over his propensities. The sensualist uses terms of inactivity, says he forgets his ideals, is deaf to

duty, and so forth ; whicli terms seem to imply that the ideal motives per se can be annulled without energy or effort, and that the strongest mere traction lies in the line of the propensities. The ideal impulse appears, in comparison with this, a still small voice which must be artificially reinforced to prevail. Effort is what reinforces it, making things seem as if, while the force of propensity were essentially a fixed quantity, the ideal force might be of various amount. But what determines the amount of the effort when, by its aid, an ideal motive becomes victorious over a great sensual resistance ? The very greatness of the resistance itself. If the sensual propensity is small, the effort is small. The latter is made great by the presence of a great antagonist to overcome. And if a brief definition of ideal or moral action were required, none could be given which would better fit the appearances than this : It is action in the line of the greatest resistance.

The facts may be most briefly symbolized thus, P standing for the propensity, I for the ideal impulse, and E for the effort : In other words, if E adds itself to I, P immediately offers the least resistance, and motion occurs in spite of it. But the E does not seem to form an integral part of the I. It appears adventitious and indeterminate in advance. We can make more or less as we please, and if we make enough we can convert the greatest mental resistance into the least. Such, at least, is the impression which the facts spontaneously produce upon us. But we will not discuss the truth of this impression at present ; let us rather continue our descriptive detail.

Objects and thoughts of objects start our action, but the pleasures and pains which action brings modify its course and regulate it ; and later the thoughts of the pleasares and the pains acquire themselves impulsive and inhibitive power. Not that the thought of a pleasure need be itself a pleasure, usually it is the reverse — nessun maggior dolore — as Dante says — and not that the thought of pain iieed be a pain, for, as Homer says, " griefs are often afterwards an entertainment." But as present pleasures are tremendous reinforcers, and present pains tremendous inhibitors of whatever action leads to them, so the thoughts of pleasures and pains take rank amongst the thoughts which have most impulsive and inhibitive power. The precise relation which these thoughts hold to other thoughts is thus a matter demanding some attention.

If a movement feels agreeable, we repeat and repeat it as long as the pleasure lasts. If it hurts us, our muscular contractions at the instant stop. So complete is the inhibition in this latter case that it is almost impossible for a man to cut or mutilate himself slowly and deliberately — his hand invincibly refusing to bring on the pain. And there are many pleasures which, when once we have begun to taste them, make it all but obligatory to keep up the activity to which they are due. So widespread and searching is this influence of pleasures and pains upon our movements that a premature philosophy has decided that these are ■our only spurs to action, and that wherever they seem to be absent, it is only because they are so far on among the * remoter ' images that prompt the action that they are overlooked.

This is a great mistake, however. Important as is the influence of pleasures and pains upon our movements, they are far from being our only stimuli. With the manifestations of instinct and emotional expression, for example, they have absolutely nothing to do. Who smiles for the pleasure of the smiling, or frowns for the pleasure of the frown ? Who blushes to escape the discomfort of not blushing ? Or who in anger, grief, or fear is actuated to the movements which he makes by the pleasures which they yield ? In all these cases the movements are discharged fatally by the vis a tergo which the stimulus exerts upon a nervous system framed to respond in just that way. The objects of our tage, love, or terror, the occasions of our tears and smiles,

wbetlier they be present to our senses, or whether they be merely represented in idea, have this peculiar sort of impulsive power. The impulsive quality of mental states is an attribute behind which we cannot go. Some states of mind have more of it than others, some have it in this direction^ and some in that. Feelings of pleasure and pain have it^ and perceptions and imaginations of fact have it, but neither have it exclusively or peculiarly. It is of the essence of all consciousness (or of the neural process which underlies it) to instigate movement of some sort. That with one creature and object it should be of one sort, with others of another sort, is a problem for evolutionary history to explain. However the actual impulsions may have arisen, they must now be described as they exist ; and those persons obey a curiously narrow teleological superstition who think themselves bound to interpret them in every instance as effecta of the secret solicitancy of pleasure and repugnancy of pain.*

* The silliness of the old-fashioned pleasure-philosophy saute aux yeux Take, for example, Prof, Bain's explanation of sociability and pareuta love by the pleasures of touch : "Touch is the fundamental and generic sense. . . . Even after the remaining senses are differentiated, the primary sense continues to be a leading susceptibility of the mind. The soft warm touch, if not a first-class influence, is at least an approach to that. The combined power of soft contact and warmth amounts to a considerable pitch of massive pleasure ; while there may be subtle influences not reducible to these two heads, such as we term, from not knowing anything about them, magnetic or electric. The sort of thrill from taking a baby in arms is something beyond mere warm touch ; and it may rise to the ecstatic height, in which case, however, there may be concurrent sensations and ideas. ... In mere tender emotion not sexual, there is nothing but the sense of touch to gratify, unless we assume the occult magnetic infiuences. ... In a word, our love pleasures begin and end in sensual contact. Touch is both the alpha and omega of affection. As the terminal and satisfying sensation, the we ^^ws-wZira, it must be a pleasure of the highest degree. . . . Why should a more lively feeling grow up towards a fellow-being than towards a perennial fountain ? [This ' should ' is simply delicious from the more modern evolutionary point of view.] It must be that there is a source of pleasure in the companionship of other sentient creatures, over and above the help afforded by them in obtaining the necessaries of life. To account for this, I can suggest nothing but the primary and independent pleasure of the animal embrace." [Mind, this is said not of the sexual interert, but of ' Sociability at Large.'] " For this pleasure every creature is disposed to pay somethinjj, even when it is only fraternal.

A certain It might be that to reflection such a narrow 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 ethixxd proposition, in favor of which a good deal may be said. But it is not a psychological proposition ; and nothing follows 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 illusory simplification at the cost of half the facts.

If in these our flrst acts pleasures and pains bear no part, as little do they bear in our last acts, or those artificially 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 like 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 find 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 ministering 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. would not on the whole give us the pleasure in question 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 ?