IE SENSE OF 
 UN & PLEASURE 
 
 HENRY T.MOORE 
 
Class 
 
 Book 
 
 COPYRIGHT DEPOSm 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
Our Senses Series — George Van N. Dearborn, Editor 
 
 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY THOMAS MOORE, Ph.D 
 
 H 
 
 Assistant Professor of Psychology, Dartmouth College 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY 
 1917 
 
Copyright, 1917, by 
 MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY 
 
 Published August, 1917 
 
 V 
 
 SEP -4 I9t7 
 
 ©CI.A473295 
 
TO 
 
 M. B. M. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 In presenting to the public a volume on pain 
 and pleasure as part of a series on the senses, a 
 word of explanation is perhaps necessary as to the 
 precise meaning attached to these terms- It may 
 quite properly be asked how far I mean to identify 
 these terms with sensation, and how far with 
 feeling. Indeed, my whole position in regard to 
 the relation of sensation and feeling naturally 
 comes in question when unpleasantness is included 
 as a variety of pain, and the sensation of tickling 
 is put in the same general class with pleasantness* 
 There is probably no more disputed ground in 
 psychology than that which relates to the above 
 point, and none in which more different shades of 
 opinion have authoritative support. Speaking 
 personally, I find it impossible to dispute the fact 
 of a distinct difference between the sensation of 
 pain and the feeling of unpleasantness, but the 
 points of similarity seem far more significant than 
 the points of difference. We may therefore with- 
 out hesitation class them under a single general 
 
PREFACE 
 
 heading even though recognizing them as sub- 
 classes of a primitive type of consciousness. The 
 right understanding of this relation will, I be- 
 lieve, come as the result of a genetic study rather 
 than of cross-section analysis. [The effort has 
 been in the third chapter to suggest a probable 
 line of genetic continuity from primitive pleasant- 
 ness and unpleasantness to full-fledged sensory 
 pleasure and pain. 
 
 Especial emphasis has been laid throughout on 
 the broad, vital significance which all pain and 
 pleasure experiences have in common. It is be- 
 lieved that a satisfactory philosophy of the prob- 
 lem of evil can proceed only from a psychology of 
 pain and pleasure that lends itself to broad inter- 
 pretation. 
 
 I wish here to acknowledge my especial in- 
 debtedness to Professor G. V. N. Dearborn for 
 his kind loan of two hitherto unpublished hem- 
 obarograms showing the relation of pleasantness 
 and unpleasantness to blood-pressure. These 
 graphs appear in Chapter V. 
 
 Hanover, New Hampshire, 
 March 16, 19 17. 
 
EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION 
 
 Few people, comparatively, however intelligent 
 and generally thoughtful, have as yet stopped to 
 consider the surpassing interest and the unique 
 importance of Our Senses. Living gateways as 
 the sense organs are between ourselves and our 
 ever-changing surroundings, both spiritual and 
 material, they constitute the channels not only of 
 our life-satisfaction, but of all our immediate 
 knowledge as well. If, then, in discussing them, 
 biological imagination and breadth and depth go 
 hand in hand with technical knowledge of the 
 highest grade, the volumes comprised should be 
 both human and scientific. And these volumes 
 are so, and will be. It is because of such possibil- 
 ities that a series like the present, authentic yet 
 interesting and inexpensive, must appeal to the 
 intelligent man or woman of to-day. As contribu- 
 tions to psychology and to education their value is 
 certain to be great, as indeed is indicated by the 
 
 vii 
 
viii EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION 
 
 list of their authors, whom it would be superflu- 
 ous to praise or even to portray. 
 
 Small in number are the topics in all the won- 
 drous range of the science of living things that 
 are more alluring for their very mystery and 
 romance than these same gateways by which we 
 may go out into " our world " and by which this 
 same great world may come into us and, for the 
 little span of life, lend us a feeling of home-dwell- 
 ing. 
 
 Within the past decade there has been a gen- 
 eral popular awakening from the former uninter- 
 ested attitude toward these phenomena of the 
 physical and mental processes by which we keep 
 in touch with the things outside ourselves. A fair 
 knowledge of the rudiments of biology, of physi- 
 ology, and of psychology now has become part of 
 the curriculum of our schools and colleges. And 
 of these three sciences it is psychology which has 
 entered so deeply into our everyday life — busi- 
 ness life as well as personal — that at last no one 
 can escape its influence. And no one wishes to, 
 for psychology in a sense has become the intel- 
 lectual handmaiden of all who think in terms of to- 
 day, with to-day's amazing development of insight 
 
EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION ix 
 
 into the mortal meanings of our very selves, body 
 always as well as soul. Our scientific realization 
 of our true continuity with all things else goes 
 on apace, and our personal relations to the bound- 
 less, perhaps Infinite, Cosmos of consciousness, 
 life, and energy seem ever clearer. Thus, in a 
 way, the sense organs give us personal anchorage 
 in a Sea which else sometimes, from its very im- 
 mensity and stress, would overwhelm us. Our 
 range, although the broadest as yet vouchsafed to 
 life, is as it were but a mere line out into the com- 
 plexity of the Actual. The first step to the appre- 
 ciation of this complexity and its implications for 
 the human mind is knowledge of the conditions 
 of its acquirement, — of the sense organs and of 
 the perplexing brain behind them. 
 
 Editorial duty or privilege fails to know much 
 as yet of the detailed contents of these several 
 volumes. But the editor does know not a little 
 about the arrangers and expounders of the vol- 
 umes' contents, and he knows that they are women 
 and men of conspicuous sense — trustworthy in 
 every sense. The books are the best of their kind 
 and are in a class by themselves. They are the 
 standard authority for ordinary use. These vol- 
 
x EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION 
 
 umes when disposed as a red-backed set on one's 
 library shelf will be a set of books to be proud of. 
 And the high-school boys and girls and their 
 fathers evenings and on Sundays and their 
 mothers at the club all alike will think of them as 
 highly valued friends, both wise and agreeable, as 
 pleasant to meet for an hour as the most welcome 
 visitor well could be. No higher " authority " 
 exists than that which these authors represent; 
 and it would be hard to find those who could set 
 forth " authority " more gracefully. Each knows 
 that literary enjoyment usually goes hand in hand 
 with that wisdom which extended is the director 
 of Life itself. 
 
 Of the many moot-points in the sister sciences 
 of psychology and physiology, none probably is 
 more mootable than the technical truth about pleas- 
 ure and pain, pleasantness and unpleasantness. 
 The psychologists (both amateur and professional, 
 lawyers and salesmen as well as professors of 
 psychology in the colleges) have inevitably a great 
 interest in the subject of this volume, that double 
 interest coming both from the very nature of a 
 mystery, and from the circumstance that pleasure 
 
EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION xi 
 
 and pain are at the very heart of every one, even 
 of the narrowest and coldest intellectualist or 
 algebraist. The psychologist then is both scien- 
 tifically and humanly interested, and bound to be 
 so always, in this theme, so that each new treatise 
 on the subject will have a ready welcome. 
 
 On the other hand, who will suggest a subject 
 in which the traditional unpsychologic " average " 
 man (the term average never applies to a 
 woman!) would be more interested, if he stopped 
 just one moment to think of it, than in this two- 
 phased subject of pleasure and pain? Does he 
 not spend much of his time and money and pre- 
 cious nerve-strength exhausting his longing for 
 pleasure? and surely more minutes every day than 
 he would care to publish the number of, studying 
 the avoidance of pain? And pleasantness keeps 
 him living oftentimes; and unpleasantness con- 
 tinually reminds him that Earth not yet is heaven 
 but full of worries and bothers, and sordid some- 
 times with petty disagreeableness, — even if too 
 petty to properly burden a human soul. This 
 book explains some of these feelings. 
 
 To every man interested in the undying prob- 
 lem of Job (the origin and need of evil in our 
 
xii EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION 
 
 brief paradise) pain must have always a special 
 interest And to the moral philosophers, ama- 
 teur and professional, both pleasure and pain. 
 
 Pleasure and pain in a way underlie the other 
 topics set forth in the volumes of this Series, be- 
 cause every sensation is at least potentially either 
 pleasant or the contrary. The editor personally 
 leans to the opinion that the balance of evidence 
 favors the view that pleasure and pain are two 
 sensations and as distinct from others as are taste 
 or hearing. From this way of " seeing " them 
 (even seemly language is confusing sometimes), 
 the larger number of common feeling-experiences 
 are not properly painful or pleasurable at all, but 
 rather are unpleasant or pleasant. But the terms 
 pleasure and pain are used in common speech to 
 include all four of these ideas. And after all, 
 there is one broad, common-sense criterion be- 
 neath and at the same time above all such nice 
 distinctions: A certain quality of sensation we 
 all wish to continue or to return; and a certain 
 other quality to cease and never to return. For 
 the broker and the housewife, the soldier and the 
 machinist and the farmer and their children and 
 their sisters, this basal contrast after all is the 
 
EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION xiii 
 
 main means of judging this whole matter. But, 
 none the less, it is not easy to doubt (until con- 
 vinced of error?) that when the microscope-men, 
 have taken up the problem of the general body- 
 sense-organs with a subtlety of method at all ad- 
 equate to the search, a relatively short time will 
 give us the organic sense organs of pleasure and 
 of pain, and probably the respective nerves 
 thereof. With this identification to use, in turn it 
 will not be long, perhaps, before the technical un- 
 certainty is solved as to whether or not they really 
 are sensations ! 
 
 What our present author has done in this vol- 
 ume the editor thinks he has accomplished with 
 remarkably good judgment; and with a technical 
 descriptive skill which the literary critic, as well as 
 the psychologist, must admire. It surely is one 
 more demonstration that a book may be of a high 
 scientific standard and yet of ready and permanent 
 interest to the educated million for whom, after 
 all, science ultimately exists. Sometimes the 
 " seeker " who can write only for his colleagues 
 possessing the same edition of a dictionary, for- 
 gets this, the " final purpose " of science. 
 
 The volume is free from theorizing to an un- 
 
xiv EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION 
 
 usual degree; it simply states and states simply 
 much of what its author knows about his subject. 
 And really, a psychologist who refrains from 
 theoretic discussion in this particular realm of 
 feeling is a being of strong personal restraint. 
 For a relatively brief book, the volume says much 
 and that scientifically and popularly well. 
 
 Professor Moore has emphasized anew the im- 
 portant thesis that in a sense and a degree, human 
 struggle is the index of pleasure and of pain, using 
 the terms in their broader meanings. [This view- 
 point not only lets us understand the reason for 
 their bodily evolution as the chief motives of be- 
 havior, but it places them in the long scale of 
 moral, that is, permanent, values. 
 
 Scarcely any topic in psychology is more hu- 
 manly interesting in its history than the published 
 opinion concerning pleasure and pain and the 
 other experiences of which these words are sym- 
 bols, but our author, with a full realization of this 
 human interest, by the plan of this Series has been 
 compelled to omit this the historical phase of his 
 subject. 
 
 But just now it is enough that it is a compre- 
 hensive account clearly and yet scientifically ex- 
 
EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION xv 
 
 pressed of a topic of surpassing interest to every 
 conscious being — the latest word on pleasure and 
 pain, and a word that is full of meaning and feel- 
 ing for us all. 
 
 G. V. N. D. 
 Cambridge, Massachusetts, 
 April, 19 1 7. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I Varieties of Pain i 
 
 II Varieties of Pleasure . . .16 
 
 III Probable Origin and Develop- 
 
 ment of Pain and Pleasure . 33 
 
 IV The Meaning of Pain and Pleas- 
 
 ure 53 
 
 V The Bodily Effects of Pain and 
 
 Pleasure . 76 
 
 VI The Nervous Basis of Pain and 
 
 Pleasure . 96 
 
 VII The Diagnostic Value of Pain . 117 
 
 VIII ^Esthetic Pleasure . . . .134 
 
 IX Pleasure in Play 146 
 
 X The Paradox of Pleasure Seek- 
 ing ........ 152 
 
 XI Conclusion 164 
 
 Bibliography 167 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Fig. I. Amoeba chasing and attempting 
 
 to ingest an euglena . . .36 
 
 Fig. 2. Positive reaction of paramecium 
 
 to pleasant contact ... 37 
 
 Fig. 3. Reactions of paramoecia to heat 
 
 and cold 39 
 
 Fig. 4. Laughing chimpanzee {half tone 
 
 facing) 48 
 
 Fig. 5, A. Hemobarogram 89 
 
 Fig. 5, B. Hemobarogram 90 
 
 Figs. 6, 7. The nervous system . ... 98 
 
 Fig. 8. The ascending and descending 
 
 tracts between cord and cortex 100 
 
 Fig. 9. The middle and lower brain . .102 
 
 Fig. 10. Cross section of skin . . . .110 
 
 Fig. 11. Nerve endings 112 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 Varieties of Pain 
 
 When a speaker uses the word " pain " or " pleas- 
 ure/' it is probable that his hearers feel that they 
 have a fairly adequate notion of what he means. 
 And yet it needs but little reflection to convince 
 one's self that these words, as commonly used, 
 include a much wider variety of mental experience 
 than do any of the other words that describe par- 
 ticular sensations. The sense of hearing at once 
 suggests to me something that is either tone or 
 noise; the sense of vision something that either 
 has color or is lacking in color. But " pain " is 
 not so easy to limit strictly to a special group of 
 facts. It may refer to something so trivial as 
 pricking a finger, or it may mean something of 
 such far-reaching importance as grief at the death 
 of a beloved friend. The fact that these two 
 
2 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 widely different experiences may both be appro- 
 priately described as painful, suggests to us that 
 somehow pain is more deeply imbedded in the 
 fundamental conditions of our existence than are 
 hearing, vision, taste, or smell. For this reason, 
 a satisfactory understanding of the " sense of 
 pain " can come only from an adequate array of 
 concrete instances of painfulness, — both those in- 
 stances where pain seems to be a simple sensa- 
 tion, and those in which it involves our emotions 
 and higher thought processes. 
 
 Surface Pain 
 
 There is, to begin with, a very large and 
 familiar list of pains which result from injury at 
 or near the surface of the body. Whether we 
 step barefooted on a tack, or pick up the wrong 
 end of a hot poker, or tear a finger-nail at the 
 quick, or offer a sensitive tooth to the tender 
 mercies of an aggressive dentist, we are certain to 
 be rewarded in any of these cases by a very defi- 
 nite kind of sensation quality. It appears to us 
 as something very bright and sharp-edged; it is 
 so insistent that it forces us to pay attention, and 
 so disagreeable that our natural impulse is to make 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 3 
 
 very definite and energetic movements of with- 
 drawal. 
 
 Taken as a class, these pains are distinguished 
 from all others by their extreme pointedness and 
 by their definiteness in consciousness. [They give 
 us exact information to the effect that, as far as 
 we are personally concerned, something is radi- 
 cally wrong in the world outside, — something 
 w r hich we can hardly afford to leave out of account. 
 As if to safeguard their function of imminent 
 warning, they ordinarily refuse to disappear com- 
 pletely from consciousness until the source of dis- 
 turbance has been removed. In this respect they 
 differ notably from all other forms of sense ex- 
 perience. For example, few sensations of smell 
 can last continuously for more than two minutes; 
 even the strong odor of asafetida is exhausted 
 in one and a half minutes, and the strongest cheese 
 smells are likely to become odorless after eight 
 minutes. The sense of touch is so easy to get 
 accustomed to that the absent-minded person not 
 infrequently finds himself looking all over the 
 house for the spectacles on his nose or even for 
 the hat on his head. 
 
 But the acute sense of pain described above is 
 
4 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 not easily cheated out of its hold on our attention. 
 The dentist's buzzer is more and more carefully 
 scrutinized after each new insertion into the open 
 tooth, and the throbbing of the injured finger be- 
 comes more and more unendurable until healing 
 actually begins to set in. 
 
 Bodily Distress 
 
 Quite different in many respects from the pains 
 announcing harmful contact with the outer world 
 are those which serve to indicate that the inner 
 working of the body is not proceeding success- 
 fully. To appreciate this difference one has only 
 to contrast a splitting headache with a pricked 
 finger, a cramp in the stomach with a scalded foot, 
 or a twinge from about the region of the heart 
 with the smarting from a razor cut on the face. 
 
 One especially curious fact about this second 
 class of pains is that they originate in organs 
 which can scarcely be made to give pain as the 
 result of injury inflicted by ordinary external 
 means. It is always necessary that the organ be 
 thwarted in its normal function by some condition 
 developed from within the body, such as inflam- 
 mation, disease, new; growths, etc. Surgeons 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 5 
 
 have repeatedly assured themselves that no 
 amount of mechanical insult to the stomach or in- 
 testine, after the peritoneum has been opened, will 
 provoke any outcry from the patient. From the 
 day when Xenophon in the " Anabasis " wrote of 
 Nakarchos, the Arcadian, " wounded in the ab- 
 domen in battle, and coming in flight, holding his 
 entrails in his hands," evidence has continued to 
 accumulate to the effect that the intestine can be 
 cut, pinched, rubbed with gauze, seized with a 
 clamp, or pricked with a needle, — all without the 
 faintest indication of pain. The writer has re- 
 cently learned from an ambulance driver in the 
 French hospital service in the present European 
 war of a case in which a French sergeant, shot 
 through the chest to the right of the heart, and 
 exit near the spine, said that he felt merely a sort 
 of burning, and this in spite of the fact that he 
 spat blood for several days, and had many clots 
 removed. And yet nothing is more certain than 
 that an ulcer in the stomach produces spontaneous 
 pain as well as extreme tenderness to pressure. 
 And the lump-like pains that go with a colicky 
 digestion are the despair of the sufferer as well 
 as a joy to the agent for dyspepsia tablets. 
 
6 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 The facts just cited in regard to the stomach 
 and intestine are paralleled in other inner organs. 
 [The brain surface has of late been freely explored 
 with surgical instruments and with weak electrical 
 stimuli, always without pain being reported by the 
 subject under operation. Nevertheless the brain 
 seems to be extremely sensitive to its own changes 
 in volume, or to any abnormal internal conditions, 
 such as cerebral abscesses, which make for an in- 
 crease in intracranial pressure. An equally good 
 illustration is to be found in the case of the blood 
 vessels. They seem to be immune from pain pro- 
 duced by any ordinary external means, but when 
 their normal function of distributing the blood is 
 seriously thwarted, they give rise to excruciating 
 pain. One experimenter, working with dogs, 
 found that a binding of the vessels caused extreme 
 discomfort; and it is without question that the 
 suffocating contractions in angina pectoris a<re to 
 be reckoned among the severest pains. 
 
 From the foregoing, it is clearly evident that 
 the ordinary method of arousing inner pains is 
 radically different from that of stimulating sur- 
 face pains. The more outward lying parts of the 
 body, such as the skin, muscles, tendons and joints, 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 7 
 
 which afford us a means of intelligent understand- 
 ing of the outer environment, are necessarily more 
 sensitive to that environment. 
 
 In respect to quality of sensation the inner 
 pains are again strikingly different from the outer. 
 Without exception, they are heavier, duller, and 
 give us a less exact clue as to the location of the 
 trouble. When one tries to describe them, he at 
 once finds himself very indefinite both in his choice 
 of adjectives and in selecting the exact spot from 
 which the pain seems to originate. Such expres- 
 sions as " a feeling that something is wrong in- 
 side " or " a feeling as if something were about to 
 give way " form a considerable part of our vo- 
 cabulary describing abdominal disorders. A 
 number of ignorant soldiers, when asked to point 
 to the part of the body most concerned with the 
 pangs of hunger, gave the most conflicting re- 
 sponses. Several pointed to the neck and upper 
 chest; only two indicated the stomach, and four 
 were unwilling to admit that it came from any 
 particular region. Indeed, so lacking in definite- 
 ness is this class of pains, that they as often as not 
 give a false account of themselves by affecting 
 other nervous connections. Thus some abdominal 
 
8 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 diseases cause a shoulder pain, and angina pectoris 
 may very definitely affect the arm or neck. In 
 short, the well defined areas of the outer surface 
 of the body, when indirectly aroused by pain from 
 within the body, succeed in impressing their own 
 local character at the expense of the vaguer inner 
 disturbance by which they are aroused. 
 
 The same lack of definiteness is seen in the way 
 we react to inner discomfort. Whereas the in- 
 jured hand is promptly and effectively removed 
 from the occasion of injury, the aching stomach 
 succeeds in producing for the most part only help- 
 less writhing and groaning. To be sure we do 
 learn a few simple devices for keeping the pain 
 as endurable as possible. We may find that ly- 
 ing on the stomach gives a position of maximum 
 relief, or in the case of headache, we may discover 
 that bending the head backward or bathing it in 
 cold water is efficacious, but for the most part our 
 behavior resembles that of an organism very 
 poorly equipped in resources for self-protection. 
 We seem to descend a long step in the scale of in- 
 telligence every time we make the transition from 
 the exactly coordinated impulses by which the skin 
 defends itself, to the blind protests of diseased 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 9 
 
 inner organs. For this reason we are justified in 
 using the term " distress " to characterize this 
 class of pains as distinct from the exact pains of 
 the first class, which we may hereafter refer to as 
 " pain." 
 
 Unpleasantness 
 
 A person of robust health may go practically 
 from one day's end to another without any thought 
 of what is taking place within his body; and mod- 
 ern conveniences and safety first philosophy are 
 gradually eliminating the occasion for scratches, 
 cuts, and burns, so that it might be possible to look 
 forward in time to an era of painless life, if it 
 were not for the existence of a third type of pain- 
 ful situation, which comprises decidedly the major 
 fraction of the ills to which flesh is heir, — the un- 
 pleasant. 
 
 By contrast with surface pain, unpleasantness is 
 even more than bodily distress lacking in any clear 
 and direct outline which makes it possible to set 
 it apart and think of it separately from the total 
 situation in which it occurs. It is this marked lack 
 of clearness which has convinced the greater num- 
 ber of psychologists that unpleasantness and pleas- 
 
io PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 antness are unique mental experiences to be con- 
 sidered apart from any other kind of mental con- 
 tent " Unpleasantness is a feeling," they say, 
 " pain a sensation." [There is weighty authority 
 both for and against this statement, and the con- 
 troversy can hardly be said to be completely 
 closed. It matters not for our present purpose 
 whether the statement be confirmed or denied. 
 What all are agreed on is that the resemblances 
 of pain and unpleasantness are as significant as 
 their differences, and that the ultimate explanation 
 of one is probably also the explanation of the 
 other; hence the inadequacy of any account of one 
 that omits parallel reference to the other. 
 
 Owing to the very fact of its indistinctness, un- 
 pleasantness seems to take on the special character 
 of everything with which it is associated. Xhe 
 taste of quinine is like the discomfort at having 
 made a social blunder, in that both are unpleasant, 
 but the unpleasantness has so lost its identity that 
 it is hard to disentangle it from the taste sensation 
 in the one case and from the complicated social 
 emotions in the other. The result is that the 
 number of unpleasantnesses is as great as the num- 
 ber of possible variations in our mental life. We 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE it 
 
 probably come nearest to recognizing unpleasant- 
 ness as such, when something pleasant is allowed 
 to become unpleasant by being continued too long 
 or by being made too intense. If the pleasing 
 warmth of a bath is gradually transformed to an 
 excessive heat, it is almost possible to catch the 
 unpleasantness coming in and taking the place of 
 the pleasantness. To be sure it is like trying to 
 turn up the gas quickly enough to see how the 
 darkness looks, but one at least gets the hint of 
 something almost at hand, even though he can't 
 quite imprison it and look it in the face. Again, 
 when any commonplace pleasure, too long drawn 
 out, gradually produces boredom, one is fairly 
 conscious that his ennui has supervened on a situa- 
 tion otherwise unchanged, and he at least infers 
 the separateness of his unpleasant feeling. We 
 are also fairly able to form an indirect notion of 
 what the disagreeable qualities of simple sensa- 
 tions are in themselves. When one smells a foul 
 odor, or touches something clammy, or listens to 
 a high grating noise, he experiences unpleasant- 
 ness in a fairly accessible form. A little harder 
 to disentangle is the same effect when we look at 
 a combination of colors that " swear at each 
 
12 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 other," or hear an orchestra playing badly out of 
 tune. But the unpleasantness of being unable to 
 collect one's thoughts, or discovering that a trusted 
 friend has proved disloyal, is almost inextricably 
 woven in with the complex situation of which it is 
 a part. 
 
 Long education in the great variety of unpleas- 
 ant mental states has endowed man with a count- 
 less number of different gestures and facial ex- 
 pressions indicating dislike and avoidance, but 
 these specially learned reactions ought not to blind 
 us to the essential fact that unpleasantness as such 
 is an obscure and unintelligent state of mind. 
 While it lasts, it only serves to lessen activity and 
 to turn us in on ourselves. A primitive organism 
 submitted for a time to disagreeable treatment, 
 tends more and more to shrink within itself; if 
 badly frightened, it may even curl up and " feign 
 death." A human being, if his consciousness is 
 sufficiently taken up with the same kind of feeling, 
 behaves in a very similar manner. Sickening 
 dread and paralyzing fear are synonymous with 
 an almost complete cessation of effective bodily 
 response. Shame, sorrow, and all the rest of the 
 emotions of marked unpleasant tone, present some- 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 13 
 
 what the same picture of a person given over 
 temporarily to the organic and vegetative side of 
 his life, and distinguished for a cessation of any- 
 thing like intelligent behavior. This is best seen 
 in the case of those types of insanity in which 
 melancholic and dreadful thoughts predominate. 
 These unfortunate persons seem deprived of every 
 resource except that of huddling up in as small a 
 heap as possible. If a violently disagreeable sen- 
 sation is one for which a person has not already 
 formed effective habits, the result is likely to be 
 a complete giving up of the ghost, and an other- 
 wise intelligent person may become reduced to a 
 mere quivering lump of unhappiness. It is re- 
 ported that recently on one of the trans-Atlantic 
 passenger liners, when a submarine was spied ap- 
 proaching for a torpedo attack, some of the sea- 
 sick passengers refused to have any interest in the 
 threatened danger, and would not take the most 
 elementary measures of precaution. It is not by 
 accident that pessimism is associated with ineffi- 
 ciency. A life given over permanently to unpleas- 
 antness is a life doomed to a shut-in existence and 
 lowered vitality. The current saying that the 
 world does not need knockers but boosters, is a 
 
i 4 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 popular expression of the fundamental fact that 
 unpleasantness, even more than bodily distress, is 
 a state of mental emptiness. 
 
 What has just been said does not stand in con- 
 tradiction to the well-known fact that the after- 
 effects of unpleasant experiences are of far-reach- 
 ing consequence in modifying our behavior. If 
 the burnt child did not dread the fire, and the 
 young chick which had pecked a bad-tasting cat- 
 erpillar did not avoid a repetition of the occur- 
 rence, there would be no possibility of progress 
 toward the selection of the agreeable. But the 
 learning that comes as an intelligent working-over 
 of unpleasant experiences does not gainsay the 
 blindness of the unpleasant reaction itself. 
 
 Summary 
 
 Our review of painfulness has brought to at- 
 tention three fairly distinct types. The first type, 
 surface pain, is distinguished by sharp clearness, 
 exactness of location, and well-coordinated reac- 
 tion. The second type, bodily distress, is char- 
 acterized by obscure dullness, difficulty of exact 
 location, and a quite general and somewhat aim- 
 less bodily reaction. The third type, unpleasant- 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 15 
 
 ness, is marked by such obscurity that it is com- 
 monly spoken of as feeling; it has no particular 
 location, but seems to pervade the whole body; 
 and its corresponding bodily reaction, with the ex- 
 ception of a few special habits learned or instinc- 
 tively provided, is one marked by an indefinite 
 shrinking, involving pretty much the whole body. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 .Varieties oe Pleasure 
 
 Surface Pleasure, or Tickling 
 
 Every healthy child likes to be tickled. A 
 friendly attack with a straw or feather on the 
 soles of the feet, or a brisk use of the fingers up 
 and down the ribs or under the armpits ordinarily 
 provokes screams of laughter in any youngster. 
 When in the midst of his paroxysms he may cry 
 out to his assailant to stop tickling, but when he has 
 been released, he will usually beg to have the fun 
 begin again. The immediate pleasurableness of 
 this kind of diversion may be judged by the fact 
 that any pronounced tickle zone is often referred 
 to by young children as the " funny place." In 
 general it can be said that this pleasure sensation, 
 which differs so strikingly from the surface pain 
 described in the first chapter, is provoked by 
 stimuli too weak to do any real harm, but just 
 strong enough to faintly suggest injury without 
 
 16 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 17 
 
 actually bringing it about. Whereas pain results 
 when the skin is injured or pricked, pleasure re- 
 sults when it is faintly threatened but left intact. 
 As soon as the contact with the skin becomes so 
 broad or solid as to be recognized with certainty, 
 one no longer feels any tickling or tendency to 
 laugh, for the threat no longer exists. One has 
 instead the definite and familiar feeling of a harm- 
 less object. For this reason we cannot easily 
 tickle ourselves with our own hands; their touch 
 is too well-known to us; we may succeed with a 
 feather or with something only weakly recogniz- 
 able, but the same feather is far more effective if 
 manipulated by the hand of another person. 
 
 It is for this reason also that the change to a 
 mood of sullenness in a person being tickled will 
 suddenly render him immune from the effects of 
 what, a moment ago, convulsed him with laugh- 
 ter. Just as an angry person refuses to let him- 
 self be terrified by danger threatened by one who 
 has offended him, so he fails to feel any ticklish- 
 ness in the playful threatening of his skin by one 
 whom he dislikes. The skin of a person made 
 unafraid through hostile emotion seems to acquire 
 a certain invulnerability which takes account only 
 
1 8 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 of pressure contacts. It is little concerned with 
 either actual or possible injuries. 
 
 Once again, the pleasure sensation which, if 
 made too familiar, so readily goes over into in- 
 different pressure, may just as easily be changed 
 into a kind of painfulness if made completely un- 
 familiar, or if brought about under conditions 
 where self-defense is made impossible. Thus if 
 a ticklish youngster is taken completely unawares 
 by a string slyly drawn across the back of his neck, 
 or if his dangling bare foot unexpectedly finds its 
 way into contact with the gently quivering point 
 of a wisp of straw, his withdrawal is made with 
 almost the same promptness as if he had been 
 pricked with a pin. And the light crawling of a 
 beetle which has found its way underneath his 
 shirt, may provoke the laughter of bystanders, but 
 their amusement is far from meeting with a sym- 
 pathetic response in him, unhappily occupied as 
 he is. We see then that a very slight change of 
 conditions one way or the other may convert the 
 " funny feeling " of tickling into mere touch or 
 into unpleasantness. Indeed there are some parts 
 of the body where the best that tickling can do is 
 to cause pressure; others where it can't be made 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 19 
 
 other than disagreeable. For most people the 
 extreme tips of the fingers are free from ticklish- 
 ness. Xhey are so educated in the interpretation 
 of contacts that it is impossible to mystify them. 
 The minutest variation in the form of anything 
 touched has a very definite meaning for them; 
 hence it is impossible to create for them a situation 
 full of vague possibilities. For most people, 
 again, the inside of the ear and of the nostrils 
 gives only disagreeableness in response to tickling. 
 It is almost as it were against the rules of the game 
 to attack via the nose and ear. At any rate the 
 threat to injure inner passages of the body hardly 
 admits of playful interpretation. Generally 
 speaking, however, the most vulnerable parts of 
 the body are the most ticklish. Hall and Allin, 
 on the basis of a considerable amount of data, 
 have concluded that the order of ticklishness for 
 the various parts of the body is as follows : soles 
 of the feet, under the arms, neck and throat, 
 ribs, back, under the chin, stomach, knees, etc. 
 The least ticklish parts were the shoulder-blades, 
 shoulders, calves and thighs of the leg. It 
 appears at once that the first list contains those 
 parts which exhibit the greatest vulnerability and 
 
20 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 suggestiveness of danger, whereas the parts named 
 in the second list are marked by a certain ox-like 
 invulnerability and obtuseness. 
 
 The ticklishness of individuals shows the same 
 relation to sensitiveness and presumably to vulner- 
 ability. This sensitiveness may be raised to such 
 a pitch in high strung children that an explosion of 
 laughter will result from the slightest provocation. 
 Hall and Allin mention cases of children so ticklish 
 that they scream with laughter if merely touched; 
 one child writhes and screams if a friend makes a 
 buzzing sound; another feels ticklish and must 
 giggle in going down an elevator ; and still a third 
 needs only to be pointed at to feel tickled. 
 
 As often as not, tickle is referred to as a weak 
 sensation of pressure. The " funny feeling " 
 itself, however, almost beggars description. [The 
 most characteristic feature, perhaps, is the feeling 
 of strain giving way to a burst of excess energy. 
 If the strain is sufficiently great and the explosion 
 correspondingly tremendous, we speak of it as 
 being " killingly " funny. Although much more 
 difficult to place than surface pain, the funniness 
 does seem to begin either in the part tickled, or in 
 some general region such as the stomach, throat 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 21 
 
 or face, and then to diffuse itself rapidly over the 
 entire body. 
 
 It was noted in the preceding chapter that the 
 bodily reaction to surface pain was a very exact 
 and calculable affair. Sticking one thousand boys 
 with a pin would lead to the discovery of very few 
 variations in the boyish mode of response to pin- 
 sticking. With tickling the case is wholly other- 
 wise. From the youthful stoic whom nothing can 
 induce to smile, to the little hysteric who howls in 
 an agony of glee at the mere crooking of a finger, 
 the number of individual variations is legion. 
 More often than not, the first indications are given 
 by a brightness or twinkling of the eye; but in 
 many cases a sudden dimpling of the cheeks or 
 slight twitching of the corners of the mouth may 
 be the first visible sign that the tickling has been 
 accepted as funny. Even before the snorts of 
 laughter have set in, some form of defensive 
 movement has usually been brought about. 
 Those movements are described by Sully as 
 follows: " retraction of the foot and leg when the 
 sole is tickled; the bending of the head to the 
 shoulder when the neck is tickled; the rendering 
 of the body concave on the side which is attacked; 
 
22 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 the thrusting away of the hand of the tickler; 
 wriggling and fencing with the arms when a child 
 is tickled lying on his back." While these move- 
 ments are never exactly reproduced in any two 
 individuals, it is in the final expression of laughter 
 that the greatest variation is to be found. One 
 finds facial distortion in infinite variety, vocal out- 
 bursts that run all the way from soft gurgling to 
 cackling peals, and individual rhythms varying 
 from a quite gradual to an instantaneous onset. 
 Evidently the tickling reaction has not yet become 
 a stereotyped part of the behavior of the race. 
 By contrast with pain, it seems decidedly an unfixed 
 and individual feature of human behavior equip- 
 ment. 
 
 Gratification, or Pleasure of the Inner Organs 
 
 No one organ in our bodies carries with it as 
 much possibility of pleasure as of pain, but there 
 is unmistakable evidence that every organ, when 
 adequately functioning, contributes its share to the 
 total background of pleasure, which inspires the 
 healthy man to remark, " It seems good to be 
 alive." 
 
 It is naturally to be expected that organic satis- 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 23 
 
 faction will be the keener in proportion as the 
 organ's function is of supreme importance for the 
 life of the individual and of the race. When the 
 painful contractions of an empty stomach are 
 replaced by the mild tension resulting from a com- 
 fortably large meal, this restoration of an indis- 
 pensable condition of life is heralded by one of the 
 most all-pervading pleasures that the vegetative 
 side of our life knows, — the pleasure of satiety. 
 It is almost as though the man's soul had tempor- 
 arily taken up its abode in his belly, and w r ere 
 announcing from there its satisfaction at the way 
 things were proceeding. Civilized man, with an 
 abundance of food, has in a measure developed a 
 fine scorn for one who eats with conviction; but 
 among savages and young children, with whom 
 the food question is perpetually at hand, one often 
 finds that the recognized sign of pleasure is some 
 expression which indicates the taking-in of food. 
 Travelers have reported that the negroes on the 
 Upper Nile display their admiration for beads by 
 rubbing their bellies, and that Greenlanders, when 
 they wish to show their pleasure, suck down air 
 as if swallowing food. 
 
 As one could live even less without water than 
 
24 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 without food, the grateful effect of quenching 
 thirst is correspondingly more acute, and the 
 occasions are likewise much more infrequent when 
 the need is urgently felt. The satisfaction seems 
 to be most definitely localized about the soft 
 palate; indeed one may for a time cheat himself 
 by merely moistening his parched throat, but the 
 complete act of swallowing is necessary to get the 
 full course of satisfaction which normally trails 
 after the liquid. One would have to imagine him- 
 self traveling by caravan or in company with the 
 Ancient Mariner to picture even faintly the 
 hilarious ecstasy which probably accompanies the 
 slaking of real thirst. The pathological craving 
 of the dipsomaniac, although a morbid state, offers 
 the most frequently observed illustration of the 
 intensity to which the thirst impulse and the corre- 
 sponding pleasure of its satisfaction may con-> 
 ceivably attain. Professor James cites the follow- 
 ing case from Cincinnati, Ohio: " 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, 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 25 
 
 placed one hand upon the block, aad with an axe 
 in the other, struck it off with a single blow. 
 With the stump raised and streamings he ran into 
 the house and cried, ' Get some rum ! My hand 
 is off ! ' In the confusion and bustle of the occa- 
 sion, 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! ' " 
 
 The following statement from a French sol- 
 dier * in the present war parallels in normal life 
 the above pathological case. It is quoted from an 
 account of trench life given by a- wounded private : 
 11 In the north, it is often hard to get water. I 
 have seen soldiers go without water for 48 hours. 
 Some were wounded, and very thirsty. They 
 tried to drink the filthy water in the trenches. An 
 officer stood over them. i If you drink that water 
 I'll shoot you dead!' * Shoot me if you like, 
 officer,' said the soldier, 4 but I must drink.' And 
 he did. 
 
 The pleasure derived from the free circulation 
 of the blood and from breathing without difficulty 
 
 1 From unpublished notes of O. H. Moore on " Relief Work in 
 France." 
 
26 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 is something to which we get so adapted that it 
 requires some special circumstance to bring it to 
 our attention. To be sure there is a certain irre- 
 ducible minimum of exhilaration that the man of 
 brisk circulation and sound lungs carries about 
 with him constantly, but for the most the fre- 
 quently recurring functions rarely intrude them- 
 selves in consciousness. It is only after the 
 oppression of submitting to the stuffiness of a 
 badly ventilated room that we keenly appreciate 
 the pleasure of a deep draught of fresh air; or 
 when catching our " second wind " after a suffo- 
 cation that we consciously realize the joy of 
 breathing as far down as the waist-line. In these 
 cases the air is like wine, and the pleasure of a 
 breath as poignant as that of drinking when 
 thirsty. It should be noted, however, that in the 
 case of the extremely vital functions, any really 
 considerable thwarting necessarily brings us so 
 near to utter collapse that much time is necessary 
 to restore anything like normal functioning; and 
 hence the gratification, which would ordinarily 
 mark our return to equilibrium, is entirely 
 obscured by the after-effects of shock. For 
 example the choking gasps of a person who has 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 27 
 
 almost been drowned fail to offset the widespread 
 discomfort that has been stirred up within. 
 
 The pleasures so far considered have centered 
 about the organic functions of especial importance 
 in maintaining the life of an individual. t There 
 remains one function, the appropriate perform- 
 ance of which has little importance in furthering 
 the individual's life, but which is as indispensable 
 for the race as breathing is for the individual. It 
 is provided accordingly that reproduction should 
 be attended by a pleasurability corresponding to 
 its vast importance to the race. Continuous 
 existence of the race can be assured only by a 
 superabundance of lustfulness in the individual. 
 Unique in its importance, sexual gratification is 
 also unique in its conscious quality. Though less 
 intense than the pleasure derived from satisfying 
 acute hunger or thirst, it is, however, much more 
 general in its bodily reverberations. No dramas 
 have ever been written about hunger or thirst. 
 Occasionally the bibulousness of a Falstaff or the 
 sweet tooth of a " Chocolate Soldier " add to the 
 gayety of the nations; but such literary effect is 
 usually limited to the comic, and offers not a frac- 
 tion of the intricacy to which the sex motive so 
 
28 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 readily lends itself. The latter is so inexhaustibly 
 fertile in new and interesting possibilities that it 
 will probably continue to inspire the " best 
 sellers " as long as the novel is a popular form 
 of pastime. Hence it is not possible to limit 
 sexual gratification strictly to a single local refer- 
 ence; it has a widespreadness of bodily content 
 which no other pleasure can begin to equal. All 
 that the poets have written of love bears out the 
 fact that every sensitive part of the body plays 
 a potent part in this connection. For lovers, the 
 merest touch of the hand, the meeting of the lips, 
 or the clasping embrace, — all are forms of caress 
 which offer intense physical satisfaction. There 
 is certainly no little plausibility in Freud's con- 
 jecture that the whole body was originally a more 
 or less undifferentiated seat of sexual desire, and 
 that only by degrees of development have we 
 reached the stage of highly specialized reference. 
 
 Pleasantness 
 
 A life limited to tickling and bodily gratification 
 would be indeed poor in pleasure. There are few 
 people who would not prefer the lot of Socrates 
 dissatisfied to that of the pig content, even if the 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 29 
 
 choice were made on purely epicurean grounds; 
 for one of the outstanding facts about pleasure is 
 that innumerable varieties of pleasantness, taken 
 together, completely outweigh the grosser and 
 individually more intense gratifications. 
 
 What has already been said of unpleasantness 
 holds good with appropriate modifications for 
 pleasantness. It is so lacking in definiteness that 
 it seems to take on the character of whatever it 
 happens to be associated with. One must have 
 a certain introspective skill in order to separate 
 the pleasantness from the sweet taste, from the 
 sight of the blue horizon, or from the smell of 
 the rose. We meet with most success if we take, 
 to begin with, something disagreeable and weaken 
 it gradually until it first becomes indifferent, then 
 mildly pleasant. For example, the taste of grape- 
 fruit, by contrast with stronger bitter tastes, is for 
 most people quite agreeable; a very faint whiff 
 of rank smell adds to the palatal appeal of certain 
 cheeses; musk and civet are sickening until dif- 
 fusion renders them pleasant; and distance lends 
 enchantment to even the harsh tones of the 
 trumpet. In all of these cases, a sensation dis- 
 agreeable at normal intensity becomes pleasing as 
 
3 o PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 it grows weaker; and we have a much better 
 opportunity to catch pleasantness at work than 
 when we apply ourselves to tastes, smells, and 
 sounds of a sort that could hardly be unpleasant 
 under any circumstances. 
 
 But such occasions are decidedly the exception. 
 Every possible variation in our mental life seems 
 to bring with it a kind of pleasure peculiar to it. 
 Whether one converses with friends, listens to a 
 concert, or realizes his ambitions, the pleasantness 
 in each case is so intimately a part of the particu- 
 lar situation that it is impossible to disentangle it 
 and to regard it as something sui generis. Like 
 the clay which readily assumes any desired form 
 in the hands of a modeler, pleasantness is all things 
 to all states of mind; it is so much undifferentiated 
 stuff, having in its own right only the fundamental 
 characteristic of being agreeable and associating 
 itself in such a variety of contexts that we speak 
 equally often of a pleasant sight, a pleasant 
 thought, or a pleasant mood. 
 
 The numerous bodily attitudes expressive of 
 pleasantness are to be understood as the result of 
 special adaptations of an original vague tendency 
 to expand and approach. In an organism not 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 31 
 
 developed in intelligence we may imagine that 
 pleasantness would express itself simply as a gen- 
 eral unfolding and drawing alongside the pleasing 
 object. In ourselves, the beaming smile, the open 
 hands, and the readiness to come forward are the 
 special developments of this general bodily recep- 
 tivity. But though this forward-coming attitude 
 of taking in as much as possible of the agreeable, 
 makes it easier for us to know most about what 
 we like best, it remains true that the pleasantness 
 itself, like unpleasantness, is vague and obscure. 
 When given over to it with complete abandon, our 
 speech becomes reduced to mere ejaculation and 
 our thought correspondingly limited. It is partly 
 for this reason that one who thoroughly enjoys art 
 or music is in a measure handicapped in his criti- 
 cism by his very capacity for enjoyment. The 
 story is told of a celebrated German pianist, that 
 persistent effort to obtain his views on Beethoven 
 and Wagner elicited only two brief expressions: 
 " Beethoven ist gut; Wagner ist nicht gut." 
 
 Summary 
 
 Xo summarize briefly what has been said 
 regarding the three chief types of pleasure : 
 
32 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 Tickling, produced by stimulating the surface 
 of the body, calls forth a fairly definite pleasure 
 sensation and a laughter reaction. It varies ex- 
 tremely from individual to individual. 
 
 Gratification, or the pleasure derived from 
 satisfying the needs of inner organs, is distinctly 
 experienced for each of the vital needs. The 
 pleasure in each case seems to reside most particu- 
 larly in the general region of the organ concerned, 
 but it is by no means possible to give it an exact 
 location. 
 
 Pleasantness is least of all capable of exact 
 location or definition. The characteristic reaction 
 is an attitude of the whole body which, in some 
 fashion, goes out to meet the agreeable object and 
 to further relations with it. It never appears 
 separately, but always as the accompaniment of 
 some other state, such as sensation, emotion, 
 memory, or thought. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 Probable Origin and Development 
 of Pain and Pleasure 
 
 Do animals feel pain and pleasure ? For the man 
 on the street who beats his horse in order to drive 
 him faster, it is almost axiomatic that the horse 
 feels pain. The organization of a " Society for 
 the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals," and the 
 widespread sentiment against vivisection could 
 hardly have come about without an intuitive 
 disposition to answer this question in the affirma- 
 tive. And as for pleasure, there is hardly a dog 
 fancier in the world who does not interpret the 
 dog's wagging of his tail as in some sense the 
 equivalent of the human smile, and there is 
 certainly no one on speaking terms with cats who 
 does not understand a particularly sonorous pur- 
 ring to mean that kitty is in a decidedly optimistic 
 frame of mind. But when one attempts to draw 
 the line and decide the extent to which pain is felt 
 
 33 
 
34 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 throughout the animal kingdom, the question at 
 once becomes peculiarly difficult. If we take as 
 examples animals that are very low in the evolu- 
 tionary scale, it seems most questionable to attrib- 
 ute cruelty to acts which, if applied to ourselves, 
 would be deemed brutal. [The fisherman, for all 
 the sharpness of his hook, would resent any atten- 
 tion from the " Society for the Prevention of 
 Cruelty to Animals." Animal psychologists have 
 often noted how philosophically the earth worm 
 submits to having his body cut in two. Instead of 
 giving outward indication that he objects seriously 
 to such gross bodily mutilation, he proceeds along 
 in his usual leisurely manner, scorning the things 
 of the flesh. Examples of a similar kind might be 
 multiplied indefinitely. 
 
 All speculation as to the state of mind of any 
 animal is based on indirect evidence. Such evi- 
 dence as is available suggests very strongly that 
 there have been three fairly distinct stages in the 
 evolutionary history of pleasure-pain in animals. 
 The first stage — that of the lowest organisms — 
 was probably one in which there was only a crude 
 experience of well-being, or of malaise, — the raw 
 stuff of pleasantness and unpleasantness. 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 35 
 
 The pain-pleasure reactions of the animal in 
 this stage would be limited to total bodily move- 
 ments of retreat or approach. The second stage, 
 that of animals a little higher up, would include, 
 in addition to the primitive pleasantness-un- 
 pleasantness, the more specialized experiences of 
 gratification and distress. The highest stage, that 
 of animals relatively near the top of the scale, 
 would include, in addition to the preceding states, 
 the very special sensations of pain and of tickling. 
 
 As an example of the first stage we may examine 
 the behavior of an amoeba. This simplest of all 
 animals is lacking in anything which remotely 
 resembles a nervous system. Its whole body, in 
 fact, consists of a single cell, and its behavior is 
 limited to three reactions. The negative reaction 
 is brought about whenever the amoeba collides 
 with a solid obstacle, or moves into an overheated 
 region or when a ray of light falls on one side or 
 an electric current is passed through the water. 
 What the amoeba does in such cases is to check 
 any movement in the direction of the unfavorable 
 stimulus, and to withdraw or change direction by 
 contracting pretty much its whole body. It is the 
 same sort of thing that we do when we find our- 
 
3* 
 
 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 selves in an unpleasant situation ; and if we venture 
 to credit the amoeba with a state of mind, its 
 attitude is probably a vague " I don't like it." 
 
 ..©=*^ 
 
 Fig. i. — Amoeba chasing and attempting to ingest an euglena. (After 
 , Jennings. From Washburn's " The Animal Mind," Courtesy the 
 Macmillan Co.) 
 
 And just as dislike in ourselves involves our whole 
 body, we must suppose that the vague discomfort 
 of the amoeba could not be referred to any exact 
 spot. Its malaise probably pervades the whole 
 of its small structure. 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 37 
 
 The positive reaction is given whenever the 
 amoeba comes into gentle contact with a solid 
 surface or with food. Under either of these 
 circumstances it continues to come nearer and to 
 further its contact. The solid object is used as a 
 surface on which to creep, and the food will call 
 forth the third type of reaction, that of food- 
 
 Fig. 2. — Positive reaction of Paramecium to pleasant contact. (After 
 Jennings. From Washburn's " The Animal Mind," Courtesy the 
 Macmillan Co.) 
 
 taking. Be it said to the credit of the amoeba, its 
 habits in regard to meals are marked by the 
 utmost simplicity and informality. The process 
 consists in simply opening up the whole body and 
 gradually surrounding the food particle entire. 
 The expansiveness of both the positive and the 
 food-taking reaction correspond to the general 
 motor effects of pleasantness in ourselves. It has 
 
3 8 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 already been noted that when we are pleased every 
 gesture and expression indicates an openness and 
 accessibility which is just opposite of the shrinking 
 withdrawal produced by unpleasantness; and on 
 the basis of the same kind of reaction in the 
 amoeba one is tempted to ascribe to it the capacity 
 for a vague feeling of well-being, which can not 
 be distinctly referred to any one part of the body, 
 although it may result from contact at one or the 
 other side of the body. 
 
 Like the amoeba the other simple organisms 
 have their vague but effective likes and dislikes. 
 The human pleasure seeker who goes to the 
 northern summer colony and the southern winter 
 resort, hoping to bask in a moderate temperature 
 the year round is only doing on a grand scale what 
 the paramoecium — another one-celled organism 
 — does on a small scale. Holmes * found that 
 " if paramoecia are placed in a trough, one end of 
 which is heated to 35 ° C, while the other is 
 placed upon ice, they will form a band near the 
 middle where the temperature ranges from 24 
 to 28 C." Marked preferences and dislikes are 
 
 1 S. J. Holmes, "The Evolution of Animal Intelligence," 
 New York, 1916, p. 58. 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 39 
 
 likewise expressed in regard to the other elemen- 
 tary influences which so readily affect us favorably 
 or unfavorably, such as the intensity of light, the 
 kind of chemical stimulation, or the pressure 
 against solid support. Vague and diffuse as we 
 must suppose these feelings to be in the lowest 
 animals, as indeed they are in ourselves, they may 
 
 
 d c 
 
 
 
 
 ■ 
 
 l 
 
 ? d e 
 
 b 
 
 / 
 
 Fig. 3. — Reactions of paramoecia to heat and cold. One end of the 
 slide is heated to 35 ° C. while the other end is kept on ice. The 
 Paramoecia gather in an intermediate zone d c. (From Holmes' 
 " Evolution of Animal Intelligence," Courtesy Henry Holt & Co.) 
 
 call forth the most pronounced attitudes of 
 11 willingness " or " unwillingness." Thus the 
 liking of earwigs for the snugness of crevices is so 
 strong that, " if given an opportunity to wedge 
 themselves under a glass plate (they) will remain 
 there, even when exposed to strong light," * and 
 this despite their usual dislike for light. 
 
 If we pass on to animals enough higher in the 
 
 1 Holmes, op. cit, p. 36. 
 
4 o PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 evolutionary scale to have the merest rudiments of 
 a nervous system, we seem to find the beginnings 
 of organic gratification and distress. The indi- 
 rect evidence that an animal experiences the pleas- 
 ure of gratification is that his behavior seems 
 impelled by specific cravings, such as those of 
 hunger or sex. When an animal deprived of 
 food for some time behaves in an unusual manner 
 in the presence of food, it is reasonable to suppose 
 that the satisfaction of its hunger yields it a special 
 form of pleasure; likewise when an animal over- 
 comes many obstacles and travels long distances in 
 order to join company with its mate, it is hard 
 not to believe that the sex impulse is in some 
 measure a source of peculiar gratification to that 
 animal. 
 
 Now actually an animal as primitive as the jelly- 
 fish shows what might almost be called a hunger 
 reaction. That is, when it has gone unfed for 
 some time it will leave its attachment to the 
 bottom of the water, swim to the top, then turn 
 over, and with its " umbrella " spread out, float 
 slowly to the bottom, thus disposing itself very 
 favorably for catching any food in its vicinity. 
 This procedure of swimming to the top and float- 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 41 
 
 ing to the bottom may be kept up for a whole day 
 by a " hungry " jelly-fish. A starfish, if kept for 
 several days without food, will instantly perceive 
 and crawl toward food the presence of which it 
 would not notice when in a different physiological 
 condition. Romanes found it possible to lead a 
 hungry starfish about the floor of its tank in any 
 direction simply by keeping a small piece of food 
 within smelling distance. Moreover, animals of 
 this type seem to make a distinction between 
 apparent and real satisfaction from food. Thus 
 the experiment has often been made of tricking 
 the animals into taking in paper soaked with the 
 juice of crab-meat. Hunger makes the animal a 
 ready victim to the ruse but the deception is soon 
 discovered and the spurious food rejected. This 
 unwillingness to accept as bread " that which 
 satisfieth not," bespeaks the capacity for a fairly 
 definite pronouncement on the part of the diges- 
 tive apparatus. 
 
 The sex impulse reaches extraordinary acute- 
 ness in insects. To cite a case from Washburn, 1 
 11 Forel says he had a female saturnalia moth 
 
 *M. F. Washburn, "The Animal Mind," New York, 1913, 
 p. 87. 
 
42 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 shut up in his city room, and that within a short 
 time a number of males came and beat against the 
 window. Riley hatched in Chicago seven moths 
 from the ailanthus silkworm, which were care- 
 fully confined. No other specimens were known 
 to exist within hundreds of miles. A virgin 
 female was put in a wicker cage on an ailanthus 
 tree, and a male, with a silk thread tied around 
 the abdomen for identification, was liberated a 
 mile and a half away. The next morning the two 
 were together." 
 
 The best illustration of bodily distress in the 
 lower organisms is to be found perhaps in the case 
 of the earthworm, an animal which, as was noted 
 a few pages back, appears to be immune from the 
 specific sensation of pain such as would be pro- 
 duced in us by lacerating the surface of the body. 
 But let it not be inferred from the lack of " sur- 
 face pain " that the earthworm is exempt from 
 all varieties of painfulness. Prolonged and 
 harmfully intense stimulation seem to call forth 
 from its simple nervous system reactions that bear 
 much resemblance to our writhing response to 
 great internal distress which we are helpless to 
 avoid or to relieve. Jennings has distinguished 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 43 
 
 six different degrees of excitement which can be 
 obtained by persistently " stirring up " an earth- 
 worm with an ever-increasing stimulus. His 
 description of the two last degrees of excitement 
 presents an unmistakable picture of bodily dis- 
 tress, as follows: 
 
 44 (e) A state of still greater excitement, after 
 long-continued and intense stimulation. Now the 
 worm responds to a stimulus at the anterior end, 
 that would in a resting worm cause only a com- 
 paratively slight reaction, by a rapid ' right-about- 
 face.' [The body is suddenly doubled at its 
 middle, so that the anterior and posterior halves 
 become parallel, with the two ends pointing in the 
 same direction, then the posterior half is quickly 
 whipped about, so that the whole worm is again 
 straight, but is facing the opposite direction from 
 that in which it was pointed before the reaction. 
 
 "(f) A state of still more intense excitement, 
 after repeated strong stimulation that is of such 
 a character as to actually injure the tissues. The 
 worm now responds ... by lifting the anterior 
 fourth of the body into a vertical position, and 
 waving it about in a frantic manner. This 
 behavior is usually alternated with the right-about- 
 
44 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 face reactions, and with persistent rapid crawling 
 backward and forward." 1 
 
 The behavior above described has so much in 
 common with our own reactions to violent bodily 
 distress that we must conclude that the earthworm, 
 for all his indifference to being cut in two, has a 
 fairly well developed organic sensitivity of some 
 kind. It will be remembered that the human 
 stomach, intestine, kidneys, etc., are absolutely 
 irresponsive to the surgeon's knife, but that when 
 disordered in function they may easily become 
 sources of excruciating agony. It would seem 
 that the earthworm's capacity to experience pain is 
 about on a par with that of our own vital organs. 
 This conjecture is further supported by the fact 
 that the special nervous system which supplies the 
 viscera — the so-called sympathetic nervous sys- 
 tem — is a much more primitive affair than the 
 nervous system proper, by means of which we see, 
 hear, feel surface pain, etc. The former is a dif- 
 fuse system of nerve fibers and ganglia not wholly 
 unlike the rudimentary nervous system of the 
 earthworm; it is more adapted for communicating 
 the vague aches of disordered organs than the 
 
 1 Quoted from Holmes, op. cit., p. 148. 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 45 
 
 exact pains from the surface of the body. [The 
 fact that the earthworm has this kind of nervous 
 system, and that its behavior gives indications of 
 distress, but not of pain, makes it a plausible con- 
 jecture that we have in it an example of the second 
 stage in the evolution of pain; namely, the stage 
 which implies a capacity for limited unpleasant- 
 ness and for organic distress. 
 
 It is impossible to say exactly at what point one 
 can first begin to trace evidences of the experience 
 of surface pain and of tickling, but two general 
 statements may be made with a fair show of 
 reason: 
 
 First, pain and pleasure do not appear as clear 
 cut and definite sensations except in animals with 
 11 central " nervous systems, i. e., with something 
 of a brain and spinal cord connection. 
 
 Second, pain as a sensation, has been much more 
 fully developed than has pleasure. It is a much 
 more constant sort of psychic fact throughout the 
 animal series than is tickling. In the struggle for 
 existence it was obviously much more important 
 for an animal to know what not to do in order to 
 avoid trouble than to know what to do in order 
 to afford itself pleasure. Consequently we find 
 
46 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 that all of the higher animals, i. e., those with 
 cerebro-spinal nervous systems, react in very much 
 the same manner to an injury to the skin, whereas 
 the reaction to tickling pleasure varies widely from 
 animal to animal and from individual to indi- 
 vidual. 
 
 The possession of a surface pain sensation 
 together with a central nervous system has given 
 the higher animals a double advantage in the 
 struggle for existence. Surface pain sensitivity 
 means that the animal will be aware of danger 
 before the wound has become vitally serious, and 
 the possession of a brain means that pain-causing 
 objects will soon be taken for what they are and 
 left scrupulously alone. A species thus equipped 
 with special pain receptors and with special 
 faculties for learning by experience may continue 
 to exist and prosper in a rigorous environment 
 even though the number of individuals be small. 
 The lower animals are obliged to make up in 
 fertility of offspring what they lack individually in 
 equipment for guarding against the painful. As 
 James * has expressed it, " those fishes which are 
 no sooner thrown back from the hook into the 
 
 1 James, op. cit, p. 99. 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 47 
 
 water than they automatically seize the hook 
 again, would soon expiate the degradation of their 
 intelligence by the extinction of their type, did not 
 their extraordinary fecundity atone for their 
 imprudence." It is still a moot question what 
 sort of nervous change takes place when the burnt 
 child learns to dread the fire, but it is evident that 
 brains and a specific pain sensation take their 
 places together as the peculiar birthright of those 
 beings whose individual welfare is relatively 
 precious. It is almost as if Nature — ■ to use the 
 term personally — had discovered, after many 
 biological experiments, that life could be admin- 
 istered more economically by having a few individ- 
 uals equipped with pain and brain than by a mere 
 prodigal output of painless and unteachable 
 creatures left to take their chances in a world full 
 of mischance. 
 
 Tickling, even in human beings, shows an 
 inconstancy and unsteadiness that stand in marked 
 contrast to the insistence and unvarying steadiness 
 of pain. As it is more vitally important to be able 
 to avoid the hurtful than to seek the agreeable, we 
 may well expect to find that tickling is a late 
 acquisition and not even yet possessed of the 
 
48 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 stability of a full-fledged sensation. There is, 
 however, considerable evidence that the animals 
 just below ourselves in the scale of intelligence are 
 capable of being made to " laugh " by means of 
 the sensory effect of tickling. Darwin speaks of 
 anthropoid apes giving out " a reiterated sound, 
 corresponding with our laughter, when tickled, 
 especially under the armpits." 
 
 Dogs derive endless pleasure from the many 
 varieties of mild friction of the skin. A gentle 
 patting and rubbing will usually produce a slow 
 wagging of the tail, which is the dog's most natural 
 smile. People well acquainted with dogs are, 
 according to Hall and Allin, almost unanimous 
 in their verdict that the dog draws back the 
 corners of his mouth if tickled in the ribs and thus 
 literally and physiologically " smiles." When the 
 tickling is somewhat sportively administered, dogs 
 are likely to have their " funny streaks " and to 
 " run around in a circle, sometimes showing their 
 teeth in a peculiar way, perhaps lifting the upper 
 lip when they play with children they know, but 
 never with strangers." * With dogs as with 
 
 1 Hall and Allin., The Psychology of Tickling and Laughter, 
 Am. J. of Psych., 1898. 
 
be 
 
 < 
 
 I 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 49 
 
 human beings it is the friendly hand that tickles 
 most, or at least most pleasurably. L The cat is 
 much more impersonal in its preferences as to who 
 shall do the tickling and rubbing. Any well- 
 tamed cat will arch a comfortable back for any 
 inoffensive person who chooses to stroke her. 
 Tickling proper is readily obtained from cats by 
 light intermittent touches about the face and 
 throat, and ordinarily calls forth a spirited form 
 of friskiness, in which the close relation of tickling 
 to mock injury is especially evident. 
 
 Horses, lambs, etc., although they give con- 
 spicuous evidence of the sheer joy of living, as 
 when they jump, snort, paw and roll about, never 
 seem to get beyond the stage of organic gratifica- 
 tion. Tickling appears to be a distinctly unpleas- 
 ant experience for them. If one tries a light 
 touch with the tassel of a whip the only response 
 provoked will usually be a general quiver or 
 shudder such as we would give in response to a 
 vexatious treatment of our skin. Thus it appears 
 that while surface pain is an endowment of at 
 least all of the vertebrates, the pleasure of tickling 
 is limited to a very few of the highest vertebrates, 
 notably the cat, the dog, and the monkey, 
 
f$o PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 and is a quite variable experience even among 
 them. 
 
 The late development of surface pain and 
 ticklishness in the animal series is paralleled by 
 their lateness in appearing in the human infant. 
 Though babies cry abundantly as a result of 
 organic discomfort of various sorts, it seems that 
 for weeks, and even months, they may be — like 
 animals far down in the scale of evolution — not 
 painfully aware of any laceration of the skin. 
 The writer knows personally a case in which the 
 mother of a baby of four months in dressing her 
 child unwittingly penetrated the infant's skin with 
 a safety pin in such a manner that the fastening 
 included a pin length of outer surface skin. The 
 baby, though left in this way for ten hours, made 
 not the slightest outcry throughout the day. The 
 same mother reports that in cutting her child's 
 finger nails she has occasionally pricked the finger 
 and even drawn blood without any noticeable 
 response from the baby. The exact time of 
 appearance of the pain sensation probably varies 
 as widely in different individuals as do the times 
 of learning to talk and walk, but it is at least not 
 present at birth, and may not appear for months. 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 51 
 
 Tickling also develops very gradually, first one 
 and then another zone becoming ticklish. A four 
 months' old baby which will giggle as a result of 
 being tickled about the neck, may fail to display 
 any such sensitiveness when the soles of its feet 
 are concerned. When he is a few months older, 
 these latter may be the most ticklish parts of his 
 body. 
 
 Summary 
 
 To sum up what has been said in the present 
 chapter: It has been found that pain and pleas- 
 ure as sensations have probably been evolved 
 gradually out of a primitive obscure state of well- 
 being or pleasantness and malaise or unpleasant- 
 ness. The three distinct stages of development 
 for which we found evidence were: 
 
 ( 1 ) The primitive stage of pleasantness — 
 — unpleasantness itself, which apparently exists in 
 some fashion in all animals, even down to the one- 
 celled organism such as the amoeba. 
 
 (2) The next stage was that of bodily gratifica- 
 tion and distress, the kind of pleasure-pain expe- 
 rience which we get from our inner organs. 
 These states seemed to be discoverable in those 
 
52 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 animals just beginning to develop a rudimentary 
 nervous system of the same general type as the 
 " sympathetic nervous system " which supplies our 
 inner organs. Animals of many cells but inverte- 
 brate, such as the earthworm, were seen to offer 
 an excellent example of the capacity for bodily 
 distress without the possibility of pain proper. 
 
 (3) The last stage was that of surface pain 
 and ticklishness. This stage implies the posses- 
 sion of a fairly well developed central nervous 
 system, and may be said roughly to include the 
 vertebrate animals, except that ticklishness is the 
 unique possession of the highest vertebrates and 
 is very unevenly present even among them. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 The Meaning of Pain and Pleasure 
 
 In order to form an adequate notion of the 
 essential character of pain and pleasure it will be 
 necessary for us to refer constantly to two facts, 
 both of them sufficiently obvious, but too often 
 lost sight of in the present connection. These 
 two facts are ( i ) the readiness with which pleas- 
 ure goes over into pain and pain into pleasure, 
 and (2) the connection of both states with the 
 struggle for existence. 
 
 The first fact, — the ready interchangeability of 
 pain and pleasure when conditions are slightly 
 changed, — is one which can be abundantly illus- 
 trated from any department of life. pThe same 
 hardship that is the chief delight of the well 
 trained and athletic person is utterly intolerable 
 to one fatigued or lacking in physical strength. 
 For the former the violent exertion of climbing a 
 mountain is sheer joy, and he would find nothing 
 
 53 
 
54 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 more unendurable than the absence of all exertion. 
 The latter is continually on his guard against 
 having to tax his powers. He can hardly repre- 
 sent pleasure to himself except as consisting of 
 flowery beds of ease ; and by the same token pain 
 is for him practically synonymous with vigorous 
 effort. 
 
 Moreover, it is possible that the same task may 
 appear at one moment painful and at another 
 pleasurable to the same man, not as the result of 
 any change in his physical condition, but according 
 to whether he adopts the attitude of work or play. 
 The same tasks which the average man abhors to 
 perform as household chores form the chief joy 
 of picnicking or camping put. With remarkable 
 avidity he bears his share of carrying the packs or 
 building the fire, when it is all done just for the 
 fun of it. In the same way the exercise of danc- 
 ing may be enjoyed even by frail young ladies on 
 the point of physical exhaustion, although it would 
 be excruciating torture to these people, if pre- 
 scribed to them by a physician, and in the form of 
 calisthenics to be gone through just after rising 
 and before going to bed. It is more than the 
 mere perversity of human nature which makes it 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 55 
 
 possible for the tired shop girl to find in the dance 
 hall recreation from the footsore weariness caused 
 by a long day's work. 
 
 Further than this, the outward expression of 
 pain and pleasure has some connection such that 
 the two may be confused in persons of nervous 
 instability. The following cases, mentioned by 
 Hall and Allin, 1 illustrate strikingly this tendency, 
 especially on the part of immature or hysterical 
 persons : " A company of young people, of both 
 sexes, from 19 to 24, were sitting together when 
 the death of an acquaintance was announced. 
 They looked at each other for a second and then 
 all began to laugh, and it was some time before 
 they could become serious." " A frontiersman in 
 a well-authenticated case, came home to find his 
 dearly beloved wife and children all lying dead, 
 scalped and mutilated by Indians. He burst out 
 into a fit of laughter, exclaiming repeatedly, i It 
 is the funniest thing I ever heard of,' and laughed 
 on convulsively and uncontrollably until he died 
 from a ruptured blood vessel." 2 
 
 To go a step further, it can be said without 
 
 iHall and Allin, op. ck. 
 2 Ibid. 
 
 \ 
 
56 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 exaggeration that our profoundest pleasures are 
 those which have the nearest relation to possible 
 or actual pain. [The very horror of falling off a 
 great height or out of a swiftly moving vehicle 
 furnishes the background for the intense thrill in 
 taking daredevil chances with an aeroplane or 
 automobile. The painful start of fear which any 
 child gives in response to a sudden change in his 
 surroundings is of a piece with the acute delight 
 that he gets from the friendly Boo! of those 
 who make believe with his fears. It is the pain- 
 ful emotions of fear and pity which, when skill- 
 fully played upon, afford the extraordinary joy 
 that the theater lover derives from tragedy. In 
 this special case the direct contemplation of tre- 
 mendous sadness or gruesome Rightfulness may 
 leave the spectator sighing deep with the content- 
 ment of a really edifying experience. 
 
 [The same ready interchangeability of pain and 
 pleasure is observable when we note some of the 
 characteristic effects that result from the lapse of 
 time. An embarrassing social blunder, which 
 covers one with mortification at the time of its 
 occurrence, may within a few weeks become a 
 never failing source of laughter and pleasure as 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 57 
 
 one reflects on it afterward. Perhaps he may 
 even bore his neighbors with the frequent recount- 
 ing of the incident which he now enjoys so heartily. 
 Joy in the memory of past griefs is a fact 
 remarked on by Homer, whereas Dante was espe- 
 cially impressed with the painful memory of past 
 pleasures, saying that the greatest sorrow was to 
 recollect one's happier time when in misery. 
 
 The cases mentioned so far have had to do 
 more with pleasantness-unpleasantness than with 
 surface pleasure and pain, but the same general 
 statement will be found to obtain for these states. 
 We have already seen that the ticklishness of a 
 given part of the body varies directly with the 
 vulnerability of that part, and that tickling when 
 overdone becomes distinctly disagreeable or pain- 
 ful. Further than this, surface pain sensations, 
 when very faintly experienced, may be productive 
 of the greatest pleasure of which the skin is 
 capable. Thus the pleasure of picking a partly 
 healed scab is so alluring that children have been 
 known to make cuts on their hands for the definite 
 purpose of creating a scab. Tearing away a frag- 
 ment of slightly sensitive callous skin is another 
 of the " real sports n of childhood. But it is the 
 
5 8 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 faint pain of scratching an itching area which is 
 preeminent in this respect. " You scratch my 
 back and I'll scratch yours," is the homely adage 
 based on the peculiar satisfaction that this mildly 
 painful treatment of the skin affords. 
 
 It appears then that from whatever angle we 
 begin our consideration of pain and pleasure, we 
 find everywhere abundant illustration of the fact 
 of ready interchangeability. Both of them seem 
 to issue from the same general circumstances; 
 when pain issues, it is only because of an excess of 
 the same conditions which when less extreme result 
 pleasurably. What are these conditions? 
 
 In order to answer this question we shall have 
 to make mention of the second of the two facts 
 referred to at the beginning of the chapter, i. e., 
 that life is inevitably a struggle. A ceaseless con- 
 flict between an environment that imposes ob- 
 stacles and an organism that tends to pit itself 
 against obstacles, — this is the fundamental con- 
 dition of life, and there are no other terms at 
 which it is to be had. Whether we think of our 
 bodily existence as a struggle between the forces 
 making for growth and those making for disinte- 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 59 
 
 gration, or whether we think of our personal life 
 in society as a competitive struggle in which each 
 individual is spurred on to render a good account 
 of himself, the reflection is continually forced on 
 us that without strife there can be no life. As 
 soon as any part of the body is freed from the 
 performance of its tasks, it begins to atrophy; as 
 soon as any individual proves his unfitness to cope 
 with the conditions that surround him, he is 
 immediately reckoned as of no account; and when 
 an institution ceases to find things worth fighting 
 for we ask what is its reason for being. Born as 
 we are to a world of this sort it is only natural 
 that we should enter it equipped with an abun- 
 dance of active dispositions. To a world which 
 demands effective responses we bring more or less 
 ready-made tendencies to respond, all of them 
 waiting for the appropriate occasion when they 
 may be brought into play. Thus prepared with 
 innumerable impulses, desires, reflexes and in- 
 stincts, we venture out into endless enterprise, 
 some of which is to be attended by success, some 
 by failure. When our activity arrives at its end, 
 i. e., encounters successfully the conditions it was 
 
60 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 designed to meet, we experience pleasure. 1 When, 
 in spite of our utmost resource, the demands made 
 of us cannot be met, we experience pain. For 
 example, a keenly contested game brings to the 
 victor a pleasure he could not have known if his 
 rival had not been a worthy match for him. And 
 vice versa, to be defeated at the hands of an 
 acknowledged rival, who challenges our utmost 
 effort, this is indeed to drink the cup of bitterness. 
 [To state the same point in somewhat different 
 language, one may say that all pleasure and pain 
 center about the efforts of a living organism to 
 further its development. Such an organism 
 refuses to rest satisfied with what it has attained, 
 and strives not only to hold what it has attained, 
 but continually to add new worlds to those already 
 conquered. Any given state of equilibrium is 
 therefore indifferent or even positively painful if 
 too long maintained. Enforced idleness soon 
 brings with it the pain of boredom to an organism 
 ready for the fray. Not a few business men who 
 have retired at a ripe old age have found it neces- 
 sary to go back to die in harness. Business capac- 
 
 1 See W. Fite, "The Place of Pleasure and Pain in Functional 
 Psychology," Psychol. Rev., 1903, X, 633-644. 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 61 
 
 ities ready at hand and " stripped for racing " 
 brook no check except at a cost of pain. It is 
 evident then that within certain limits all dis- 
 turbance of equilibrium is pleasant. The trained 
 athlete " rejoicing as a strong man to run a race " 
 makes a wide departure from the ease of the arm- 
 chair, but counts his exertion a pleasure. It is 
 equally obvious, however, that there are limits 
 beyond which all disturbance of equilibrium is 
 painful. The agonized expression of the runner 
 who has punished himself too severely stands in 
 marked contrast with the buoyancy of his better 
 trained opponent. No matter with what zest we 
 enter upon any form of activity there is a point 
 beyond which it becomes intolerable. The or- 
 ganism's task under such conditions is to restore 
 the excessively disturbed equilibrium. It is only 
 in this way that it can cope further with environ- 
 ment, and accordingly it is recuperation that is 
 now pleasurable. The struggle in such cases as- 
 sumes a different character; it is a struggle to 
 recover normal fitness, and though it is marked by 
 no outward signs of striving, in reality certain 
 vital processes are functioning to an unusual de- 
 gree. Thus it is possible for the mountain- 
 
62 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 climber to derive keen pleasure both from his ex- 
 ertion in the morning and from his rest in the 
 afternoon. One is the pleasure of activity; the 
 other is the pleasure of preparation for activity. 
 Both types, different as they seem, depend on the 
 efficient operation of active tendencies. 
 
 [To sum up, all forms of pain and pleasure re- 
 volve about the fact of conflict. Pain may arise 
 either when the struggle makes excessive demands 
 on us or when our powers, ready for activity, are 
 denied the opportunity for employment. Pleas- 
 ure may arise either from carrying on a struggle 
 equal to our powers or from restoring equilibrium 
 by rest after a severe struggle. It remains to 
 apply the above account to the varieties of pain 
 and pleasure which were described in the first 
 chapter. 
 
 Pleasantness and Unpleasantness 
 
 We may begin with the cases of pleasantness 
 and unpleasantness. Especially instructive here 
 are the instances of acquired tastes. When a 
 man is persuaded by his friends to learn to eat 
 olives or drink beer, neither of which he likes at 
 first, but which finally come to be numbered among 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 63 
 
 his favorite indulgences, we may account for the 
 change, according to our explanation by saying 
 that these bitter tastes, with each successive adap- 
 tation have produced a less violent palatal dis- 
 turbance, until finally they have come within the 
 range of disturbances against which the palate is 
 able to pit itself. Thereafter they afford the 
 relish of something difficult, but not too difficult. 
 The same sort of process is probably at work 
 when we acquire a liking for music which at first 
 hearing seemed intolerably harsh and disssonant. 
 Any one in the least familiar with the history of 
 music knows how every great master has out- 
 raged the tender feelings of critics of his day. 
 The music that we most enjoy to-day would have 
 been laughed out of court as unspeakably dis- 
 agreeable two hundred years ago. More and 
 more dissonant intervals have challenged the ears 
 of each successive generation, and while each new 
 innovation has created confusion and unpleasant- 
 ness, it has been gradually mastered by the music- 
 going public, which now demands that music be 
 complex and even harsh in order to be enjoyable. 
 Wagner had to struggle to persuade the world to 
 endure harmonies which are to-day a chief re- 
 
64 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 source for popular nights at the symphony. The 
 challenge which Wagner's orchestration bears to 
 our ears still disturbs our auditory equilibrium, 
 but we delight in going forth to meet the dis- 
 turbance. It is within the range of our power to 
 cope with it. 
 
 Everything depends on whether the force called 
 forth in ourselves is adequate to the demands 
 made of it. So long as it is, there is no limit to 
 the amount of disturbance which may be pleasant. 
 The more keenly contested the struggle, the more 
 enjoyable is the winning of the victory. 
 
 We are now in a position to understand why 
 a slight difference in bodily energy may make such 
 a vast difference in our feeling attitude toward 
 the same object. For the sick or weary man no 
 form of strenuous activity is tolerable, because 
 every effort compels him to overdraw his reserve. 
 To one who is brimful of energy every struggle 
 is a delight, because he is more than able to main- 
 tain himself. For the same reason any new ac- 
 cess of energy may convert an unpleasant into an 
 extremely pleasant experience. How often, for 
 example, does one who dreads some social event 
 or public performance find his dread changed into 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 65 
 
 sheer delight as the result of a stimulating cup of 
 coffee! How often, also, is an article of dress 
 that one dislikes personally, accepted with joy 
 as a result of the knowledge that everybody is 
 wearing that style ! Our effort when backed up 
 by the powerful force of social suggestion can be 
 made to cope with even the extreme hobble skirt 
 or the ultra-modern dance. Vice versa, our per- 
 sonal preference for a certain style of dress sur- 
 vives with difficulty the edict of fashion that 
 taboos such a style. 
 
 The case of the picnicker's delight in gruesome 
 toil now appears as merely a special instance in 
 which the instinct of play has availed him of an 
 extra supply of energy. Furthermore, it is now 
 quite comprehensible that the painful fear of real 
 danger should be so readily converted into the 
 pleasant thrill of near or make-believe danger. 
 The child begs to be half startled with a boo ! be- 
 cause the mild shock is within the scope of his 
 powers of resistance, and is therefore pleasurable. 
 The same explanation obtains for the aviator's 
 deviltry and for the pleasing effect of fear and 
 pity in tragedy. For the same reason also a sud- 
 den change from a flippant to a sober mood may 
 
66 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 make us turn with more relish to aching toil than 
 to gay triviality. One who has girded up his 
 loins does not cope with difficulty on quite the 
 same terms as does one supine with " paunched 
 ease." 
 
 The notion that pleasure results from conflict 
 adequately prepared for also renders it intelligible 
 that past griefs may become pleasant. In mem- 
 ory all things are likely to lose in intensity, and 
 the grief that overwhelms us in its actual occur- 
 rence might very conceivably mellow into a faded 
 image of sorrow against which there is a certain 
 pleasure in pitting one's self because the diffi- 
 culty has been so far reduced. 
 
 The confusion of the outward expressions of 
 pain and pleasure, as when one laughs at dis- 
 tressing news, we must suppose to be due to the 
 fact that the shock has summoned forth even more 
 energy than is normally to be expected. When 
 such unusual laughter goes over into profound 
 depression, we have but the natural reaction 
 against the original excess. An interesting case 
 in which we are able to observe a sudden change 
 from amused pleasure to anxious concern is that 
 in which we discover that the victim of a laugh- 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 67 
 
 able fall has seriously injured himself. Here the 
 joy which comes in contrasting our own security 
 with the humiliation of the man we laugh at is 
 forced out by the intense pang of sympathy which 
 is more than a match for us. 
 
 The conception of life as a progressive conflict 
 for which we are equipped by nature leads us to 
 the discussion of two further points, — (1) the 
 indifference of habitual acts and (2) the pain- 
 fulness of repressing activities normally seeking 
 expression. The former is too obvious to re- 
 quire elaboration. It is exemplified in every 
 routine act of our life. Every act which becomes 
 so habitual as to be performed with ease ceases 
 to afford pleasure or even consciousness. When 
 we have become expert at bicycling or typewriting 
 or playing the piano we are obliged to set our- 
 selves new tasks or lose the joy in the perform- 
 ance of these acts. We have acquired a facility 
 which requires a very considerable activity for 
 its full employment. 
 
 The unpleasantness of thwarted activity is an- 
 other instance of the need of allowing ample oc- 
 casion for the exercise of native or acquired 
 tendencies. When we take on a match at tennis 
 
68 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 with a player we suppose to be skillful, but dis- 
 cover shortly that he is the merest novice, the un- 
 pleasantness of ennui at once begins to set in, 
 and unless we are able to divert ourselves by 
 thoughts remote from the present occupation, we 
 are in for an unhappy half hour. Our capacities 
 for successful struggle of this particular form 
 have been aroused only to be thwarted. Pre- 
 pared for action we have no occasion for activity. 
 All of the unpleasantness of monotony or boredom 
 is of this same general type. In a passage quoted 
 by Stout * from Brown's " Philosophy of the Hu- 
 man Mind" the following question is asked: 
 " What patience could travel for a whole day, 
 along one endless avenue, with perfect parallel- 
 ism of the two straight lines, and with trees of 
 the same species and height, succeeding each other 
 at exactly the same interval? " And it is pointed 
 out that " what we should feel with most fret- 
 fulness would be the constant disappointment of 
 our expectation, that the last tree which we be- 
 held in the distance was the last that was to rise 
 upon us; when, tree after tree, as if in mockery 
 
 *G. F. Stout, "Analytic Psychology," London, 1S96, Vol. II, 
 p. 274. 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 69 
 
 of our very patience itself, would still continue 
 to present the same dismal continuity of line." 
 [The above is a single instance of capacities for 
 activity denied their natural outlet. 
 
 The pain of bereavement is to be understood in 
 the same way. To quote again from Stout: 1 
 11 The person taken from us has formed part 
 of our life. So far as this is the case, his re- 
 moval means the repression of our previous 
 modes of thought and action. While the loss is 
 recent, these preformed mental tendencies are 
 stimulated by everything which can remind us of 
 the deceased; but they are stimulated only to be 
 crushed." Indeed, one need not have known any 
 real sorrow in order to experience this kind of 
 thwarting. To mislay a watch that one has car- 
 ried for years may cause an uncomfortable feeling 
 that lasts for days. Each mention of the time 
 of day will provoke an incipient start for the 
 watch pocket, followed by an acute annoyance be- 
 cause there is no end to be attained by the ac- 
 customed form of activity. 
 
 1 Stout, op. cit., p. 278. 
 
7 o PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 Bodily Distress and Gratification 
 
 To turn now to the pain and pleasure connected 
 with the functioning of the inner organs, we find 
 once more that the same general principle holds 
 good. Bodily distress is always due either to 
 the violent disturbance of some organ or else to 
 the baffling of some organic craving. As ex- 
 amples of the first we have all of those cases of 
 disordered functioning which make up the long 
 list of aches, cramps, colics, etc. In all of these 
 instances the organism finds itself confronted with 
 excessive demands. If the surgeon even by cut- 
 ting and pinching the stomach, fails to call forth 
 any pain, that is because the stomach has not had 
 an evolution which leads it to concern itself on 
 such occasions. [The stimulus of cutting calls 
 forth no effort on its part to ward off such an at- 
 tack. But the presence of indigestible food in 
 the stomach may produce colicky pain, because 
 such a stimulus calls forth its utmost effort, and 
 when this effort fails there results the peculiar 
 quality of internal bodily pain. 
 
 The nature of organic craving is also clearly 
 illustrated in the case of the stomach. Its capac- 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 71 
 
 ity for aiding in the digestion of food may be the 
 occasion for pain if the capacity is too long de- 
 nied adequate employment. The contractions 
 which proceed comfortably in the moderately 
 filled stomach produce the gnawing pangs of 
 hunger, when they take place in an empty stom- 
 ach. An experiment by Cannon and Washburn 1 
 has very neatly demonstrated this point. To 
 quote from their account: " In order to learn 
 whether such proof might be secured, one of us 
 (W.) determined to become accustomed to the 
 presence of a rubber tube in the oesophagus. Al- 
 most every day for several weeks W. introduced 
 as far as the stomach a small tube, to the lower 
 end of which was attached a soft-rubber balloon 
 about 8 cm. in diameter. The tube was thus 
 carried about each time for two or three hours. 
 . . . When a record was to be taken, the balloon, 
 placed just below the cardia, was moderately dis- 
 tended with air." After this preliminary prac- 
 tice, " on the days of observation W. would ab- 
 stain from breakfast, or eat sparingly, and with- 
 out taking any lunch would appear in the labora- 
 
 iW. B. Cannon and A. L. Washburn, "An Explanation of 
 Hunger," American Journal of Physiology, vol. 29, 1911, p. 449. 
 
72 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 tory about two o'clock." With recording appa- 
 ratus arranged the experiment proceeded, and 
 " when W. stated that he was hungry, powerful 
 contractions of the stomach were invariably be- 
 ing registered. The record of W's introspection 
 of his hunger pangs agreed closely with the record 
 of his gastric contractions." Here is simply a 
 new application of our pleasure-pain principle. 
 [The normal activity of the stomach demands its 
 normal exercise. If it is baffled in the realization 
 of its appropriate ends, pain ensues. The 
 thwarted stomach bereft of its food takes its place 
 with the other cases of baffled expectation and 
 demonstrates further that pain may be due either 
 to the violence of the disturbance or to the futility 
 of a readiness that is not allowed expression. 
 
 The pleasure of eating a hearty meal is, by the 
 same token, due to the putting forth of a con- 
 siderable digestive effort when the stomach's 
 readiness is likely to be equal to the task imposed 
 upon it. Gastric preparedness like military pre- 
 paredness likes nothing so well as the assimilation 
 of adequate prey. 
 
 The other forms of bodily distress and gratifi- 
 cation are in every way comparable to the above. 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 73 
 
 The lungs may suffer from a local disturbance, as 
 in pleurisy, or from a general thwarting of activ- 
 ity, as in suffocation; the circulation may suffer 
 from an excessive start when an emotional shock 
 is experienced, or it may cause acute pain when 
 the normal activity is obstructed as in angina pec- 
 toris; and our nervous system as a whole may 
 render us uncomfortable either on account of 
 great strain or on account of repressed desires. 
 
 Surface Pain and Pleasure 
 
 A cut finger brings about very definite and 
 violent movements designed to defend our skin 
 against further harmful inroads. But no matter 
 with what alacrity we respond, the best we can 
 do is to prevent further damage; we have no effec- 
 tive counter stroke which at once rights the wrong 
 already done. The disturbance is excessive in 
 that we are not adequately equipped with any ac- 
 tivity tendency that is a match for it, and the 
 inevitable result is pain. If, however, the dis- 
 turbance is very slight, and can be completely 
 relieved by some such activity as scratching, we 
 have a really agreeable experience. The pleasure 
 of tickling we saw to be related in all probability 
 
74 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 to the vulnerability of the parts tickled. Like 
 playful fear this make-believe injury to the skin 
 depends on the fact that the attack is something 
 we are able to cope with. The disturbance merely 
 threatens to become painful, and the normal de- 
 fensive reaction, if successful, is quite capable of 
 affording protection before harm is done. 
 Within such limits it is to be expected that the 
 more violent the outward behavior of the person 
 tickled the more intense will be the thrill of pleas- 
 ure that comes from entering into the struggle. 
 The child who writhes and squirms is probably 
 much nearer to the point of accepting the make- 
 believe attack as a serious threat; he accordingly 
 pitches the conflict at a high level of intensity, and 
 hence derives keener pleasure from the whole per- 
 formance. 
 
 Cases where pain is caused by the thwarting of 
 activities connected with the skin are somewhat 
 harder to list, but every one has had the experi- 
 ence of having a pain become much more severe 
 on account of his being unable to move in re- 
 sponse to it. Even an itching that cannot be 
 scratched soon tries our self-control to the limit. 
 If one were given his choice between a toothache 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 75 
 
 to which he was free to minister, and an itching 
 back that he was not allowed to scratch, it is prob- 
 able that his choice would incline toward the 
 former. 
 
 Summary 
 
 We have seen that all three varieties of pain 
 and pleasure described in the first chapter can be 
 best accounted for by reference to the fact that 
 every living organism is born with the capacity 
 for struggle, and in an environment where struggle 
 is a fundamental law of nature. Pain signifies 
 either that the environment has demanded too 
 much of the organism! s limited capacities — the 
 pains of excess, or that it has failed to offer a 
 point of contact for unused activity tendencies — 
 the pains of thwarting. Pleasure signifies either 
 that the environment has furnished occasion for a 
 conflict to which the organism's powers are equal 
 — the pleasures of activity, or that opportunity 
 is being afforded for recovery from a struggle car- 
 ried to an extreme point- — ■ the pleasures of rest. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 The Bodily Effects of Pain and 
 Pleasure 
 
 The popular notion in regard to the bodily ef- 
 fects of pleasure and pain has it that in some way 
 or other pleasure always tends to make our bodily 
 machinery more efficient, and pain less so. 
 While this notion has a considerable measure of 
 truth in it, it falls far short of being an adequate 
 statement of the case. Let us consider, for ex- 
 ample, the implication that the immediate effects 
 of the two are necessarily opposite. Far from 
 this being the case, it is actually a fact that our 
 most extreme pleasures have the same kind of 
 immediate bodily result as does pain. This would 
 naturally follow according to the view set forth 
 in the preceding chapters, to the effect that the 
 most vivid pleasures represent some sort of hard 
 fought struggle which we have been fortunate 
 enough to maintain successfully. We may best 
 
 76 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 77 
 
 judge of the facts by taking some well-known 
 pain-effect, such as the production of sugar in the 
 urine, and observing whether the same effect is 
 produced by a violent form of pleasure. 
 
 An opportunity for such an observation is to 
 be had in connection with intercollegiate athletics. 
 It needs little argument to prove that for the large 
 majority of college undergraduates the one day 
 of the year most supreme with pleasure is the day 
 of the " big game." To quote from Dr. Can- 
 non's description of this event, — " There is prac- 
 tically a holiday in college and to a large extent in 
 the city as well. The streets are filled with eager 
 supporters of each team as the hosts begin to 
 gather at the field. As many as 70,000 spectators 
 may be present, each one tense and strongly 
 partisan. The student bands lead the singing by 
 thousands of voices of songs which urge to the 
 utmost effort for the college. . . . Into the midst 
 of that huge, cheering, yelling, singing, flag-wav- 
 ing crowd, the players are welcomed in a special 
 outburst of the same demonstration of enthusi- 
 asm." x To quote the same author further, — 
 
 1 W. B. Cannon, " Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear, and 
 Rage," New York, 191 5, p. 2aoff. 
 
78 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 " In the dressing-room before a critical contest I 
 have seen a c gridiron warrior,' ready in canvas 
 suit, cleated shoes, and leather helmet, sitting 
 grimly on a bench, his fists clenched, his jaws 
 tight, and his face the color of clay. He per- 
 formed wonderfully when the game began, and 
 after it was over there was a large percentage of 
 sugar in his urine." Further than this, we are 
 informed that the observation taken on an ex- 
 cited spectator in the Harvard-Yale game of 19 13 
 showed a marked increase of sugar in the 
 urine. 
 
 Xo take still another effect which one most nat- 
 urally attributes to extreme pain, — namely, col- 
 lapse. There is abundant possibility of collapse 
 from pleasure, either if the pleasure is very excit- 
 ing or if the individual is very sensitive. Dear- 
 born, in the " Influence of Joy " cites the case of 
 Lucretia Davidson, the precocious American 
 poetess who died at the age of seventeen. " Her 
 susceptibilities were so acute, and her perception 
 of beauty so exquisite, as to cause her to faint 
 when listening to some of her favorite melodies 
 from Moore. Yet notwithstanding this serious 
 impression, she would beg to have them repeated, 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 79 
 
 so delicious were the sensations produced." * 
 Here then is evidence that conspicuous pain effects 
 may be produced by supreme pleasure. It will be 
 necessary, therefore, in making statements regard- 
 ing the bodily effects of pleasure, to distinguish 
 the milder and more restful pleasures from those 
 marked by extreme activity. 
 
 Another point which should not for a moment 
 be lost sight of is the difference between imme- 
 diate and final effects. For example, an obvious 
 immediate effect of pain is a quickening of bodily 
 activity. Darwin's oft-quoted " Expressions of 
 the Emotions in Man and Animals " contains this 
 statement: " In the agony of pain almost every 
 muscle of the body is brought into strong action; 
 great pain urges all animals, and has urged them 
 during endless generations, to make the most 
 violent and diversified efforts to escape from the 
 cause of suffering." But when we consider the 
 effects of pain in the long run we are obliged to 
 think of it as depressing. Synonymous with sor- 
 row and woe, it always calls up a picture of phy- 
 sical inadequacy. 
 
 1 G. V. N. Dearborn, "The Influence of Joy," Boston, 19^6, 
 p. 96. 
 
8o PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 In the limited scope of the present chapter we 
 shall confine our discussion largely to those bodily 
 effects which immediately appear as the result of 
 pain and pleasure, and we shall refer chiefly to the 
 milder pleasures. Two vitally important bodily 
 effects will occupy our attention, those of diges- 
 tion and of circulation. 
 
 Effects on Digestion 
 
 The first step which the body takes in the direc- 
 tion of effective digestion is in starting the secre- 
 tion of saliva. " Fletcherism " has at least done 
 something toward educating the general public to 
 the importance of beginning nutrition with an 
 abundance of this first aid to digestion. Gen- 
 erally speaking, it may be said that whatever 
 causes the mouth to water is inspfar a help to 
 digestion, and that vice versa, any slowing up of 
 this secretion will render digestion so much more 
 difficult. Now it is a pretty clearly established 
 fact that pleasant associations of any kind tend 
 to make the moistening of the mouth proceed 
 easily, whereas pain and unpleasantness make it 
 difficult or even impossible. So regular is this 
 connection that some savages, as for example the 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 81 
 
 Australians, express admiration by smacking and 
 clacking the mouth. Children often add to the 
 expression of their joy by various gurgling and 
 trickling sounds; and even in adults the warm 
 smile always carries with it a certain suggestion 
 of moistness. A dry mouth, on the contrary, is a 
 fairly constant accompaniment to marked unpleas- 
 antness. It is for this reason that a mob is 
 secretly impressed upon noting that the intended 
 victim can stand and spit at those who would 
 terrorize him. They realize that such an abun- 
 dance of saliva would be impossible in a man 
 afraid. Indeed, one well-known ancient method 
 of determining guilt in a suspect was to try his 
 power to produce saliva. In the ordeal of rice, 
 employed in India, the judges assumed that the 
 innocent man would have a normal flow, whereas 
 the real culprit, wrought upon by his guilt, would 
 have a dry mouth. The method of trial was 
 therefore to have all of the suspects chew the 
 consecrated rice and, after a time, spit it out upon 
 a fig leaf. Whoever returned the rice dry was 
 adjudged guilty, because it was supposed that the 
 stopping of the secretion indicated the knowledge 
 of guilt and fear of discovery. 
 
82 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 After salivary secretion the next important 
 process in preparation for digestion is the secret- 
 ing of gastric juice. And here again we find a 
 very definite antagonism between pain and pleas- 
 ure effects. Almost every one has noticed more 
 or less clearly that in some strange way food eaten 
 under pleasant surroundings is assimilated with 
 more than ordinary ease, and without harmful 
 after effects. The German beer-garden and the 
 French cafe chantant flourish for this reason. 
 In our own dyspeptic country this knowledge has 
 been capitalized on an extravagant scale. The 
 dominant theory of the big New York hotel to- 
 day is that rich patrons will spare no price if every 
 consideration of elegance, daintiness and personal 
 comfort is provided in addition to good food. 
 
 Pawlow, the noted Russian physiologist, has 
 abundantly demonstrated in his experiments on 
 dogs that a pleasurable food idea causes the stom- 
 ach to begin watering, even though the food never 
 reaches the stomach. Two details of this experi- 
 ment will be necessary for a clear understanding 
 of the point under discussion. For one thing, a 
 device was provided which enabled the experi- 
 menters to count the drops of gastric juice for a 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 83 
 
 given interval of time. Another essential point 
 was that the food eaten and swallowed by the dogs 
 was in some cases not allowed to reach the stom- 
 ach, but passed out through an opening artificially 
 made below the throat. Whenever a dog was al- 
 lowed the quiet pleasure of eating undisturbed for 
 five minutes, — a procedure called " sham feed- 
 ing " by the experimenters, because the food never 
 reached the stomach — the gastric juice flowed 
 in abundance, and as much as 67 cubic centimeters 
 would sometimes be produced during twenty min- 
 utes. If however, any unpleasant emotion were 
 allowed to intrude itself on the dog's peace of 
 mind, a most remarkable lowering of gastric pro- 
 duction was the result. To quote from Cannon's 1 
 description of such a case : " On another day a 
 cat was brought into the presence of the dog, 
 whereupon the dog flew into a great fury. [The 
 cat was removed and the dog pacified. Now the 
 dog was again given the sham feeding for five 
 minutes. In spite of the fact that the animal was 
 hungry and ate eagerly, there was no secretion 
 worthy of mention. During a period of twenty 
 minutes, corresponding to the previous observa- 
 
 1 W. B. Cannon, op. cat, p. n. 
 
84 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 tion, only nine cubic centimeters were produced." 
 Thus the gastric juice secreted in the stomach 
 under normal conditions of eating is more than 
 seven times ^s great as under conditions of emo- 
 tional stress ! Well might Solomon write — > 
 " Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than 
 a stalled ox and hatred therewith." 
 
 The disturbance of gastric secretion does not 
 require any such fury of excitement as in the above 
 instance. The direct stimulation of a pain nerve 
 is most effective, and even the discomfort of a dog 
 in new surroundings, or his annoyance at being 
 tied, will often suppress the gastric flow. In 
 children mere vexation at not being allowed to 
 eat when they want to may render them incapable 
 of digestion even though hungry. 
 
 A third important part of the total process of 
 digestion is what may be referred to as the me- 
 chanical factor, i.e. the contractions of the stom- 
 ach and intestines. This is the final process by 
 which food is carried from one region to another 
 in the alimentary canal. On this depends the as- 
 similation of food, which has passed through the 
 preliminary stages of digestion. When this 
 movement ceases, food inevitably stagnates. The 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 85 
 
 conclusions reached by Cannon in this department 
 of digestion parallel in significance the experi- 
 ment by Pawlow relating to gastric secretion. 
 Again we find the same point for point antagonism 
 between pleasure and pain effects. All things un- 
 pleasant tend to check the peristaltic waves; all 
 things pleasant tend to further them. Even such 
 a slight emotional difference as that between the 
 restiveness of the male cat and the calmness of 
 the female cat when tied shows a corresponding 
 difference in gastric peristalsis. The animals in 
 the experiments referred to were restrained in a 
 holder in order to be examined with Rontgen 
 rays. " Although the holder was comfortable, 
 the male cats, particularly the young males, were 
 restive and excited on being fastened to it, and 
 under the circumstances gastric peristaltic waves 
 were absent; the female cats, especially if elderly, 
 usually submitted with calmness to the restraint, 
 and in them the waves had their normal occur- 
 rence." 2 
 
 That specific bodily distress has the same effect 
 here as general unpleasantness, appears from the 
 fact that the gastric contractions could always be 
 
 a W. B. Cannon, op, cit., p. 14. 
 
86 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 stopped by shutting off the cat's breath for a short 
 time. These facts observed in animals give the 
 clue to the feeling of heaviness so often com- 
 plained of in dyspeptics. The connection be- 
 tween such stagnation and unpleasant or painful 
 ideas is clearly seen in the following case. 1 " A 
 refined and sensitive woman, who had digestive 
 difficulties, came with her husband to Boston to 
 be examined. They went to a hotel for the night. 
 The next morning the woman appeared at the 
 consultant's office an hour after having eaten a 
 test meal. An examination of the gastric con- 
 tents revealed — the presence of a considerable 
 amount of the supper of the previous evening. 
 [The explanation of this stagnation of the food in 
 the stomach came from the family doctor, who 
 reported that the husband had made the visit to 
 the city an occasion for becoming uncontrollably 
 drunk, and that he had by his escapades given his 
 wife a night of turbulent anxiety. The second 
 morning, after the woman had had a good rest, 
 the gastric contents were again examined; the 
 proper acidity was found, and the test breakfast 
 had been normally digested and discharged." 
 
 1 Ibid, p. 17. 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 87 
 
 Thus the story of the effect of pain and pleas- 
 ure on digestion is one that is simply told, for the 
 effects are direct and constant. The practical 
 deductions are therefore so plain that he who 
 runs may read, and yet unfortunately their plain- 
 ness does not guarantee the reading. Their im- 
 portance is, however, inconceivably great. Dear- 
 born has aptly said that dyspepsia in the long run 
 is more momentous than war. Year in and year 
 out its destruction probably amounts to even 
 more, and yet it is certain that a very large per 
 cent, of its ravages could be eliminated by a rigid 
 enforcement of the following rule : — Always 
 force yourself to go without food rather than eat 
 when annoyed, anxious, hurried, or in severe pain. 
 
 Efficacious as this simple regime would undoubt- 
 edly be, it is amazingly hard to put into effect in 
 everyday life. One of the many things that die 
 hard is the illusion that having eaten means being 
 fed. A safety first campaign directed toward dis- 
 pelling this illusion would rank in public service 
 with any of the welfare movements which social 
 workers have fostered. The business men's 
 luncheon is probably the meal at which the soul 
 is most consumed along with the food. If soul- 
 
88 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 gnawing is a necessary feature of noon life in a 
 metropolis then a glass of water is the ideal lunch- 
 eon of the future. Perhaps an increased skill in 
 relaxation may be made to save the day, but if not, 
 the alternative is plain. 
 
 The relation between pain and digestion will 
 serve to make clear one further point. The readi- 
 ness of the neurasthenic to find in his stomach a 
 prolific source of trouble can hardly be a matter of 
 surprise. Whatever the original character of his 
 difficulty, fancied or real, it would take no great 
 amount of disagreeable thinking to have a sub- 
 stantial effect in thwarting digestion. When eat- 
 ing proceeds under these conditions the way to 
 real trouble is not far ahead. What per cent, of 
 dyspepsia is " nervous " it is difficult to say, but 
 it can be readily seen that there is practically no 
 limit to the power of pleasantly or unpleasantly 
 toned ideas to further or hinder the assimilation 
 of food. 
 
 Effects on Circulation 
 
 It is the circulation which immediately avails 
 us of whatever vital resources we have. And as 
 pain always means that conflict is on in real earn- 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 89 
 
 est, it necessarily carries with it a hurry up call 
 for activity of the circulation in special directions. 
 In the interest of making mighty efforts, it is nec- 
 
 Fig. s, A. 
 Hemobarogram B 1 2. Woman, 19. The tenth minute shows a pleasure- 
 anticipation fall beginning; this went on for five minutes, the 
 systolic falling 28 millimeters, the diastolic falling quickly 4 milli- 
 meters then rising slightly in what is practically a plateau. This 
 girl volunteered a report of long training in repression of the un- 
 pleasant for the sake of euphoria — happiness-training such as the 
 " ' new ' thought " inculcates. In the 24th minute the memory of an 
 unpleasant experience (involving some little difficulty) very quickly 
 raised both the systolic and the diastolic and disturbed the vasomotor 
 apparatus so much that all sounds forthwith disappeared for 6 min- 
 utes, and the diastolic sounds mostly for 15 minutes. The two 
 heart-counts were 92. 
 
 essary that the slow nutritive processes, which have 
 gradually furnished us our strength, are held in 
 complete abeyance. The body is on a war foot- 
 
QO 
 
 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 ing, and every energy is bent to the quick mobi- 
 lization of reserves. When nations are at war 
 play grounds become places for drill, school 
 houses are converted into hospitals, the lion's 
 share of the food is withheld from the civil popu- 
 
 Fig. 5, B. 
 Hemobarogram B 2 13. Woman, 22. The first half of this hemo- 
 barogram shows the marked rise in both pressures from the memory, 
 most unpleasant, of a gastric ulcer a year before. The fall during 
 a heart-examination is noteworthy. In the second half of the 
 graph (24th minute) further anxiety over her aortic incompetency 
 caused another rise. The heart-rate at first was 72 and at last 84. 
 
 lation to be rushed to the soldiers at the front, and 
 the conservative industrial plants that bring ma- 
 terial prosperity in peace, are converted into 
 munition factories operating night and day. The 
 nation is none the richer for all of this, but it is 
 in a position to instantly consume its wealth in a 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 91 
 
 way favorable to its military intentions. Just so 
 the body, when in extreme pain, foregoes in- 
 stantly all the vegetative life which has slowly 
 built it up, and gives itself to the task of drawing 
 out all its latent power for use in one effort. 
 
 The chief recruiting officer of the body, to fol- 
 low the military analogy further, has been discov- 
 ered to be an insignificantly small gland, and one 
 which until very recently was not thought to have 
 any importance. The adrenal gland, located in 
 the upper end of the kidney, has now been made 
 famous by the work of Biedl, Dreyer, Elliott and 
 especially Cannon. It is now known that ad- 
 renalin, the secretion of this gland, is produced 
 by pain, bodily distress, or by any exciting emo- 
 tion, including violent pleasures as well; and that 
 it has a most remarkable variety of effects which 
 help to render the blood instantly available and 
 the muscular system ready for supreme effort. 
 As soon as discharged into the blood it quickens 
 the heart action, and causes a change in the con- 
 striction of the arteries of such a sort that all of 
 the inner organs except the heart and lungs are 
 deprived of their blood, whereas there is an enor- 
 mous increase of blood supply to the limbs and 
 
9 2 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 surface muscles. It brings it about that the liver 
 releases extra stores of sugar, and thus gives extra 
 food to the muscle cells which are thereby sup- 
 plied for strenuous action. But most remarkable 
 of all is the fact that it causes the blood to have 
 a much quicker coagulation time than normal. 
 This latter change is obviously of great advantage 
 as a protection against mortal injury. The ani- 
 mal in great pain, and therefore secreting ad- 
 renalin, is actually better prepared for the heal- 
 ing of wounds, if it should receive them. 
 
 A further effect of having the circulation laden 
 with adrenalin is that breathing is rendered easier. 
 This is because the smooth muscle of the air tubes 
 becomes relaxed so that the great inrush of air 
 does not have to encounter contracted bronchioles. 
 By this effect adrenalin brings it about that breath- 
 ing does not become excessively labored even in 
 supreme exertion. 
 
 Lastly, adrenalin gives to tired muscle the 
 equivalent of rest. The injection of one cubic cen- 
 timeter of adrenin has in fact been found to cause 
 a recovery of from fifty to seventy-five per cent, 
 efficiency in a fatigued muscle. This striking ad- 
 vantage enables the organism to continue the 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 93 
 
 struggle far beyond its ordinary powers, and it is 
 hence not to be marveled at that a man frenzied 
 with excitement seems to double or treble his 
 strength. 
 
 This great number of advantageous reactions 
 resulting from pain might have led us to the point 
 of believing that pain was after all an excellent 
 thing for the body. But let it be remembered 
 that we are discussing the extra supplies drawn 
 out in answer to excessive demands. When this 
 mobilization proceeds moderately, as it does in 
 response to active pleasure, the ultimate effect is 
 tonic. But in pain the body is on an emergency 
 basis and excessively so. The war debt will have 
 to be paid when peace is declared. Then it will 
 be discovered that the exchequer has been ser- 
 iously depleted. When the object of tremendous 
 struggle has been removed from the scene, we are 
 left with depressed bodily states — slowed heart 
 action, lowered blood pressure, and the inertia 
 from digestive organs that have been violently 
 put out of commission. It is this latter condition 
 which is the real effect of pain. Unpleasantness 
 evokes it directly without the temporary phase of 
 excitement. It offers no definite deed to perform, 
 
94 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 but leaves us to settle down at once to the depres- 
 sion which all things painful sooner or later bring 
 about. The definiteness with which this depres- 
 sion of the body can be accomplished by means of 
 depressive ideas has often been demonstrated ex- 
 perimentally. When a group of seventeen medi- 
 cal students were given milk-sugar pills, and in- 
 formed that they had taken a new kind of cardiac 
 depressant, thirteen of the number responded with 
 a slower heart beat. Little wonder that the doc- 
 tor should use such studious care to prevent any- 
 thing resembling an atmosphere of gloom in his 
 vicinity ! The personal impression created by his 
 presence is as potent a factor in producing sub- 
 stantial physical effects as are most of the med- 
 icines he is called on to administer. 
 
 Summary 
 
 In making any general statement in regard to 
 the bodily effects of pain and pleasure it is neces- 
 sary to keep continually in mind the difference be- 
 tween immediate and final effects of pain, and the 
 difference in effect of the moderate and of the 
 violent pleasures. Confining ourselves to the con- 
 sideration of the: immediate effects of pain and of 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 95 
 
 moderate pleasure we noted the following signifi- 
 cant facts: Pain impedes digestion in every par- 
 ticular. It diminishes the secretion of saliva and 
 of gastric juice, and delays the peristaltic contrac- 
 tions. Its immediate effect on the circulation is 
 to give an extra supply of blood to the limbs, 
 heart and lungs at the expense of the digestive 
 organs. Further results of pain are that the liver 
 releases an unusual supply of blood-sugar, the 
 blood is more disposed to coagulation, the muscles 
 are less fatigable, and rapid breathing is made 
 easier through the relaxation of the air tubes. 
 The immediate bodily effects of moderate pleasure 
 are as a rule directly opposed to those of pain. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 The Nervous Basis of Pain and 
 Pleasure 
 
 It is an accepted doctrine of modern psychology 
 that every possible variation in mental life cor- 
 responds to some variation in nervous condition. 
 Psychology has been forced to accept this paral- 
 lelism, partly because of the number of facts all 
 pointing to the same conclusion, and partly be- 
 cause the theory offers the most intelligible basis 
 for explaining mental life in terms of cause and 
 effect. 
 
 The main facts that point to an intimate rela- 
 tion between mind and brain are : 
 
 (i) The fact that any injury to the brain al- 
 ways means some loss of mental capacity. If the 
 optic (second cranial) nerve is injured, the ability 
 to see is either lost or impaired; likewise the in- 
 variable connection of hearing with the eighth 
 nerve has been certainly established; and so on for 
 
 all of the twelve cranial nerves. 
 
 96 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 97 
 
 (2) w The fact that mental development always 
 corresponds to brain development. The child's 
 brain, like his mind, is much less developed than 
 that of the man. Likewise the dog's brain falls 
 far short of the man's in development; but for 
 those mental abilities in which the dog surpasses 
 man, as, for example, the sense of smell, there is 
 a special brain part (the olfactory lobe), which 
 is tremendously enlarged to correspond to his 
 extra capacity. 
 
 (3) The fact that by stimulating certain parts 
 of the brain it is possible to produce definite re- 
 actions. These reactions may be primarily motor, 
 as when by applying a weak electric current to the 
 Rolandic (upper central) part of a dog's brain, we 
 succeed in producing now a movement of the front 
 legs, now a wagging of the tail, now a barking. 
 Again the effects may be sensory, as when we ob- 
 serve that in exploring the skin with a warm, 
 pointed cylinder, as often as the area touched cor- 
 responds to the location of a certain kind of nerve 
 ending (corpuscle of Ruffini) under the skin, we 
 are aware of the sensation of warmth. 
 
 Always and everywhere the story has been the 
 same; more and more special nervous facts are 
 
Figs. 6 and 7. 1 — Fig. 6 at the left shows the general relations of the 
 central nervous system to the bones of the skull and spine. Figure 
 7, at the right, displays the general contours of the central system 
 as seen from in front. The great ganglionated cord of the sympa- 
 thetic system is shown attached to one side of the spinal^ nerves; 
 the other side has been cut away. Cer., the cerebral hemispheres; 
 O, the olfactory centers; M, the medulla oblongata; Cb., the cere- 
 bellum; Sp.C, the spinal cord; I, the olfactory nerve; II, the optic 
 nerve; VIII, the auditory nerve; C, the first cervical spinal nerve; 
 Dx t the first dorsal, or thoracic, nerve; L±, the first lumbar nerve; Si, 
 the first sacral nerve. (From Angell's Psychology, Courtesy Henry 
 Holt & Co.) 
 
 98 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 99 
 
 being found to have an invariable connection with 
 certain special mental facts. The advance of 
 physiological psychology in this direction has been 
 of a sort to justify ambitious hopes for the future. 
 " No psychosis (mental activity) without neurosis 
 (nervous activity)" has been the slogan, and the 
 supposition has been that finding the particular 
 neurosis for every particular psychosis is only a 
 matter of time and more detailed progress. 
 
 It must be admitted, however, that pain and 
 pleasure are not to be numbered among the con- 
 spicuous conquests of physiological psychology up 
 to date. Indeed it may be said that it is even yet 
 something of a moot point whether pain impulses 
 ever reach the brain proper, or whether they stop 
 just short of the cerebral hemispheres. The de- 
 tails regarding the distribution of pain nerves are 
 likewise far from being satisfactorily made out, 
 although much careful work has been done along 
 this line. 
 
 ,The best evidence as to the brain-center for 
 pain and pleasure, points to the so-called " optic 
 thalamus " as being most directly concerned. If, 
 for simplicity's sake, we picture the brain as 
 formed of a top, middle and lower story, we may 
 
i$yfi 
 
 Fig. 8. — Showing schematically the ascending and descending tracts 
 between cord and cortex. Impulses of pain transmitted from the 
 skin to the spinal cord by way of C or D, ascend the sensory 
 columns in the cord, and crossing over to G arrive at the thalamus, 
 H. The cerebral hemispheres lie above. (From Pillsbury's 
 " Fundamentals of Psychology," Courtesy the Macmillan Co.) 
 
 IOO 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 101 
 
 think of the thalamus as an important part of the 
 middle story. Above it lie the cerebral hemis- 
 pheres which, as is well known, subserve all of 
 the special sensations but pain, and all of the 
 imagery and association of ideas which go to make 
 up our perception, memory, imagination and 
 thought. In short, this upper story may be said 
 to be the seat of sheer intellect and of deliberate 
 control. But it is a feelingless part of the brain. 
 Destruction to it is not marked by any change in 
 the painful or pleasant aspects of things. The 
 expression " cold intellectuality " seems appro- 
 priate to all of those phases of our mental life in 
 which this upper brain level is primarily at work. 
 If one finds a supreme virtue in knowing all things 
 and suffering nothing, he must believe the need of 
 the race is in more and more cerebral activity at 
 the expense of activity of the lower brain centers. 
 Considerably below the thalamus lie the med- 
 ulla and cerebellum, the lower story of the brain. 
 Together with the spinal cord, these centers make 
 it possible for us to perform those acts which are 
 most necessary for our bodily existence. A frog 
 deprived of all but these three centers is still able 
 to breathe, swallow, swim, turn over from his 
 
102 
 
 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 back, and make defensive movements in protec- 
 tion of his body when touched, but all of these 
 activities seem to proceed automatically. Every 
 object is, for him, only a space-occupying mass, 
 
 FlG. g. — Showing the middle and lower brain, th, thalamus; ps, pm, 
 pi, are superior, middle, and inferior peduncles of the cerebellum, 
 which may itself be seen, in part cut away and drawn to one side. 
 (After Wundt. From Pillsbury's " Fundamentals of Psychology," 
 Courtesy the Macmillan Co.) 
 
 and not a something to call forth an attitude of 
 like or dislike. 
 
 It is the middle story of the brain, containing 
 the thalamus, which seems to furnish the special 
 conditions of painful and pleasurable sensibility. 
 When this part of the brain is injured, one of the 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 103 
 
 most conspicuous results is a great exaggeration 
 of painful sensibility. After injury to the lateral 
 zone of the thalamus, according to Herrick, 1 
 " acute, persistent, paroxysmal pains are always 
 present, often intolerable and yielding to no 
 analgesic treatment. There is also a tendency to 
 react excessively to unpleasant stimuli." Even 
 tickling becomes very unpleasant, but the pleas- 
 ure from moderate warmth is increased. It 
 appears then that when the thalamus through 
 injury is somewhat isolated from the controlling 
 activity of the cortex (top story), the result is a 
 free play to its affective (feeling) activity. Both 
 pleasure and pain become unrestrained and there 
 is a consequent overloading of all sensations with 
 an exaggerated feeling-tone. In these facts we 
 find a neurological basis for the ancient distinction 
 between mind and heart, for now it may be said 
 that a man thinks with his cerebral hemispheres 
 (top story), feels with his thalamus (middle 
 story) , and with his lower brain centers performs 
 the machine-like acts which are regularly neces- 
 sary to his very existence. It is evident that a 
 well-rounded life, abounding in complex and 
 
 1 Herrick, C. J., " Introduction to Neurology," 1916. 
 
io 4 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 refined sentiments, rests on numerous inter-con- 
 nections between the thalamus and the cortex. 
 For it is the elaboration of connections in the 
 cerebrum which gives crude feeling the basis for 
 discrimination and thus lays the foundation for a 
 critical appreciation of the things that please or 
 displease. Culture and real artistic feeling are 
 marked by the presence of this higher intellectual- 
 ity in the things of the heart. But if the thalamus 
 profits by its cortical connections, it renders value 
 received in supplying the emotional drive without 
 which mere intellectuality becomes arid and bar- 
 ren. [The pedant who, for all his learning, has 
 no live interests, the prodigy of theory lacking 
 utterly the glow of practical enthusiasms, the 
 calculating schemer whose reptilian selfishness is 
 unrelieved by any generous warmth, these are men 
 whose cerebral organization (top story) has in a 
 measure parted company with its thalamic found- 
 ation and naturally, when weighed in the balance 
 by their fellows, they are found wanting. 
 
 The connections of pain and pleasure in the 
 nervous system outside the brain, have not been 
 at all clearly made out except for surface pain and 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 105 
 
 for tickling. Pleasantness and unpleasantness, it 
 is generally agreed, are not to be referred to any- 
 particular nerves but depend on the kind of nerv- 
 ous discharge that is produced when any given 
 nerves are called into activity. Pleasantness, for 
 example, may result equally well from a stimula- 
 tion of the nerves of taste or of smell, of hearing, 
 or of vision. It is not the specific nerve but the 
 character of the discharge that makes the dif- 
 ference between pleasantness and unpleasantness. 
 A great variety of hypotheses have been advanced 
 as to what it is about the nervous impulse that 
 makes the difference. Perhaps the most widely 
 discussed of these theories has been the one 
 advanced by Marshall in his " Pleasure, Pain and 
 ^Esthetics, " and recently restated in his later work 
 entitled " Consciousness.'' Briefly stated, his 
 view is that any nervous activity is pleasant, if it 
 involves the use of surplus stored force; it is 
 unpleasant whenever the energy demanded by the 
 activity is greater than the amount which is readily 
 available. In other words, pleasantness means 
 that we are spending our surplus; unpleasantness, 
 that we are drawing on our reserve. If a man 
 
106 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 who has sat all day in a train enjoys getting out 
 and walking briskly up the street, that is because 
 the energy consumed in walking comes out of the 
 abundance of the surplus which he has gradually 
 stored up during his ride. If, after miles of such 
 walking, he begins to find it unpleasant, the reason 
 is that, having consumed his surplus, he begins 
 after a time to find that the energy demanded by 
 this activity is greater in amount than that which 
 he can produce without drawing on his general 
 reserve. The author of this theory has adduced 
 many strong arguments in its support, but it has 
 seemed to most psychologists that pleasure must 
 rest on a more stable nervous condition than the 
 mere burning up of a surplus — a process which 
 it is hard to think of as drawn out in time, whereas 
 any given pleasure may show a very considerable 
 length of life. Moreover, the fact that pleasure 
 is usually keenest where the issue of a conflict is 
 most in the balance, is one which is difficult to 
 interpret in terms of surplus energy consumption. 
 The difference between just winning and just being 
 defeated is as wide as the two poles, but the 
 energy-depletion of the loser may not be conspicu- 
 ously greater than that of the victor. 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 107 
 
 The more recent theory of Max Meyer * is that 
 11 the correlate of pleasantness and unpleasantness 
 is the increase or decrease of the intensity of a 
 previously constant current, if the increase or 
 decrease is caused by a force acting at a point 
 other than the point of sensory stimulation." In 
 other words, when a given nervous discharge is 
 heightened by a sudden access of energy, we get 
 pleasantness ; when it is diminished by interference, 
 we get unpleasantness. 2 " Imagine," says Profes- 
 sor Meyer, " you are interested in the presidential 
 election. You have heard the dinner-bell and are 
 rising from your chair. The cover of a magazine 
 strikes your eyes, on which you read the title of 
 an article on candidates for the presidency. This 
 interferes with your walking to the dining-room 
 and you experience a brief unpleasantness. . . . 
 While you are reading the paper, every stimula- 
 tion of your sense organs other than the sight of 
 the printed pages is unable to reach its motor end, 
 but must join and increase the intensity of the 
 process of reading because of your acquired 
 capacity for reacting strongly upon words and 
 
 1 Max Meyer, " The Nervous Correlate of Pleasantness and 
 Unpleasantness," Psychological Review, 1908, p. 307. 
 
 2 Max Meyer, op. cit., 317. 
 
108 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 sentences which have the meaning of politics. 
 According to our theory you experience pleasant- 
 ness. Thus we see that an acquired capacity of 
 attention can result in unpleasantness at the 
 moment when attention begins and must result 
 in pleasantness as long as attention in the same 
 direction continues.'' Concentration of nervous 
 energy appears in this theory as the physical basis 
 of pleasantness, dissipation of energy corresponds 
 to unpleasantness. It is the familiar contrast 
 between easy working attention to what interests 
 us, and the painful inability to collect our scattered 
 thoughts when we find ourselves flying off at a 
 tangent as one distraction succeeds another. 
 Pleasure means nervous efficiency, not the effi- 
 ciency of an overfed nerve-cell consuming its 
 stored-up surplus, but that of a whole system of 
 nerves converging on the accomplishment of an 
 end. The detailed working out of this theory 
 would lead us beyond the limits of the present 
 discussion, but it is evident that it lends itself to 
 a wide range of application. The last word that 
 can be said at present is only conjecture. Only 
 this much seems reasonably established — that the 
 nervous basis of pleasantness and unpleasantness 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 109 
 
 is to be looked for rather in the general mode of 
 functioning of the whole nervous system than in 
 the specific properties of any special set of nerves. 
 
 Bodily distress and gratification appear to 
 depend on the working of the special nervous 
 system that supplies the abdominal cavity. [This 
 system, the so-called autonomic, is made up prin- 
 cipally of three great plexuses of nerve centers — 
 the cranial, the solar, and the sacral plexus. It 
 has long been known that a blow delivered at the 
 solar plexus (in the pit of the stomach) would 
 result in acute bodily distress, if not in actual col- 
 lapse. Xhis blow has always been a favorite 
 resource of the prize-fighter, who, without making 
 any pretence at a knowledge of the anatomical 
 reasons connected with the " knock out," has 
 nevertheless guided the delivery of his blow with 
 the certainty born of much experience. 
 
 It is only quite recently that anything approach- 
 ing a detailed knowledge of the autonomic nervous 
 system has been worked out, and plausibility still 
 has to take the place of proof when any general 
 statement is offered as to its method of operation, 
 but there is not a little evidence that points to the 
 " sympathetic " nerves (those which connect the 
 
no 
 
 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 region of the solar plexus with the spinal cord) , 
 as the conductors of inner bodily pains. It has 
 been observed, for example, in cases of syringom- 
 yelia — a disease of the spinal cord — that when 
 the injury to the cord occurs at a lower level than 
 the entry of the " sympathetic " connections, 
 bodily pains continue to be felt. But when the 
 
 *-m. 
 
 Fig. io. — Cross section of skin. hi. horny layer of epidermis; ne, 
 nerve endings; nt, nerve trunks, leading to spinal cord. (From 
 Angell's " Psychology," Courtesy Henry Holt & Co.) 
 
 spinal injury occurs at a point higher than the 
 fifth or sixth dorsal segment of the cord, that is, 
 high enough to interfere with the central connec- 
 tions of the " sympathetic " nerves, no bodily 
 pains are felt. 
 
 The nerve apparatus for surface pain and for 
 tickling has been much more satisfactorily made 
 out. Careful exploration of the skin with very 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE in 
 
 delicate hair points has afforded evidence of the 
 existence of special pain spots which yield upon 
 stimulation a pointed wiry sensation different from 
 that of pressure or of temperature. These spots 
 number from ioo to 200 per square centimeter, 
 and their localization seems to correspond to that 
 of the free nerve endings in the epidermis. 
 Where the skin is lacking in this type of nerve 
 ending it is insensitive to pain, as, for example, 
 on the inside of the cheek, where the membranous 
 covering can be bitten or pricked without causing 
 more than the inconvenience of an abrasion. 
 Where, on the other hand, this type of nerve is 
 the only one to be found in a given area, the only 
 sensation quality that can be obtained is that of 
 pain. This is true of the cornea of the eye and 
 of the tooth pulps. Contact with the " nerve " of 
 a tooth is not felt as pressure, but only as pain. 
 
 [The pain nerves, although arranged in a 
 separate system, are so intimately connected with 
 the other nerves of the skin that any excessive 
 stimulation of the senses of pressure or of temper- 
 ature readily overflows into the pain channels, and 
 the result is a painful quality, over and above that 
 of the special sense in question. Thus very hot 
 
Fig. ii. — Nerve endings in skin and about hair follicles. The free 
 nerve endings, — "pain spots" are just below the skin hsi. (From 
 Pillsbury's " Fundamentals of Psychology," Courtesy the Mac- 
 millan Co.) 
 
 112 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 113 
 
 water feels both hot and painful; intense pressure 
 feels both heavy and painful, and so on for prac- 
 tically all of the senses. It is as if pain had been 
 only gradually differentiated from the other 
 senses; in spite of its recently evolved special 
 nervous machinery, it remains bound to the service 
 of the older neurone systems, a sort of collateral 
 pathway excited by excesses in the adjoining 
 channels. 
 
 The pain fibers, on reaching the spinal cord, 
 cross to the opposite side, and, ascending directly 
 up the gray matter of the cord to the thalamus, 
 they form the pain tract of the cord. " Injury to 
 this path in the human body may cause complete 
 insensitivity to both superficial and deep pain on 
 the opposite side of the body below the site of 
 injury, without loss of general tactile sensibility." * 
 When the injury to this path has been only suffi- 
 cient to dull and not destroy the functioning of the 
 nerves, the result is that all pain becomes reduced 
 to an itching. Experiments by Dr. Thole, a 
 German physiologist, show that when the spinal 
 cord of a patient is anaesthetized, there is a cer- 
 
 1 C. Judson Herrick, " Introduction to Neurology," Philadel- 
 phia, 1916, p. 251. 
 
ii 4 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 tain stage at which the patient will report that the 
 pricking of a needle doesn't hurt, but itches. This 
 is in accord with the fact that when the pain spots 
 on the skin are very weakly stimulated, the result 
 is an itching sensation which may be indifferent or 
 even mildly pleasant, especially when scratching 
 ensues. The sense of tickle shares the same 
 nerves as the pressure sense. The end organs in 
 the skin, which function for this sense, are there- 
 fore the bulbs at the roots of the hairs and, in 
 the hairless regions of the skin, the corpuscles of 
 Meissner. From these end organs, communica- 
 tion proceeds to the spinal cord and thence 
 upward, by way of the special path for touch in 
 the spinal lemniscus. It is possible for an injury 
 to this path to take place in such fashion that a 
 normal impulse of touch, such as pressure on the 
 finger, merely tickles. It has been observed that 
 when the spinal cord is anaesthetized, the gradual 
 stages of deterioration in the functioning of the 
 touch nerves is marked by first the loss of tickle, 
 then of light touch, then of the sensation from 
 solid contact. Tickling therefore appears as a 
 partially effective pressure, which drops out when 
 the nerve is considerably reduced in efficiency. 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 115 
 
 This accords with the fact that it is our sensitivity 
 to extremely light touch that renders us ticklish 
 under normal conditions. 
 
 In passing it may be noted that there is con- 
 siderable evidence to the effect that the surface of 
 the body has evolved more than one kind of sys- 
 tem of nerve terminals. Head * has found evi- 
 dence of as many as three separate systems, which 
 he has called the systems of protopathic, epicritic, 
 and deep sensibility, but inasmuch as the exact 
 functioning of these separate systems is an obscure 
 point, we must leave it with only passing mention. 
 
 Summary 
 
 We have seen that the most primitive kind of 
 pleasure and pain is probably pleasantness and 
 unpleasantness. Corresponding to this we have 
 found that the nervous basis of pleasantness and 
 unpleasantness is not a specially evolved system of 
 nerves, but some characteristic of nervous impulses 
 in general. The more special states of bodily 
 distress and gratification seem to have a particular 
 connection with the autonomic nervous system, 
 which forms such a conspicuous feature of the 
 
 1 Head, Rivers, and Sherren, op. cit. 
 
n6 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 inner body. Surface pain and tickling are seen 
 to depend on the distribution of special nerves 
 throughout the skin. These nerves group them- 
 selves into very definite paths in the spinal cord 
 and communicate finally with the thalamus of the 
 brain, which is the center at which all variations 
 of our affective (feeling) life are brought to a 
 focus. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 The Diagnostic Value of Pain 
 
 " Where does it hurt you?" is generally the 
 physician's first question. To be sure there are 
 exceptional diseases in this respect, such as typhoid, 
 scarlet fever, and malaria, in which local pain 
 plays no part; there is also the well-known fact 
 that just before death even the most painful 
 diseases tend to become painless; but these few 
 exceptions do not seriously affect the general 
 statement that the pains reported by the patient 
 are the physician's main reliance in all depart- 
 ments of diagnosis. And it is just for this reason 
 thaf the physician's first care must be to satisfy 
 himself as to the extent to which the patient's 
 statement of the case can be accepted at face value. 
 The thousands of over-tender sufferers, who daily 
 pour out their exaggerated tale of woe, have done 
 much to encourage a widespread belief in the 
 unreality of all pain; and there is no gainsaying 
 
 117 
 
n8 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 the fact that a very considerable per cent, of 
 reported pain is unreal in the sense that it prob- 
 ably has its basis not in serious organic lesion, but 
 in morbidly directed attention to petty bodily dis- 
 orders, which would pass unnoticed by a person 
 of more robust nervous constitution. On this 
 account the physician must in some measure 
 diagnose the patient's mental tendencies before he 
 can commit himself to a judgment regarding his 
 physical condition. 
 
 The ease with which M imaginary" pain might 
 be induced in a suggestible person can be readily 
 seen in an illusion experiment which has been 
 devised for a sense very closely related to pain, 
 that of warmth. The subject is asked to hold in 
 his hand a coil of German-silver wire, which seems 
 to have some connection with four tungsten lamps, 
 which give when lighted a powerful illumination, 
 and he is told to expect the wire to become warm 
 whenever he sees the lights turned on. Actually 
 the wire will not become warm unless a secret 
 switch underneath the box has been closed. The 
 experimenter can operate this switch noiselessly 
 without the subject's knowledge, and without in 
 any way affecting the illumination of the lamps 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 119 
 
 which seem to be the real source of the heat. 
 Many subjects, under these circumstances, will 
 readily report that they feel the glow of warmth 
 every time they see the powerful tungsten lights 
 snapped on. Such subjects may be safely classi- 
 fied as over-suggestible, and their false report in 
 regard to the experience of warmth, which demon- 
 strably had no objective cause, leaves a strong 
 presumption that if their report had referred to 
 pain, for which the objective facts are difficult of 
 access, the situation would be one to bafHe an inex- 
 pert diagnostician. 
 
 We have seen that the simplest general way 
 to picture painfulness was as a struggle in which 
 the organism puts up a losing fight. In the case 1 
 of the " imaginary " pains the battle may be lost 
 in one of two ways. It may be either through too 
 much attention to the disturbance, or through too 
 little resistance to it. In the former case we 
 have the pains of psychasthenia, in the latter 
 those of neurasthenia. [The psychasthenic will 
 describe with a smile on his face the darting pains 
 he felt a short time ago, when it seemed as if knife 
 
 1 See C. L. Dana, " The Interpretation of Pain and the 
 Dyesthesias," Jour. Am. Med. Assoc, lvi, No. n, 787. 
 
120 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 blades were sticking in his knees. The memory 
 of his pain brings with it no painfullness, because 
 his original pain was due to a slight irritation 
 which was morbidly enlarged by his attention. As 
 soon as his attention is diverted, all trace of pain 
 disappears. The neurasthenic is more likely to 
 bring back his disorder as he describes it. His 
 excessive weakness and irritability bring it about 
 that a very slight reference to his headaches and 
 backaches is sufficient to reinstate the moans that 
 his tired heart and underfunctioning digestive 
 system make only too easy for him. 
 
 Whenever a physician is called upon to deal 
 with cases where there is reason to suspect the 
 patient's ability to give a genuine account of his 
 pains, he is likely to be guided by some two or 
 three supplementary criteria which are useful in 
 this connection. He watches the facial expression 
 while testing the supposedly sensitive part. 
 Usually the neuropathic patient, under such cir- 
 cumstances, fails in spite of his extreme state- 
 ments, to show anything like the anxiety of expres- 
 sion that normal pain impresses on the faces of 
 real sufferers. Another criterion is the fluctuation 
 of blood pressure during a paroxysm of pain. 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 121 
 
 This index, however, is far less certain than that 
 of the sympathetic reflex in the pupil of the eye. 
 A clear dilatation of the pupil is convincing evi- 
 dence that real pain is being felt. When a long 
 past history of pain is complained of, it is useful 
 to know also whether the loss of weight was con- 
 siderable during that period, for the regular effect 
 of long continued pain is a loss of bodily weight. 
 When it has been ascertained that the patient is 
 to be regarded as trustworthy in his account of 
 himself, the next great possibility of error lies in 
 the fact that there are many pains of the sort 
 known as referred pains. That is, the physical 
 seat of trouble may be in one place and the pain 
 be felt as located in a quite different part of the 
 body. The pain may be transferred to the other 
 side of the body, as when a patient with appendi- 
 citis sometimes feels nothing hurting him except 
 on the left side. Much more frequent are the 
 references up and down the body. For example, 
 in one case of pain in the knee caused by a corn 
 on the toe, the diagnosis was erroneously made 
 and an operation was advised for loose cartilage 
 in the knee. 1 But the fact that the patient felt 
 
 1 See Rudolph Schmidt, "Pain," Philadelphia, 1911, p. 3546*. 
 
122 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 the pains only when he wore boots or shoes finally 
 gave the clue to their referred character. A still 
 more curious instance is one in which pressure on 
 a mole on the foot caused pain to be felt in the 
 groin. Cases of downward reference are also of 
 frequent occurrence, as when pain is felt in the 
 leg as a result of tubercular disease in the spine, or 
 when pain is felt in the little finger as a result of 
 pressure on the ulnar nerve from a growth on the 
 first rib. 
 
 In the head, the ear is a frequent repository of 
 the troubles of other parts, as when an irritated 
 lower tooth or tonsil causes a referred earache; 
 and headache itself is the one form of pain which 
 more than any other calls for taking account of 
 the most remote bodily areas as disease centers. 
 .Thus there is the well-known headache from con- 
 stipation or dyspepsia, 1 which disappears as soon 
 as the stomach and intestine take up their normal 
 functioning. In women the paths which lead to 
 pain in the head are even more various than in 
 men. Cases are recorded where habitual head- 
 aches disappeared after marriage or after the 
 
 1 See R. J. Behan, "Pain: Its Origin, Conduction, Perception 
 and Diagnostic Significance," New York, 1916. 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 123 
 
 birth of the first child, or as the result of some 
 adjustment which had apparently not the remotest 
 connection with the nerves of the head. 
 
 The greatest advance toward a systematic 
 interpretation of referred pains was made through 
 the researches of Head. He explained as fol- 
 lows the cases where internal organs affect definite 
 areas of the skin. The diseased internal organ 
 sends up its impulses to the appropriate segment 
 in the spinal cord, and here the impulse, instead of 
 keeping to its path, spreads itself diffusely into the 
 near-lying fibers of the same segment. In sq 
 doing it may excite those fibers that supply areas 
 of the skin from this particular spinal segment, 
 and the result is that the skin sensation, being much 
 more highly developed and accurately localized 
 than visceral sensation, arrogates to itself the 
 pain, and we feel as if hurt on the surface of the 
 skin although injured inside the body. 
 
 To put the matter more simply, referred pain 
 means that there has been a crossing of " wires " 
 somewhere along the line, and in order to inter- 
 pret it satisfactorily, it is necessary to know what 
 are the possibilities of such crossing, i. e., what 
 are the nervous impulses that come into near con- 
 
124 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 tact in the same spinal segments or elsewhere. 
 Head's work has done much toward clearing up 
 this point. He has shown, for example, how a 
 painful area in the temporal region of the head 
 may be associated with impulses from the heart, 
 lungs, or stomach; and how the area at the back 
 of the head might be especially connected with 
 the liver or intestine. Each organ within the 
 head also has its maximum points of referred pain. 
 For example, when the retina is involved, the 
 crown of the head may be affected. But in spite 
 of the exercise of the most careful study, we may 
 well imagine that baffling cases of this sort will be 
 constantly arising. One instance is recorded in 
 which a woman, suffering apparently from the 
 bronchial tubes, visited specialist after specialist, 
 all to no purpose. One day by chance there was 
 discovered in the outer ear a large plug of wax, 
 and with its removal the coughing and irritation of 
 the throat at once subsided. 
 
 The two great sources of error in the diagnosis 
 of pain we have seen to be the imaginativeness of 
 nervous patients, and the referred character of 
 many pains in normal patients. Reasonable 
 allowance being made for these two sources of 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 125, 
 
 error, he bases his diagnosis of pain mainly on 
 three criteria — location, time of occurrence, and 
 influences that modify the pain. " Where does 
 it hurt you?" " When does it hurt you?" 
 " Under what conditions does it hurt you most and 
 least?" L These are the questions the answers to 
 which make possible the intelligent interpretation 
 of pains. 
 
 Location 
 
 Easiest to judge on this basis are the pains in 
 the joints. The typical joint pain is clearly 
 defined and without any radiation. There are a 
 few exceptions, such as the radiations from the 
 ankle joint in flat foot, but in general it can be 
 said of the joints that the hurt will coincide pretty 
 exactly with the trouble. On the other hand, 
 there are pains which by their very characteristic 
 radiations give the clue to diagnosis. Thus head- 
 aches that are due to too great intracranial pres- 
 sure reach a maximum in the nape of the neck, 
 and tend to radiate down the back, especially 
 about the shoulder blades. When the seat of pain 
 is inside the body, an important fact to ascertain 
 is whether localization is confined to either the 
 left or the right side. When both spontaneous 
 
126 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 pain and tenderness to pressure occur on the left 
 side below the arch formed by the lower ribs, 
 ulcer of the stomach most naturally comes to 
 mind, although affections of the spleen, intestine, 
 and even heart are not barred from possibility. 
 If the pain is limited to the right side, the prob- 
 abilities first suggested are disease of the gall- 
 bladder, of the duodenum, the colon, etc. The 
 tenderness from a diseased appendix is generally 
 quite low down. 
 
 Pains located in the shoulder are likewise of 
 great suggestive value in sounding the condition of 
 the inner organs. When a person of tuberculous 
 appearance complains of shoulder pains, the 
 physician at once has his attention directed to the 
 pulmonary apices. When tuberculosis is out of 
 the question, the next best guess is disease of the 
 arteries, especially if the pain is increased by 
 violent exertion, such as running up stairs. When 
 the pain is of quite mild intensity, the probability 
 is increased that the seat of inflammation is further 
 down in the stomach, spleen, or liver, but in these 
 cases there are usually other more pronounced 
 local symptoms, so that the shoulder pain is only 
 an incident in the diagnosis. 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 127 
 
 The above instances, taken somewhat at random 
 from the vast amount of topographical detail that 
 concerns the subject of pain, serve to indicate the 
 delicacy of art that the physician must bring to his 
 scientific knowledge in order to interpret his data 
 rightly. 
 
 Time of Occurrence 
 
 Although the time of occurrence has a much 
 more limited significance than the facts just dis- 
 cussed, it is of considerable importance to know 
 what is the relation of a patient's pains to the 
 hours of eating, and also to know whether the 
 acutest attacks occur by day or by night. Thus 
 pyloric colic has the regular characteristic that the 
 afternoon attack begins two to three hours after 
 the midday meal. 1 " At this time the expulsion 
 of the gastric contents through the narrowed 
 pylorus, or an attempt at this, takes place. Gas- 
 tric rigidity sets in, and gurgling sounds are 
 audible, while gas is belched up and there are 
 eructations of sour fluid. Large quantities of 
 indigestible food cause delay in the onset of the 
 pain, but increase its severity. The attacks often 
 
 1 Rudolph Schmidt, op. cit., p. 179. 
 
128; PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 last from two to three hours, and are ordinarily 
 terminated by the onset of copious vomiting." 
 
 A much larger group of pains is characterized 
 by onset at night. In the greatest per cent, of 
 cases the pain of ulcer is nocturnal, the paroxysms 
 occurring anywhere from eleven to one o'clock, 
 and the pain lasting until the early morning. In 
 general, colicky pains are most apt to be man- 
 ifested during the midnight hours. Pains con- 
 nected with the disease of syphilis have their onset 
 regularly at night. The " nervous " headache of 
 which the syphilitic in the secondary or tertiary 
 stages complains is by far more common at night. 
 Non-occurrence at that time almost justifies the 
 rejection of syphilis as the cause. In addition, 
 neuralgic pains, and most of the gastric seizures 
 in general, are characteristically night pains. 
 The fact of night onset for all of this group gives 
 to the physician an additional means of determin- 
 ing the extent to which the patient is misled by his 
 subjective feelings. The probability is that if the 
 disturbance is sufficient to wake him out of his 
 midnight sleep, the cause is a very substantial one. 
 If, on the other hand, a neuralgia is complained 
 of, which is severe by day, but never troublesome 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 129 
 
 at night, neuropathic condition of the patient is 
 to that extent rendered more probable. 
 
 Modifying Factors 
 
 A peculiarity of all pain due to disorder in the 
 circulatory apparatus is that any bodily motion 
 tends to increase it. If a patient finds that the 
 act of climbing stairs or of running for a car leaves 
 him with a persistent pain in the back of the chest, 
 it is the heart and arteries that we should naturally 
 look to for the trouble. Motion of the body is a 
 very useful index to abdominal disorders also, 
 especially those in which the organs are congested, 
 for in these cases any lifting, stooping, or bending 
 back and forth is likely to increase pressure where 
 there is already too much of it. " Pain in the 
 neighborhood of the appendix," says Schmidt, 1 
 11 is not rarely elicited in drawing on the shoes, lift- 
 ing the head, bending the trunk, or sitting down, 
 etc." Again, 2 " the jar communicated to the 
 abdomen along the lower extremity on putting the 
 foot to the ground may give rise to pain; for 
 example, in the neighborhood of an inflamed 
 appendix, a movable kidney." Naturally the dis- 
 
 * R. Schmidt, op. cit. 2 R. Schmidt, op. cit. 
 
ijo PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 orders of the organs of motion are most easily 
 determined by direct motion of the parts them- 
 selves. Pain resulting from very slow motion of 
 a joint gives a strong presumption in favor of 
 arthralgia. 
 
 When motion proves to be of no especial conse- 
 quence, it is often possible to be guided by the 
 position of maximum pain. [Thus it has often 
 been observed that when a patient with ulcer has 
 a paroxysm of pain, the intensity can be varied 
 greatly according as he lies on his face, back, or 
 side. Patients with gastralgia are likely to find 
 that lying on the right side increases their dis- 
 comfort. It is almost as if they had forcibly 
 moved the gastric contents across to that side. 
 Colic pain is likewise made more acute by lying 
 on the right side. Headache, when due to too 
 great tension within the cranium, will be worst 
 when the head is bent forward, and the greatest 
 relief is to be had by bending the head backward 
 as far as possible. This position seems to make 
 for a diminution of the tension. 
 
 The one modifying factor that best serves to 
 localize pains and to point to the seat of disorder 
 is pressure. Here alone is a whole field for 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 131 
 
 diagnosis, and one which the physician with deft 
 fingers makes peculiarly his own. The number 
 of diagnoses that have been made possible by 
 pulling and pushing the skin with occasional per- 
 cussion, we can hardly hope to estimate, for ten- 
 derness to pressure is an almost constant feature 
 of all local inflammation. The most conspicuous 
 single instance perhaps is the pain caused by 
 pressure in the region of the appendix during the 
 stage of abscess formation. The very pressure 
 of the bed clothes at this time may cause the most 
 extreme agony. It is often of great diagnostic 
 importance to know whether the pain can be 
 relieved by the administration of local anaesthe- 
 tics. If cocaine relieves the discomfort, the 
 indication is clear that the pain producing factor 
 is local, not general; hence a previous suspicion of 
 something like gastric ulcer would be in a large 
 measure justified, if local anaesthesia for that part 
 of the abdomen temporarily relieved the situation. 
 The limits of our discussion have made it 
 impossible to do more than barely outline the 
 ways in which pain may be made serviceable in the 
 interest of diagnosis, but enough has been said to 
 make it clear that pain is by far the best instru- 
 
132 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 ment of the diagnostician. Other accompanying 
 symptoms such as swelling, peculiar formations, 
 noises from within, etc., all have their usefulness, 
 but they are in themselves generally very insuffi- 
 cient for an understanding of the nature of the 
 disorder. The study of pain with especial 
 emphasis on its location, time of occurrence, and 
 conditions by which it can be increased or 
 decreased — this is an indispensable support on 
 which the physician must lean when taking counsel 
 with himself as to how to proceed. When this 
 fails him there is great probability of his being 
 led astray. The writer knows a young man who, 
 when a boy, had his appendix removed as the 
 result of his falsified account of a pain in his side. 
 He had stoutly maintained his statement before 
 his parents and the doctor in order to free himself 
 from the need of going back to school! 
 
 Summary 
 
 Pain is unquestionably the physician's most 
 reliable dependence as a means of diagnosis, but 
 it is necessary for him to have perpetually before 
 him the possibility that a given pain may be 
 " imaginary " (psychasthenic or neurasthenic) , or 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 133 
 
 " referred " (giving a false indication as to the 
 real source of the trouble). The former source 
 of error he can in a measure guard against by 
 tests of suggestibility, by noting the change of 
 facial expression, of blood pressure and of the 
 pupil reflex. It is only recently that anything like 
 a systematic interpretation of referred pain has 
 been begun. 
 
 The three most important criteria on which to 
 base a diagnosis from pain were seen to be the 
 location, the time of occurrence, and the possible 
 modifying factors, such as motion, position and 
 pressure. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 ^Esthetic Pleasure 
 
 We have seen that the fundamental condition of 
 pleasure is to be found in the struggle which we 
 as living beings are constantly waging against the 
 environment. Whether pleasure comes in the 
 successful waging of the actual conflict or in the 
 restful accumulation of strength preparatory to 
 new struggle, it always derives its significance 
 from this one great fact of life. Any situation 
 which is adapted for the staging of a successful 
 conflict is therefore eminently suited for affording 
 us pleasure, and the aesthetic situation is one 
 which is peculiarly effective for just this reason. 
 Detached from reality though it may be, the 
 artistic setting is one which calls into play a variety 
 of tendencies which struggle for expression and 
 find it. " Unity in variety " is the definition which 
 has probably been most often applied to beauty, 
 and by this definition beauty is at once seen to 
 involve the mastery of complexities by a mind 
 
 134 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 135 
 
 which delights in combining, which refuses to 
 allow things to be discrete, and determines wher- 
 ever possible to assemble the various parts of the 
 world into something intelligible. Every strug- 
 gling mind which, like Archimedes, has trium- 
 phantly cried " Eureka ! n on the discovery of a 
 solution which simplified the bewildering complex- 
 ities against which it was pitted, has known the 
 thrill of unmixed pleasure. 
 
 " A theory is beautiful," says Stout, 1 " which 
 brings under one point of view a multitude of facts 
 previously dispersed without obvious bond of 
 union; so that, instead of dissipating attention 
 upon a loose aggregate, we can concentrate it 
 upon a unified whole." The beauty and the 
 pleasure in art are due to the fact that it supplies a 
 multitude of detail that can be unified without 
 undue strain. The more energetic and masterful 
 the mind the more it will demand that the material 
 of its art be really complex. Easy conquests 
 afford it little satisfaction. A contrast between 
 the art of the restless, self-assertive north Euro- 
 pean and that of the milder and more indolent 
 south European bears out this point strikingly. 
 
 1 Stout, op. cit., p. 283. 
 
i 3 6 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 Gehring in his suggestive book entitled " Racial 
 Contrasts,'' has pointed out in some detail the 
 remarkable difference between the art which satis- 
 fies the Italian and that which satisfies the Nordic 
 mind. In the music of the former we find chiefly 
 emphasized the simple melody sung by the voice 
 and repeated only as an encore. In the music of 
 northern Europe the dominating interest is not in 
 the single melody but in involved counterpoint, in 
 which several parts go their independent ways ; it 
 is not in the voice but in the orchestra ; not in the 
 aria but in the leitmotif which recurs in a variety 
 of contexts, and helps to weave together the mean- 
 ing of the whole opera. The comparison of the 
 work of Rossini, Donizzetti, Verdi and Puccini 
 with that of Bach, Beethoven, Wagner and 
 Strauss certainly gives justification to sweeping 
 statement. In literature the same distinction 
 holds. Over against the simple charm of style 
 which the Italian or French writer derives from 
 the orderly arrangement of material which is not 
 extremely involved, we have the elaborate, and 
 even heavy, literary expression of the German and 
 Englishman. The language itself is involved and 
 lavish in figures of speech; but most marked is the 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 137 
 
 penchant for building up infinitely complex literary 
 structures. Instead of the simple observance of 
 the dramatic unities of time, place and action, we 
 find Shakespeare introducing thirty-four charac- 
 ters in " Julius Caesar," and keeping up three plots 
 in "The Merchant of Venice"; we find Goethe 
 employing two hundred individual speakers in 
 11 Faust," and leading the action through all ages 
 and all parts of the universe. The English and 
 German novels, too, attempt to bring together 
 into a unity a large number of comparatively dis- 
 connected threads of interest, so that by the end 
 of the book if the reader has succeeded in bring- 
 ing his various interests through to a solution he 
 has shown himself capable of no little synthesis. 
 In painting, again, as in music and literature, the 
 south European is satisfied with much simpler 
 effect. In the Italian paintings graceful figures 
 exquisitely colored are grouped symmetrically 
 about a single center. In the Flemish and Ger- 
 man paintings there is an extraordinary elabora- 
 tion of detail and a large number of figures. The 
 task for attention is at times huge. Even a single 
 portrait is dealt with in such a way as to suggest 
 an infinity of things not actually portrayed. The 
 
138 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 Rembrandt portrait often seems as if about to 
 speak, or at least it sets us to psychologizing as 
 to what mental processes were represented on 
 the canvas. The Bocklin or Turner landscape, 
 instead of leaving us content with direct beauty, 
 challenges us to penetrate deep mysteries*. In 
 architecture the Greek temple offers the same type 
 of contrast with the Gothic cathedral. The per- 
 fection of simplicity of the Greek temple allows 
 everything to be apprehended with little effort. 
 The Gothic cathedral almost baffles us with its 
 immense number of pillars and flying buttresses, 
 statues, spires and windows. 
 
 Nordic art is a tribute to Nordic capacity for 
 effort. It pitches the struggle at a level of inten- 
 sity which would discourage a mind not well 
 supplied with active tendencies. Not merely com- 
 plexity, but even pain itself forms one of the fund- 
 amental conditions of aesthetic enjoyment for the 
 north European. We find this explicitly recog- 
 nized in much of their criticism of art and litera- 
 ture. For example, Schiller's dictum on tragedy 
 was that " the highest degree of moral pleasure 
 cannot make itself felt except in conflict. It 
 follows hence that the highest degree of pleasure 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 139 
 
 must always be accompanied by pain." And, 
 according to Marshall, 1 it was laid down by 
 Schlegel as a principle of modern art that beauty 
 and the characteristic ugly be indissolubly con- 
 nected; and by Rosenkranz " that the artistic 
 genius finds the triumph of his art where he repre- 
 sents the ugly objectified, and beauty all-powerful 
 through triumph over evil." The same acknowl- 
 edgment of difficulty and effort as indispensable 
 to aesthetic pleasure is seen in Lessing's insistence 
 that the artist's work be incomplete in detail in 
 order to leave room for the imagination to work 
 out its own salvation. Strict realism so exact in 
 every detail as to forbid personal interpretation 
 falls short of ideal beauty, because it leaves too 
 little occasion for inner activity on the part of the 
 spectator. 
 
 It is not by accident then that the artistic 
 preeminence of any nation or people runs parallel 
 with the power of that nation to achieve. The 
 golden age in art has always been the golden age 
 in national accomplishment. The age of Pericles 
 in Greece, the Renaissance in Italy, the Eliza- 
 
 1 H. R. Marshall, " Pain, Pleasure, and ^Esthetics," London, 
 P. 309. 
 
1 4 o PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 bethan period in England, the Nineteenth Century 
 in Germany, were all times in which great aspira- 
 tions were being realized and the atmosphere was 
 charged with the spirit of achievement. By the 
 same token great art can hardly appear in a 
 decadent age. " Where there is no vision the 
 people perish," and one of the surest symptoms of 
 approaching demise is the loss of artistic capacity. 
 But if difficulty is the handmaiden of aesthetic 
 pleasure, it is clear that the degree of difficulty 
 must accord with our power for solution. The 
 arousal of activities which arrive nowhere can 
 result only in an unpleasant jangling. " Beauty/' 
 said Schiller^ u can tolerate nothing abrupt or 
 violent M ; and Spencer probably had a similar 
 principle in mind when he made grace dependent 
 on adaptation to ends. Complete aesthetic satis- 
 faction comes about when manifold activities have 
 reached their appropriate ends. This is very 
 aptly illustrated in Marshall's 1 comparison of the 
 beauty of the suspension bridge with the ugliness 
 of the cantilever. " All of nature's lines," he 
 writes, " are affected by the power of gravitation. 
 It seems clear to me that the relative grace of the 
 
 1 Marshall, op. cit. 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 141 
 
 suspension bridge and of the cantilever is princi- 
 pally determined by the fact that the catenary 
 curve in the one case presents to us nature's 
 pendent form, while the strutted extensions of the 
 cantilever bring to us other lines than those in 
 accord with which she has educated us. As one's 
 eye follows the lines of the truss, natural organic 
 combinations bring preparation for action in 
 certain directions. But the stimuli to these 
 activities fail when the abrupt and rigid lines break 
 off in directions whch nature has never given us ; 
 the shocks . . . that result produce that sense of 
 discomfort which we express by calling the work 
 
 ugly." 
 
 [This same abortion of habitual activities is what 
 displeases us when any striking disproportion of 
 features renders a face hideously ugly, or when, 
 in listening to music which we are prepared to 
 follow through familiar progressions, we hear an 
 incorrect note or a new variety of dissonance for 
 which our musical education has left us ill adapted. 
 The impossible sequences of chords which occur 
 in the music of Schonberg have proven too much 
 for the endurance of present day symphony 
 audiences, and his eccentric progressions have been 
 
1 42 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 greeted with an uproar of derisive laughter, even 
 in restrained Boston. A more advanced age may 
 become educated to the ability to unify this mani- 
 fold of musical complexity, but for the present 
 Schonberg offers only a warning example of the 
 importance of knowing the limits of the hearer's 
 power to combine sounds harmoniously. 
 
 In the enjoyment of rhythm also we are able to 
 observe the importance of the adjustment of 
 mental activity to the stimulus which it anticipates. 
 As Stout observes, " where recurrence is regular, 
 we are prepared for it. On the other hand, an 
 irregularity which defies mental forecast, is per- 
 plexing and painful. When rhythm exists, the 
 oncoming of a stimulus is met beforehand by a 
 preexcitement in conformity with it." But with 
 special training it is quite possible to derive pleas- 
 ure from rhythms so complex as to bafHe us 
 completely at the first encounter. It is a far cry 
 from the simple time which the backwoods fiddler 
 beats with his foot, to the involved rhythms and 
 changes of tempo which add to the resources of an 
 orchestral program. Rhythmic forms become 
 amazingly complex in the dances of many savage 
 tribes, notably among the American Indians, 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 143 
 
 whose war-dances are sometimes marKed by 
 variations altogether too subtle for detection by 
 spectators unused to their rhythmic practices. As 
 in the case of harmony, it is the mastery of com- 
 plexities which affords the most intense pleasure, 
 but any irregularity which exceeds our mental 
 control is the occasion for violent unpleasantness 
 or pain. The unhappiness of dancing with a 
 partner continually out of step soon taxes one's 
 ability to be even conventionally polite. Here is 
 a situation which no preparation can match. 
 Expectation is continually amiss, and every effort 
 ends only in futility. It is little wonder that the 
 average dancer much prefers as partner an insig- 
 nificant person who dances well to one of great 
 personal charm but with no sense of rhythm. 
 
 One important aspect of the connection of 
 aesthetic pleasure with the fact of mental effort is 
 to be discovered in the phase of rest after stren- 
 uous activity. The peculiar pleasure of listening 
 to the resolution of a discord, or of sitting back 
 easily for the quiet second movement of a sym- 
 phony after fifteen minutes of storm and stress, 
 are illustrations which at once come to mind. 
 This phase of pleasure has so impressed some 
 
i 4 4 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 thinkers that they have been inclined to make con- 
 trast an all-important factor in aesthetics. Fech- 
 ner has gone so far as to make the statement that 
 " pleasure experiences bring more pleasure the 
 more they come in contrast with experiences, of 
 pain or less pleasure." [This would be true if the 
 most significant part of activity were the rest after- 
 wards, but we have not found this to be the case. 
 The struggle itself we have been obliged to regard 
 as the central fact. Recuperation is of impor- 
 tance chiefly as a preparation for action. Pleas- 
 ures of inactivity are therefore in a sense 
 incidental pleasures. They register the fulfill- 
 ment of a temporary need, but are by no means 
 the ultimate fact in the pleasure-pain situation. 
 To assert that our greatest pleasures are those 
 that follow pain is comparable to asserting that 
 the climax of the day's work is the rest which 
 comes when work is done. 
 
 Summary 
 
 In our brief review of esthetics we have seen 
 that the pleasure derived from this source is a 
 special instance of the triumph of mental activity 
 in overcoming a particular kind of difficulty. 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 145 
 
 Real art demands that we put forth a vigorous 
 effort to comprehend a manifold of impressions 
 in a single scheme of thought. When this effort 
 is severe but successful, asthetic joy is at its very 
 pitch; when only a listless effort is called forth, 
 the esthetic work is trivial; when the effort 
 demanded exceeds our powers of mental activity, 
 or when there is violent thwarting of the powers 
 called into play, we experience the painful shock 
 of ugliness. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 Pleasure in Play 
 
 It is one of the axioms of our everyday thinking 
 that play is a form of pleasure. It is so universal 
 in its power to bring delight that we take it as a 
 matter of course that the human being of no 
 matter what age or race, is enjoying himself when 
 at play. The boy throwing himself with abandon 
 into a game of ball ; the adult eagerly seeking out 
 his clubmates for an hour of billiards ; the old man 
 assiduously keeping up his golf — all testify to the 
 fact that humanity has one of its most perpetual 
 fountains of joy in the spirit of play. 
 
 This fact raises two questions of very great 
 interest to one who would understand the ways of 
 human nature: Why do we play? Why do we 
 enjoy play? 
 
 [The first of these questions has been given a 
 
 variety of answers. Spencer held that we play 
 
 when we have an excess of energy and feel dis- 
 
 146 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 147 
 
 posed to let off steam. The frisky colt was for 
 him the typical embodiment of the playful state of 
 mind. But he took little account of the fact that 
 play may go on to the point of exhaustion. A 
 view which has been held especially by President 
 G. Stanley Hall is that in play we hark back to 
 the earlier existence of the species. In games of 
 contest, for example, we are supposed to lapse 
 into the past of ages long ago when personal 
 encounters were of the tooth-and-nail variety, and 
 the savage war of all against all made survival 
 depend on an abundance of pugnacity. In an 
 article written some years ago, this view is applied 
 by Patrick to the psychology of American foot- 
 ball. The author maintained that this game has 
 developed such a gripping hold on players and 
 spectators because of the many opportunities 
 which it affords us to retreat through aeons of 
 time and live out some of the dormant tendencies 
 to which the Twentieth Century civilized life 
 affords little exercise. The same view is sug- 
 gested with cynical jocoseness in the humorous 
 setting of a recent popular magazine, in which two 
 girls are represented as looking on at a football 
 contest and discussing the effects of the game on 
 
i 4 8 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 the players. In answer to her companion's query 
 as to whether the game will brutalize the partici- 
 pants, the second girl replies, " Well, one must 
 make men of them somehow." 
 
 Still another view of play which has found 
 wide acceptance is that of the German psycholo- 
 gist, Karl Groos. He finds that play is most 
 typically an activity of childhood, and believes 
 that its real significance lies in the preparation 
 which it affords for the serious activities that are 
 to come with maturity. The small girl enjoying 
 her dolls is becoming better fitted for the serious 
 tasks of maternity. [The lad who enters into all 
 of the activities of his gang is so much the better 
 prepared to take up, when an adult, the work of 
 social and political organization. 
 
 It is not necessary here to enter into the 
 theoretical discussion of these views, each of 
 which undoubtedly has in it a partial element of 
 truth. The outstanding fact common to them all 
 is that in play we give expression to certain definite 
 inborn tendencies which demand more exercise 
 than the mere routine of life affords them. 
 These inborn tendencies, or instincts, are many in 
 number, and of varying degrees of insistency. 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 149 
 
 Fear, anger, self-assertion, parental tenderness, 
 sexual love, acquisitiveness and sociability are 
 among the more powerful of the instinctive 
 tendencies which drive us spontaneously to activi- 
 ties of the most vigorous character, when the 
 circumstances are appropriate. Reason is thrown 
 to the winds when a human being is thoroughly 
 frightened or angered, when a parent is gravely 
 concerned about his child, a lover about the object 
 of his concern, a miser about his gold. The 
 instincts at work are too impelling to admit of any 
 hindrance or thwarting. 
 
 In play various instincts are in operation, but 
 always in a peculiarly modified way; and this 
 brings us to the answer to our second question. 
 All instincts seem to afford pleasure in their play- 
 ful manifestation, even those which are unpleasant 
 at full intensity. The fear which is horrible 
 becomes the thrill which is delightful. The anger 
 which seeks utterly to destroy opposition becomes 
 the social rivalry or the frolicking physical con- 
 test in which any serious injury to one's opponent 
 is studiously avoided. If special illustrations 
 were needed to make clear this difference, no more 
 obvious example could be found than in the 
 
i 5 o PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 behavior of dogs. 1 When two dogs fight, they 
 are savagely intent on tearing and rending each 
 other; when they play, they go through all of the 
 outward form of combat, and yet the teeth which 
 are pressed against the throat never inflict a 
 wound. What is true of fear and anger obtains 
 for all of the instincts when playfully manifested. 
 [The original instinct is reduced in intensity in such 
 a fashion that it can be elaborated and prolonged 
 without making any excessive demands on the or- 
 ganism. The sex instinct becomes connected with 
 the elaborate joys of courtship and association; 
 the gross impulse of hunger is refined to the more 
 exquisite pleasure of the social meal partaken 
 with many accessories and with the observance of 
 polite custom ; the instinct for acquisition becomes 
 side-tracked into the mild enjoyment that is af- 
 forded by collecting the objects of one's hobbies; 
 and serious curiosity is reduced to the idle interest 
 in gossip and small talk. Even the instincts 
 which are naturally connected with extremely dis- 
 agreeable states of mind may undergo such special 
 modification in play as to afford a certain thrill. 
 The repulsion which normally causes us to shrink 
 
 1 See W. McDougall, " Social Psychology." 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 151 
 
 with disgust may be mildly called forth with a 
 not unfavorable effect. Games are not uncom- 
 mon in which the chief attraction is touching with 
 closed eyes horribly repulsive objects. Despite 
 the creepy shudder with which the players of such 
 games react to the unseen contacts, they continue 
 to play as though fascinated by this very repulsive- 
 
 ness. 
 
 Summary 
 
 Without exception the peculiar pleasure of play 
 seems to be connected with the fact that playful 
 activity is a reduction and elaboration of grosser 
 and more severe instinctive activity. The often 
 excessive violence of fear, anger } repulsion, etc., 
 is modified to the more controlled and always 
 pleasant experiences of rivalry and adventure. 
 The naturally agreeable emotions of parental ten- 
 derness, self-assertion, acquisition, etc., are re- 
 placed by the less pleasant but agreeably interest- 
 ing make-believe states for which these instincts 
 furnish the background. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 The Paradox of Pleasure Seeking 
 
 Ever since the memory of man there has always 
 been a certain respectably large number of people 
 who persuaded themselves that pleasure is some- 
 thing which ought to be sought. At times this 
 hedonism, as it is called, has taken on a very gross 
 and objectionable form, as when represented in 
 phrases such as, 
 
 " Eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we 
 die." At other times it has given itself a fairly 
 respectable ethics by arguing that since virtue is 
 identical with happiness the way to attain virtue 
 is to seek happiness. But under some guise or 
 other there has always been a widely current doc- 
 trine which made for the direct pursuit of pleas- 
 urable states of mind. One of the curious puz- 
 zles which has tried the wits of these people 
 has been the paradoxical fact that the surest way 
 to lose pleasure has been by directly seeking it 
 
 152 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 153 
 
 Many a bachelor of independent means, after try- 
 ing the luxury of first one fashionable resort and 
 then another, has asked himself despondently why 
 he seemed to derive so much less pleasure out of 
 life than some hard-working clerk of his acquaint- 
 ance, who must needs begin work at 8 o'clock 
 sharp every day in the week, and whose slender 
 financial resources permitted only very occasional 
 and carefully planned vacations. He has had fre- 
 quent reason to wonder why his immunity from 
 work has brought him nothing but the melancholy 
 of fatty degeneration, and he has unhappily 
 shifted from one diversion to another only to find 
 each turn to dust and ashes in his very pursuit 
 of it. Worst of all he has found his capacity for 
 pain and irritation enormously over-developed. 
 His condition has become like that of the ancient 
 sybarite who was uncomfortable even on his bed 
 of rose leaves because one of them crumpled and 
 hurt him ! When such a person gives due reflec- 
 tion to his mental condition he is forced to con- 
 clude that even though pleasure be conceived of 
 as the great end of life, it is certainly not an end 
 which can be directly aimed at, and attained. It 
 can only come as the by-product of aims of an 
 
i 5 4 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 altogether different sort. It is something that can 
 be added to his life as the result of correct living, 
 but not something which can be achieved in its 
 own right, then used as a guarantee that life is 
 proceeding along the proper lines. The Epi- 
 cureans put the cart before the horse; whatever 
 the exaggerations of the Stoics, their method 
 of procedure was psychologically sound. To 
 make practical virtue the aim, to give one's self 
 directly and with hardihood to the struggle for 
 which he is by nature equipped, this is the only 
 guarantee that insures our capacity for pleasure. 
 
 Who can imagine that any athletic team on the 
 eve of a big contest would be willing to forego 
 the excitement of the actual game by having them- 
 selves victors through forfeit? Not the desire 
 for victory itself but the desire to win victory is 
 the driving force back of their enthusiasm. The 
 game is the thing in their mind, and their ambition 
 to excel in competition would only be cruelly 
 cheated if the need for competition were removed. 
 
 The fact that life is unthinkable except as a 
 struggle, means, as we have seen in an earlier 
 chapter, that access to pleasure is only to be had 
 either through the activity of struggle itself, or in 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 155 
 
 a rest which prepares for further struggle. A 
 life full of conflict must necessarily abound in both 
 of these phases of pleasure, whereas a life from 
 which the chief occasions for conflict have been 
 removed must suffer a corresponding reduction in 
 opportunity for pleasure, and the man thus de- 
 prived of rugged exercise soon comes to find even 
 normal conflicts excessive and therefore painful. 
 The practical question as to what type of life 
 offers the most pleasure is one which admits of 
 but one answer. It is the life in which conflict 
 is deliberately chosen and efficiently prepared for. 
 History offers an abundance of cases to prove that 
 the above statement is true without exception. 
 One is forced to think of stupendous workers like 
 Charlemagne, Cromwell or Calvin as men far bet- 
 ter acquainted with pleasure than their less en- 
 ergetic contemporaries. By contrast with these 
 men one naturally turns to the decadent Roman 
 emperors, men who, removed by their absolute 
 world-dominion from even the responsibility of 
 more worlds to conquer, gave themselves stu- 
 diously to the joy of wielding the power which it 
 required no effort of theirs to maintain. The 
 historian Hodgkin, writing of Tiberius, Caligula, 
 
i s6 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 Claudius and Nero, says that " standing as it 
 were on the Mount of Temptation, and seeing all 
 the kingdoms of the world and all the glory of 
 them stretched at an immeasurable distance below 
 their feet, they were seized with a dizziness of 
 soul." We read that Tiberius in the later years 
 of his reign built several villas on an island in the 
 Bay of Naples, and having gathered about him a 
 band of congenial companions, passed his time in 
 scandalous profligacy. The penalty for softened 
 moral fiber in all of these men seems to have been 
 a jaded incapacity for normal enjoyment. One 
 artificial extravagance after another was devised 
 to whip up their dulled sensibilities. " Claudius 
 determined to give an entertainment that should 
 render insignificant all similar efforts. Upon a 
 large lake, whose sloping banks afforded seats for 
 the vast multitude of spectators, he exhibited a 
 naval battle, in which two opposing fleets, bearing 
 nineteen thousand gladiators, fought as though in 
 real battle, till the water was reddened with blood 
 and littered with the wreckage of the broken 
 ships." * Nero's joy at the burning of Rome, 
 which he himself is supposed to have instigated, 
 
 1 Myers: "Rome: Its Rise and Fall," p. 343. 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 157 
 
 is another instance showing how sadly the mind is 
 soon put to. it when cut off from the normal con- 
 ditions of life and left to create wantonly its own 
 pleasurable situations. No normal person could 
 help shuddering at the thought of entering into 
 the state of mind of any of these emperors whose 
 names have been so unfavorably impressed on the 
 memory of the race. By comparison almost any 
 extreme of asceticism would afford relief. And 
 by contrast the lives of any of the world's famous 
 men of iron, who have wrought serious purposes 
 in spite of tremendous difficulty, seem to have 
 been states of unmixed blessedness. 
 
 It appears then that even the frank pursuit of 
 pleasure will fail of its ends unless the program 
 followed gives expression to the sturdy and ro- 
 bust tendencies which every man possesses to a 
 greater or less degree. The practical advice 
 which James * offers, in his remarkably suggestive 
 chapter on habit, may be quoted as entirely ap- 
 propriate to the needs of any one interested in 
 getting the most fundamental joys out of life. 
 The passage reads, " Keep the faculty of effort 
 alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every 
 
 1 James, op. cit., p. 149. 
 
158 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 day. That is, be systematically ascetic or heroic 
 in little unnecessary points, do every day or two 
 something for no other reason than that you 
 would rather not do it. . . . The man who has 
 daily inured himself to habits of concentrated 
 attention, energetic volition, and self-denial in un- 
 necessary things . . . will stand like a tower 
 when everything rocks around him, and when his 
 softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in 
 the blast." * But more than this, he will daily 
 experience a greater quantity of pleasure than his 
 softer fellow-mortals are capable of. Both in 
 his activity and in his rest he comes nearer to the 
 optimal conditions of his nature. 
 
 We have spoken so far of the general fact that 
 man is a bundle of activity tendencies, and that his 
 pleasure comes most naturally in the successful 
 expression of these tendencies. It remains to 
 point out how the existence of special aptitudes in 
 different individuals forces expression along par- 
 ticular lines, if the talented person is to lead his 
 life happily. Mozart's astounding ability to note 
 from memory the Miserere of the Sistine Chapel 
 
 1 James, "Psychology," p. 149. 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 159 
 
 forced him to seek music in order to find happi- 
 ness. A world without music could by no pos- 
 sibility ever have been satisfying to his soul. 
 Macaulay's prodigious visual memory, which en- 
 abled him to repeat literally page after page, must 
 have forced him to find his real delight in a life 
 of letters. The great captains of industry to-day 
 are, as a rule, men in whom certain instinctive stir- 
 rings are constantly at work, impelling them to 
 master the commercial environment which so 
 readily inflames their imaginations. The inven- 
 tor, even more than the money maker, is a man 
 whose instinctive equipment drives him to find 
 the same satisfaction in his contrivance that the 
 beaver finds with his dam, or the bird with its 
 nest. One of the chief reasons why the inventor 
 is so impractical seems to be that he is so fas- 
 cinated with the mere working out of the impulse 
 to create that he is incapacitated for any method- 
 ical and systematic fashioning of his ideas. Bub- 
 bling over as he is with projects, his most intense 
 pleasure is in the creation of the project rather 
 than in its utilization. Almost every great in- 
 ventor has spent much of his time and energy on 
 
i6o PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 oddities, many of them with little possible use. 1 
 " Watt was interested in a quantity of inventions 
 and devices. Among them may be mentioned a 
 new kind of clock which, to quote Watt's own 
 language, i is to be ranked in mechanics as riddles 
 and rebuses are ranked in poetry ' ; a micrometer ; 
 a drawing machine, which he himself termed ' a 
 gimcrack ' ; a copying machine for letters, proto- 
 type of the copying devices so long in use ; a ma- 
 chine for drying linen and muslin by steam." 
 Watt's fertility for " gimcracks " seems to have 
 been equaled by that of Ericsson. In a quota- 
 tion from Church's " Life of Ericsson " cited by 
 Taussig, we read the following: " When he 
 [Ericsson] took possession of his new quarters 
 [the house on Beach Street, which he bought in 
 1864] he found his company disputed by a nu- 
 merous horde of rats, who considered themselves 
 tenants at will, and stubbornly refused to yield 
 possession. . . . Regarding the situation as a 
 problem to. be solved by mechanical means, with 
 his own hands he drew the plans for a vast and 
 mighty trap. Xo the leading idea [of a water- 
 
 1 F. W. Taussig, "Inventors and Money-makers," New York, 
 19 1 5, p. 27ff. 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 161 
 
 tank beneath a trap door] he laid no claim, but 
 the details were wholly new, and upon an un- 
 heard-of scale. Tracings were made by an as- 
 sistant draughtsman, and went the rounds of the 
 shop; the pattern-maker, the brass-founder, the 
 finisher, the carpenter, the tinsmith, each had a 
 share in this novel work. At last it was com- 
 pleted and erected; it filled up half the basement, 
 and was baited with half a cheese. . , . But he 
 had underestimated the cunning of the rodents; 
 as a place for keeping cheese in safety, the pon- 
 derous engine answered admirably, but it did not 
 frighten away the obnoxious animals; and he was 
 forced to admit that ' these little beasts have 
 brains altogether too big for their heads.' " 
 
 From the foregoing examples it is clear that 
 special aptitudes clamor for the opportunity of 
 asserting themselves. The tasks which are their 
 fit occasion of self-expression are the supreme joy 
 of the man of genius, who will suffer every earthly 
 privation rather than brook the thwarting of his 
 talents. The conflict with the environment takes 
 on a very special character in these men, but we 
 see in their particular demands for self-realiza- 
 tion merely a unique instance of the same principle 
 
i62 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 which applies to the rest of humanity. No mind 
 ever appears on the scene of life in a state of 
 emptiness, devoid of specific traits. All of us, no 
 matter how mediocre, bring into the world a host 
 of very definite tendencies, some of which we share 
 in common with the whole race, others of which 
 mark us for individualistic tastes, capacities and 
 interests. The importance of these tendencies is 
 that they compel us to give battle to the environ- 
 ment along certain definite lines, and incidentally 
 afford us pleasure whenever the struggle is on. 
 But far from urging us to pursue pleasure itself 
 they direct us to the conquest of objects about us. 
 They supply us with dominating interests, which in 
 turn are our chief source of pleasure; but it would 
 be a reversal of the psychological facts to say that 
 pleasure is the normal incentive. It is the will 
 to do, to attain, which lies immediately behind 
 man's restless striving. Pleasure is not the con- 
 dition of the struggle, but merely crowns strife 
 when successful. 
 
 Summary 
 
 Pleasure is not obtainable by direct pursuit. It 
 comes as the by-product of conflicts which engage 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 163 
 
 to the full the activity-tendencies that we bring 
 with us into the world. The more the struggle is 
 equal to our powers of conquest the greater will 
 be the occasion of pleasure. This is particularly 
 true of special talents which demand a special en- 
 vironment for their adequate exercise. The 
 musician is happy when pitting himself against the 
 world of sound; the captain of industry in seeking 
 commerce finds pleasure; likewise the inventor, in 
 order to arrive at pleasure must have free play to 
 make mechanical conquests. Everywhere we find 
 the same psychological law. Pleasure can not be 
 consistently pursued of itself. It appears only 
 as an incidental feature of self-expression. 
 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 Conclusion 
 
 We have seen that pain and pleasure sensations 
 probably have their roots in an obscure state of 
 feeling of like and dislike that is shared in some 
 measure by the whole animal world, although it 
 is doubtful at what point in the evolutionary 
 series this feeling becomes sufficiently clear to be 
 properly described by the term sensation. 
 Whether as sensation or as feeling, the broad 
 significance of pain and pleasure is to be found 
 in the fact that life is essentially a struggle, in 
 which pleasure is the accompaniment of some form 
 of mental or physical success, and pain is an in- 
 dication of defeat or of abortive effort. Differ- 
 ent individuals enter the struggle variously 
 equipped, and, according to their strength and 
 particular kind of equipment, find it natural to 
 pitch the contest at varying degrees of intensity 
 and at points in the environment particularly vul- 
 nerable to their mode of attack. 
 
 164 
 
PAIN AND PLEASURE 165 
 
 Pleasure is not to be had by direct quest or 
 by avoiding encounter, but only by making the 
 venture and bringing it to a successful issue. At- 
 rophy of original powers and a constantly increas- 
 ing capacity for pain are the inevitable outcome of 
 a purely defensive attitude toward life. To the 
 man who would live happily there is but one 
 course that is psychologically sound. Let him 
 seek conflict and prepare to wage the struggle 
 efficiently. In particular let him study to know 
 his own individual aptitudes, and seek his clash 
 with the environment at points where these can be 
 brought strenuously into play. 
 
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INDEX 
 
 Adrenalin, 91-93 
 ^Esthetics, 63-64, 134-145 
 Amoeba, 35-38 
 Anger, 17, 149-150 
 
 Blood pressure, 89-90, 120 
 Bodily distress, see Distress 
 
 Cerebellum, 101-102 
 Cerebrum, 46, 100-101 
 Circulation, 8, 89-94 
 Coagulation, 92 
 
 Imaginary pain, 118-119 
 Instincts, 148-149 
 Inventors, 159-161 
 Itch, 58 
 
 Jellyfish, 40-41 
 
 Laughter, 55, 66 
 
 Marshall's theory, 105-106 
 Medulla, 101-102 
 Memory, of pain, 57, 66 
 
 of pleasure, 57, 66 
 Meyer's theory, 107-108 
 Music, 63-64, 136 
 
 see also ^Esthetics 
 
 Diagnostic value of pain, 117- 
 
 133 
 
 Digestion, 80-88 
 
 Discord, 143 
 
 Distress, Bodily, 4, 42-44, 7°- Nervous system, central, 98 
 «3 sympathetic, 44, 109-110 
 
 quality of, 7 Neurasthenia, 88, 119-120 
 
 reaction to, 8 Nordic art, 136-139 
 
 Earthworm, 34, 42-44 
 Epicureans, 154 
 Epidermis, no 
 
 Olfactory lobe, 99 
 
 Optic nerve, 96 
 
 Optic thalamus, see Thalamus 
 
 Fear, as cause of pleasure, 56, Pain spots, 111-112 
 
 149-150 Pain, Biological basis of, 58-59 
 
 Feeling, 10 bodily effects of, 76-95 
 
 Freud, 28 conflict theory, 58-62 
 
 development of, 32-52 
 Gratification, 22-28, 70-73 diagnostic value of, 1 17-13 3 
 
 duration, 3 
 Hunger, 7, 71 imaginary, 118-119 
 
 173 
 
174 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Marshall's theory, 105-106 
 Meyer's theory, 107-108 
 nervous basis of, 96-116 
 relation to pleasure, 53-75 
 varieties of, see Surface 
 pain, Distress, Unpleasant- 
 ness 
 
 Paramoecium, 88-89 
 
 Peristalsis, 84-86 
 
 Play, 146-151 
 
 Pleasantness, 28-31, 35-39 
 Quality, 29, Stimuli, 30, Re- 
 action to, 30-31 
 
 Pleasure, 16 
 
 biological basis of, 58-59 
 bodily effects, 76-95 
 conflict theory, 58-62 
 development, 32-52 
 Marshall's theory, 105-106 
 Meyer's theory, 107-108 
 nervous basis of, 96-116 
 relation to pain, 53-75 
 varieties of, 31-32 
 . see also Tickling, Gratifi- 
 cation, Pleasantness 
 
 Pleasure-seeking, 152-163 
 
 Psychasthenia, 1 19-120 
 
 Psycho-physical parallelism, 
 96-99 
 
 Referred pain, 121-123 
 Rhythm, 142-143 
 Ruffini, corpuscles of, 97 
 
 Salivary secretion, 82 
 
 Satiety, 23 
 
 Sex impulse, 27-28, 40, 150 
 
 Spinal cord, 113-114 
 
 Starfish, 41 
 
 Stoics, 154 
 
 Stomach, 5, 71, 82-86 
 
 Surface pain, 46-47, 73-74 
 
 Quality of, 2 
 
 Reaction to, 3 
 Sympathetic nervous system, 
 44, 109 
 
 Thalamus, 99-104 
 
 Thirst, 24, 25 
 
 Tickling, 16-22, 47-50, 73-74 
 
 Stimuli, 16-17 
 
 Vulnerability, 19 
 
 Quality, 20 
 
 Reaction to, 21 
 
 Unpleasantness, 9, 35-39 
 quality,, 9 
 reaction to, 12 
 
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