_The beginning of life—I. Conditions of existence of pleasure and pain; lowering and heightening of vital energy—Féré’s experiments—Meynert’s theory—II. Finality of pleasure and pain—Exceptions: explicable cases; irreducible cases._
I shall not delay long over the question, as much debated as the one we have just quitted and still less accessible: Which first makes its appearance in consciousness, pleasure or pain? In our own day, especially, optimists and pessimists have contested this point at great length, although, in my opinion, they have no concern with it. Their doctrines are two antithetical conceptions of the world, depending solely on temperament and character, which could neither be confirmed nor invalidated by the solution of this problem. It is clear that it is a question of origin, of psychogenesis, foreign to experimental psychology, and admitting only of probable solutions.
Descartes expressed the singular opinion that “joy was the first passion of the soul, since it is not credible that the soul should have been placed in the body, except when the latter was well disposed; hence the natural result would be joy.” Others, following theoretic views less strange in character, maintain that, pleasure having for its cause the free play of our activity, pain is connected with the arrest of pleasure, and hence is posterior to it.[59] The majority of writers appear to me to favour the contrary hypothesis; the impressions of cold, of contact, the beginning of pulmonary respiration, etc., are cited as proving the priority of pain; still more so, the cries of infants and of the new-born young of animals. Yet Preyer, in two passages which have not excited much remark, refuses all significance to the cry, and sees in it nothing but a reflex action.[60] It does not seem doubtful that psychic life, in its first or intra-uterine and earlier extra-uterine phases may almost be reduced to a series of pleasurable and painful impressions. Do they resemble those of the adult? It is probable that they do; but it must not be forgotten that to assimilate the plastic forms of the primitive epoch to the fixed and rigid ones of adult life is a mode of reasoning conducive to numerous errors.
Footnote 59:
For the historical summary, see Bouillier, _op. cit._, chap. xii.
Footnote 60:
"The first cry of the new-born infant was formerly considered anything rather than a reflex action. It is, however, very probable that this first vocal manifestation, accompanying an expiration, is a reflex pure and simple. Kant wrote (without, indeed, having himself observed new-born children or animals): ‘The cry uttered by the child just after birth has not the intonation of fear, but that of irritation or anger. It is not because it is suffering, but because something displeases it. No doubt it would like to move and feels its impotence, as it might feel a chain restricting its liberty. What could have been the object of Nature in making the infant born into the world utter cries which are in the highest degree dangerous? Yet no animal save man announces its existence, at the time of birth, by similar cries.’
"This remarkable conception has been much commented on, and widely adopted. At the present time many people still think that the crying of new-born infants has considerable psychic significance. But all comments of this kind are met by the objection that a totally anencephalous infant cries at birth, and that many healthy infants do not cry, but sneeze, on their entry into the world, as noted by Darwin....
"The reflexes of pains which, in later life, show themselves in the acutest manner, are those best developed in early life. Gunzmer’s observations on about sixty infants showed him that, during the first few days, they are almost insensible, and during the first week, very slightly sensitive, to the pricking of a needle.
“New-born infants have been, in the course of their first day, pricked with fine needles, on the nose, the upper lip, and the hand, deeply enough to draw a drop of blood; yet the child manifested no symptom of consciousness, and did not start once.”—Preyer, _Seele des Kindes_, pp. 177, 193.
Leaving aside this question of origin, it is impossible to close the study of pleasure and pain without a summary recapitulation of the general theories forming the philosophy of our subject. These may be classified under two heads: the _how_ and the _why_; what are the conditions of existence of pleasure and pain? and what is their utility?
