illustrations that until recently at least, if not still, feeling modes have been regarded by most writers of importance as the only or the chief causes of the consciously chosen act; (3) that those, like Martineau and Lotze, who thought of the act as properly caused in some other way, were prone to substitute some other more or less individualistic criterion, such as conscience, as the cause, as will appear more clearly in chap. iv when the ends of action are discussed. (4) It is apparent also that some of the older writers, like Hobbes, Helvetius, and Bentham, did not take into consideration any causes other than conscious ones; nor has this confusion wholly disappeared at the present time. (5) We have also an indication, though incomplete, of how the prevailing social theory until the most recent times has followed the lead of Bentham, Locke, and Hobbes in accepting a hedonistic psychological basis. An expansion of this statement will also occur in the following chapters.1

12

What then is the actual part which feeling modes play in the causation of the act? To answer this question properly it will be necessary first to determine what part consciousness of any sort plays in such causation. Woodworth denies that imagery of any kind is necessary to setting off even a voluntary act, and pleasure comes because the selection has been successfully made in a natural way" (Psy., 225). Fite: "The ethical consequence of the functional view is to render it inconceivable that we should choose pleasure as an end, and hence, impossible to set up pleasure as the end to be sought. According to the functional view, the motive power of action is instinct, and it is the object implied in the instinct which constitutes the end. In this system there is no room for the motive of pleasure. Pleasure is simply an abstracted phase of the process of satisfaction-an indication that the object is being attained in the presence of a difficulty. In other words, pleasure is not an active force or function, but a mere phenomenon. The desire for pleasure, if conceivable at all, would be irreconcilable with the desire for the object; for since pleasure exists only while success is deferred, pleasure as such could be prolonged only by sacrificing the object originally sought" ("The Place of Pleasure and Pain in the Functional Psychology," Psy. Rev., X, 643-44).

12 Also some of the more recent sociologists, who have largely or wholly abandoned the hedonistic criterion, still hold to subjectivistic and individualistic classifications of the springs of action, even though these classifications are for the most part mere ornamenta which their authors do not seek or are unable to apply. (Cf. chap. iv, below, and A. F. Bentley, The Process of Government, chap. vii.)

contends that "the complete determinant of a voluntary motor act is nothing less than the total set of the nervous system at the moment."13

... .

14

It is not necessary here to enter into a discussion as to whether consciousness can be non-imaginal, but it must be admitted that the total cause of any act is more than the conscious part of it. When an idea or image precedes the act, i.e., when the neural pathway or the act runs through the cortex (as it must when there is considerable conflict and impediment to its overt expression), the act is termed voluntary. Because we are not able to determine the total set of the nervous system, we seize upon its most obvious and immediate sign, the percept or image, and call it the cause, though it is really only the sign of the whole act of which it is but a part. If the process of ideation be a long one, i.e., if the process by which an act finally gets overt expression is modified by a great many inhibitions occupying some appreciable extent of time, we term the sub

13"[No] form of sensorial image of the movement or of its outcome need be present in consciousness in the moment just preceding the innervation. Imagery, kinaesthetic, tactile, visual, auditory, may or may not be present at the launching of a voluntary movement; when present, it seems, in many persons, at least, to be incidental rather than essential to the process.”—Woodworth, op. cit., 356.

"Where imagery is lacking, peripheral sensations are sometimes present in the field of attention, but after these cases are abstracted, there still remain a goodly share of the whole number [about one-fifth]. . . . in whom no sensorial content could be detected."—Ibid., 376.

"The complete determinant of a voluntary motor act-that which specifies exactly what act it shall be-is nothing less than the total set of the nervous system at the moment. The set is determined partly by factors of long standing, instincts and habits, partly by the sensations of the moment, partly by recent perceptions of the situation and by other thoughts lately present in consciousness; at the moment, however, these factors, though they contribute essentially to the set of the system, are for the most part present in consciousness only as a background or "fringe," if at all, while the attention is occupied by the thought of some particular change to be effected in the situation. The thought may be clothed in sensorial images-rags and tatters, or gorgeous raiment-but these are after all only clothes, and a naked thought [!] can perfectly well perform its function of starting the motor machinery in action and determining the point and object of its application."—Ibid., 391-92.

14 For such a discussion see the above-mentioned monograph by Woodworth; also Titchener, The Experimental Psychology of the Thought-Processes (New York, 1910).

jective process thinking, and we speak of the thought as the cause of our activity, while it is only the sign or index of the whole act of which it is a part.

In the same way it has been customary to speak of feeling as the cause of activity, because we knew little or nothing of its neural correlates and because it is a very immediate experience. Feeling, however, is also but a sign of the whole act, and is even farther removed from the general causal process in its completeness than is the idea. As was above pointed out, pleasantness accompanies neural processes which supplement each other or which supplement the more stable, though lower, visceral and vegetative neural processes. Unpleasantness accompanies interference of processes, either of the higher sensory ones with each other or of these with the lower basic sets, when consciousness accompanies such nervous activity. Feeling modes then are resultants of internal neural adjustments or of internal neural interferences, which correlation probably is made in the cortex only when feeling is experienced. It is absurd to speak of these feeling modes as the cause of such neural relations, which go over into overt activity as acts in the common usage of that term, unless we do so in the sense that if there had not been such supplementation and interference or inhibition of processes (resulting at times in such feelings and also in more or less corresponding acts) we should have acted differently.15 But this is not an efficient and functional explanation of the act. It would be just as absurd also to say that feeling dictates causative ideas or dictates their recall in memory. The idea, like the act, can be accounted for only on the basis of the whole neural set. The feeling mode must be explained in terms of the correlation of parts of that set, of processes, with each other.

However, we can appeal from objective analysis and the experimental method to the evidence of introspection (though this sort of appeal is no longer in the best standing), and we may get a confirmation of the direct or indirect causal nature of feeling. Certainly introspection tells us that we frequently choose activities because we have reason to believe that they will 15 Cf. Meyer, Psy. Rev., XV, 319.

16

afford pleasantness and avoid others because they usually give unpleasantness. This of course is all on the assumption that the idea of the thing can cause the act, which was discussed in the paragraph immediately preceding. It is generally held, however, that the feeling itself cannot be representative17 and thus cannot cause the act in the same way as the idea is supposed to be able to do. It is the idea of the act, which it is believed will result in certain feeling modes, that is supposed to be the cause of the representatively or ideationally caused or accompanied act.18 Introspection, then, tells us that we do frequently choose future activities with reference to whether they will be pleasant or unpleasant. And it also tells us that we perhaps at least as often choose activities without regard for or despite their previsioned feeling results. The introspective evidence is as valid in the one case as in the other."

19

Accepting the introspective account and the introspective terminology, what activities may we say, then, are the result of feeling, in the sense that the perceived hedonic consequences of an act influence our choice of action and ends? It becomes clear at once, as Marshall points out,20 that a large number of unforeseen or stubborn circumstances interrupt the course of our mental and neural action and thus cause dissatisfaction. But allowing for these interruptions, in how far yet can we consciously seek pleasure and find it? The answer appears to be, In so far as we have the technique and ability for molding all objective social and physical processes and transformations to fit our immediate subjective ends and adjustments. That is, if 16 Cf. also notes 9, 10, and 11 above, this chapter.

17 Cf. Angell, Psy., 266-67.

18 Cf. James, op. cit., II, 580; Thorndike, op. cit.; also Ribot, op. cit., 190: "A l'origine, le plaisir est un effet. . . . . Plus tard, il devient une cause d'action."

....

10 This type of case where introspection tells us that we choose the pleasant act and avoid the unpleasant is not different from the supposed type of cases, abstracted by the older philosophers, in which pleasure and pain were spoken of as direct causes, except in the amount of time intervening between the stimulus and the response. In the latter type the choice and the feeling seem to be synchronous.

20 Op. cit., 350-51.

we make the experience of pleasantness and the avoidance of unpleasantness the end of our endeavors, we can realize this end in so far as we can immediately and in the large control our environment. We must begin first to control our ideational and imaginal processes to this end. But this cannot be done most effectively without also controlling our physiological processes in the service of both ideation and feeling. Then, in the third place, we must be able to control our immediate environment in the form of material and social conditions, to which end the more narrowly "social" and financial conditions are to some degree essential. And fourthly, and least of all, we must be able to exert an effective though indirect control over the wider societary environment-at least enough to make sure of our immediate physiological and narrowly "social" adjustments.

This method is employed constantly with more or less success and with varying emphasis upon different details. Eastern voluptuaries and tyrants have tried it and have fairly succeeded -at least so long as they could control their adjustments as described above.21 Artists of all sorts have traditionally been accustomed to withdraw themselves into an esoteric world in which the chief assets of their happiness appear to be their reveries which go along with their "artistic temperaments," the reverence which the unsophisticated have for them, and noninterference from a world of fact. Indeed it has been asserted repeatedly by artists and litterateurs that genius is a lawless thing.22 Among the most successful devotees of this general method of securing pleasure and avoiding unpleasant experience, however unconscious the devotees may be of the philosophy of the method, are the women and men of fashion and pleasure.

"It has long been a custom of deposed monarchs, politicians, etc., to go into "retirement" and to assemble about them as much of their petty paraphernalia as possible and to piece out the situation by living on their memories. The Roman emperor Diocletian, who could not control his kingdom, took up cabbage raising and evidently would have been happy if he could have persuaded his rival to grow cabbages also.

"Modern society appears quite confused as to whether this is the proper statement or whether it should be, Lawlessness is genius. Perhaps there is not enough difference between the two formulae to argue about.