Philosophy of the Unconscious

by Eduard Von Hartmann

  III.

  THE UNCONSCIOUS IN FEELING.

  IF I have toothache and a pain in my finger, there are apparently two kinds of feeling; for the one is in the tooth, the other in the finger. Did I not possess the ability to project my perceptions into space, I should not feel two separate pains, but a single compound one, just as with two pure tones (without upper tones), at the interval of an octave, only one is absolutely heard—the lower note—but with a different timbre. The local difference of the perception thus confers upon the mind the ability to dissect the pain-harmony into its elements in conformity with the differently localised perceptions—to combine one part with this, another with that space-perception, and thus to establish the duality. But now things may be spatially twofold and yet incapable of discrimination, as, e.g., two congruent triangles. This can certainly not be asserted of toothache and finger-ache. In the first place, they can only be discriminated in degree, i.e., in intensive quantity, and secondly by their quality; for with equal strength pain can be continuous or intermittent, burning, cooling, crushing, beating, stinging, biting, cutting, drawing, palpitating, itching, and exhibit an infinity of variations, baffling all description.

  We have hitherto understood by pain the whole phenomenon, but it is a question whether this must not be philosophically prohibited, and whether we should not rather distinguish in this given whole the sensuous perception and the smart or pain in the narrower sense; for we have often a kind of perception which produces neither pleasure nor pain, e.g., if I gently press my finger or brush my skin. Whilst this perception remains qualitatively unchanged, and only increases or diminishes in degree, pleasure or displeasure may be felt in addition; and is the perception to be all at once included in the pain or the pleasure? We are then compelled to separate them, and soon perceive that the twain are so little one that they rather stand in a causal relation; for the perception (or a part thereof) is the cause of the pain, since the latter comes into existence and disappears with it, and never appears in its absence, although the perception may undoubtedly occur without the pain under particular circumstances.

  This separation having been made, the closely allied question arises, whether the distinctions just noticed really exist in the pleasure and pain, or merely in the producing and accompanying circumstances, namely, in the perception? That pain admits of differences in intensive quantity is clear, but does it also admit qualitative differences? Most of the distinctions expressed in words apply to different forms of intermittence, as beating, drawing, palpitating, stinging, cutting, biting, even tickling. Certainly the degree of pain here changes continuously with the degree of perception according to certain more or less regular types, but nothing is to be found of an originally qualitative difference of the pain itself. One would much sooner expect this in the pleasure or displeasure which is called forth by different smells and tastes; but even there one may be convinced by careful introspection that the qualitative difference of pleasure or displeasure is altogether only apparent, and this illusion arises from the circumstance that the separation of pleasure or pain and perception has never hitherto been made, but both are wont to be comprehended with the perception as a single whole, so that now the differences of perception present themselves as differences of this single whole.—That this separation has never been made is due to the fact that, out of the infinitely multifarious composition of psychical states, one always only learns to separate those groups as independent parts, the separation of which has a real utility for practical needs. Thus, e.g., in the accord of a full orchestra, not all tones of a certain pitch are separated out, no matter from what instrument they proceed, including their upper tones, but the upper tones of the most different parts of the scale produced by any instrument are fused with the fundamental tone of the instrument into its timbre, and the groups of tones thus formed, which represent the tones called forth from any single instrument, are alone blended into the accord, simply for the reason that the knowledge of the upper tones possesses no practical interest, but rather the knowledge of the timbres of the instruments. And this practical mode of grasping the groups of tones has become so organised in us, that that, according to mere pitch, although it must manifestly be much easier, has become purely impossible to us—so impossible that only a few years have elapsed since Helmholtz strictly demonstrated the origin of timbres by actually combining the upper tones.

  Almost as impossible does it also seem to us now, in self-observation to sharply separate and keep asunder the two elements in the totality of pleasure or pain and the perceptions following and accompanying them; but that such separation must be possible any one can see from this, that both parts are related as cause and effect, and are essentially different. Whoever succeeds in making the trial will find the assertion confirmed, that pleasure and displeasure have only intensively quantitative, but no qualitative differences. Success will be the easier the simpler the examples with which one begins, e.g., whether the pleasure is different in hearing a bell if the note is c, and if it is d. If insight has once been gained in such simple examples, the truth will be no less evident if one passes gradually to examples which contain greater differences in the element of perception. A confirmation of the assertion may also be seen in this, that we are able to balance different sensual enjoyments or pains against one another (e.g., whether any one prefers to lay out his half-crown in a bottle of wine, or cake and ice, or beefsteak and beer, or any other sensuous gratification; or whether one will endure the toothache all day long, or rather have the tooth drawn), which balancing would not be possible if pleasure and pain were not in all these things only quantitatively different and qualitatively alike; for like can only be measured by like.

  It is now also clear that local differences by no means concern the pain directly, but only the perception, and that only through the perception does an ideal separation of the total pain occur, one part of it being causally referred to this, and another to that perception. If now, strictly speaking, pain has no locality, and only the perception has local relation, the duality established by the local difference can only have reference to the perception, but not to the pain, and pain is accordingly not merely qualitatively alike in all cases, but is always only single in the same moment

  These considerations are confirmed by Wundt in his “Contributions to the Theory of Sense-Perception.” He says (pp. 391, 392), “The essential part of pain is identical, whether it have its seat in one of the objective sense-, organs, as the skin, or in some part of the viscera of the trunk. As pain, from whatever cause it may arise—mechanical, chemical stimulus, heat or cold, &c.—is always of the same nature, so it exhibits no difference in its essential character, whatever nerves of the body sensitive to pain the pain-exciting stimulus may affect.” He further shows “that pain, as it is manifested in the sense-organs proper as only the highest pitch of sensation, so in all the other sensitive organs it is nothing else but the most intense sensation, which follows on the strongest stimuli; that, on the other hand, all organs which are at all capable of the sensation of pain have also power to serve as media of sensations, which cannot be termed pain, but which stand in respect of each organ for that which in the case of the sensory organs is the specific sensation” (p. 394). “If once attention be called to these pre-cursors and successors of pain, they can also be distinctly perceived, if they do not stand in connection with preceding or succeeding pains” (p. 393). “As we only attend to them when they rise to the pitch of pain, language has also only distinctive designations for the peculiarity of the pain of different organs” (p. 395). It is, then, these specific organic sensations, corresponding to the sensations of the special senses, in conjunction with the secondary affection of adjoining tissues, which condition the different colouring of pain, without altering the identity of its essence.

  Whoever has apprehended the similarity of pleasure and displeasure in sensuous, will soon admit it also in mental feelings. Whether my friend A or my friend B dies may possibly change the
degree but not the kind of my pain, no more than if my wife or my child dies, although my love to both has been of quite a different kind, and also the ideas and thoughts which I entertain on the nature of the loss are quite different. As pain in general has been caused in this case through the representation of the loss, so also in the complex of feeling and thought which one usually comprehends under pain, a difference is introduced through the difference in respect of the loss; but if one again detaches what is pain and nothing but pain, not thought and not imagination, it will be found that this again is identical. The same holds good of the pain which I feel for the loss of a wife, the loss of property which makes me a beggar, and of the loss of my office and my honour owing to calumny. What is pain and nothing but pain is everywhere only different in degree. Likewise in the pleasure which I feel when another, after a long resistance, yields to my stubborn will, or if I gain a prize in a lottery or obtain a higher post.

  That pleasure and displeasure are everywhere alike again follows from this, that one is compared with the other, on which balancing of pleasure and displeasure in the feelings every rational practical reflection, every resolution of mankind depends; for one can indeed only measure like by like, not hay by straw or pecks by pounds. In the fact that the whole of human life and the determining grounds of action therein depends on a balancing of the most different kinds of pleasure and displeasure there is implicitly and unconsciously contained, as fundamental condition, the assumption that such different kinds of pleasure and displeasure may in general be weighed against one another; that they are commensurable, i.e., that that which is compared in them is qualitatively identical. Were this tacit supposition false the whole of human life would rest upon a prodigious illusion, whose origin and possibility would be absolutely incomprehensible. The commensurability of pleasure and displeasure in themselves, which is already expressed in language in the nominal identity of all kinds of pleasure and pain, must thus be unconditionally assumed as fact, and it holds good not merely of different kinds of sensuous pleasure, but just as much for sensuous and mental pleasure and displeasure. Think of a man who has the choice of marrying one of two rich sisters, the one clever and ugly, the other stupid and pretty. He weighs the supposed sensuous and mental pleasure against one another, and according as this or that appears to him to preponderate he makes his decision. In the same way a girl led into temptation weighs the pleasure from honour, from virtuous pride, and the hope of the future dignity of a housewife against the pleasure from the promises of the seducer and the joys beckoning her to his side. Again, a believer compares the heavenly joys which are said to flow from earthly renunciation with those earthly joys which he is to renounce, and according to the apparent predominance of the one or the other does he seize the earthly or the heavenly part. Such a weighing of sensuous and spiritual pleasure, and the supposition of the essential likeness on which it rests, would only be unintelligible if sensuous and mental were altogether heterogeneous provinces severed by a fixed gulf. This is, however, not the case. The sensuous, too, so far as it is feeling, rests on a subjective spiritual basis; and the spiritual also, so far as it fills consciousness, forms only the blossom of the tree of sense on which it has grown, and from which it can never be torn.

  We consider, then, the result established that pleasure and displeasure are in themselves only one thing in all feelings, or that they are different not in quality, but only in degree. That pleasure and displeasure neutralise one another, are related as positive and negative, and the zero between them is the indifference of feeling, is clear. Equally clear is it that it is indifferent which of the two one is inclined to assume as positive, just as indifferent as the question whether the right or the left side of the abscissa be taken as positive (that accordingly Schopenhauer is wrong when he declares displeasure the alone positive and pleasure its negative; he thereby commits the error of confounding contrary and contradictory opposition).

  But now the question is, what, then, are pleasure and displeasure? That the mental representation is one of their causes we have seen, but what are they, then, themselves? By mental representation alone they will certainly never be explained, much as ancient and modern philosophers have tried. The simplest self-observation gives the lie to their unsatisfactory deductions, and says that pleasure and displeasure, on the one hand, and thought on the other, are heterogeneous things, which only with great straining can be confounded. On the other hand, it has been acknowledged by most important thinkers of all times that pleasure and displeasure stand in the closest connection with the inmost life of man, with his interests and inclinations, his desires and strivings,—in a word, with the kingdom of the will. Without intending to enter here more minutely into the opinions of individual philosophers, it may comprehensively be said that all their opinions may be reduced to two fundamental views,—either they conceive pleasure as satisfaction, displeasure as non-satisfaction of desire, or, conversely, desire as idea of future pleasure, aversion (negative desire) as idea of future pain.1 In the former case will, in the latter feeling, is conceived as the original. Which of the two is correct it is not difficult to see; for, in the first place, in Instinct will, in fact, exists before the representation of pleasure; its proper goal is there another than the individual pleasure of satisfaction; in the second place, possibly through the explanation of pleasure as satisfaction of the will everything in pleasure is sufficiently explained, but not, conversely, everything in the will through the explanation of the same as idea of pleasure. Here the properly impelling factor, the will, as active causality, remains perfectly incomprehensible, just because the will is the externalisation, but pleasure and displeasure the return from this externalisation to self, and is therewith the close of this process; therefore the will must be the primary, pleasure the secondary moment.

  If we provisionally allow this view to pass, we obtain an unexpected confirmation of the essential identity of pleasure and displeasure in all feelings. We have seen before that volition is likewise always one and the same, and, in the first place, is only discriminated according to the degree of strength, and, in the second place, according to the object, which, however, is no longer will, but idea. If now pleasure is the satisfaction, and displeasure the non-satisfaction of the will, it is clear that these also must always be only one and the same, and can merely be different in degree; but that the apparent qualitative distinctions which they contain are given by accompanying ideas, partly by those which make the object of will, partly by those which bring about the satisfaction of the will. From this there results, for all emotional states, notwithstanding their multiplicity, so great a simplicity that, according to the ancient saying, “simplex sigillum veri,” this must be regarded as a support to the assertions from which it follows, just as these mutually support and render one another probable through the force of analogy.

  The reasons why I have at this particular place touched on these problems of the conscious psychical life are contained in the following two complementary propositions from the psychology of the Unconscious:—(1.) Where one is conscious of no will in the satisfaction of which an existing pleasure or displeasure could exist, this will is an unconscious one; and (2.) the obscure, ineffable, inexpressible in feeling lies in the unconsciousness of the accompanying ideas. Because the conception of the unconscious will was wanting in previous psychology it could not conscientiously unconditionally accept the explanation of pleasure as satisfaction of the will, and because it lacked the notion of the unconscious idea it did not know how to deal with the whole province of the feelings, and therefore limited its consideration almost exclusively to the department of thought.

  As example of a pleasure through the exercise of unconscious will, one may take the instincts where the purpose lies in the Unconscious, e.g., the maternal pleasure in the new-born child, or the transcendent bliss of the happy lover. Here no will whose satisfaction corresponds to the degree of pleasure at all emerges into consciousness; but we know the metaphysical power of
that unconscious will whose special effects are the several instinctive desires, and which obtains satisfaction through their realisation; and it must be an exceeding high and strong will indeed, whose satisfaction has for its consequence those phenomena of extravagant pleasure, of which the poets in all ages did not know how to sing in strains sufficiently lofty.

  Another example is the sensuous pleasure and pain which result from nerve-currents of a certain kind. Lotze, in his “Medical Psychology,” shows that sensuous pleasure always occurs along with a furtherance, and pain with a disturbance of organic life. This conscientious investigator, however, expressly acknowledges that only a uniform concomitance can be established, but that what we mean by pain can by no means be derived from the general notion of vital disturbance, that consequently there must be a deeper law connecting the two. Now this is manifestly the unconscious will, which we have become acquainted with as principle of organisation, self-preservation, and self-restoration. As soon as disturbances or furtherances in the sphere of organic life are of such a nature that they are telegraphed to the brain, the satisfaction or non-satisfaction of this unconscious will must be felt as pleasure or displeasure. (For the refutation of some replies to the above assertions on sensuous pleasure and displeasure I refer to Lotze, 2d book, 2d chapter.)