side the ideational; or the presence of a purely mental activity, without physical substrate. The first hypothesis must be judged on grounds of probability; nothing definite can be urged against it (p. 145: but cf. p. 159). The second does not come within the ken of the new Psychology.[1]
It is a matter of experience that what excites pleasure conduces to the welfare of the psychophysical organism, what excites unpleasantness, to its harm. Pleasure arises from the harmony of the bodily changes caused by stimulus and the conditions of the life of the organism, or of intellectual states and the conditions of conscious life; unpleasantness, from their discordance.
There is, in all probability, no physiological process underlying Feeling, other than that which underlies Idea. The lifting of loads by the crane typifies the production of ideas; the ease or difficulty of the lifting corresponds to pleasure or pain. Pleasure and unpleasantness are in all cases "the mental results of the relation between the consumption of energy necessary at a given moment to the system at work, and the renewal of energy by the activity of nutrition" (p. 160).
The biological discussion on pp. 146, 147 is acuter than some others, but wears rather a formal look. The analysis on p. 149 finds a curious setting. Certain poisons are sweet in the mouth (S and F), but bitter in the belly (S' and F'). But it is the mouth-sweetness by which the poor organism stands or falls. Pleasure and pain, weal and woe, do they correspond "durchweg" under these circumstances?
Though he is at such pains to formulate the biological correlation, Dr. Lehmann expresses himself as being very sceptical of its actual value (p. 160). It really is of no assistance to the psychologist. Why Wundt's psychological view of Feeling[2] should be held to involve, psychophysically, a new brain-process, I do not understand. Nothing that the writer adduces makes against that view itself. The "work of an organ" (p. 156) is perception or idea: its activity, like that of the crane on p. 158, may be likened to the activity of apperception.[3] Wundt's analysis might have been the text of the argument here.
- ↑ Cf. Külpe, in Arch. f. Geschichte d. Philosophie, VI, p. 177. Very refreshing is the frank recognition here, and by Dr. Lehmann (pp. 167, 168), of Fechner's services to modern psychology.
- ↑ As the reaction, by the way, not of mind, but of apperception, upon perception and idea. See Phil. Stud., VI, p. 364.
- ↑ Haltingly, of course, and misleadingly, if the phrase "production of ideas" ascribes to voluntary attention the power of raising ideas over the limen.
