Chapter 2
The Essential Difference Between
The Feeling Principle And The Body
56. We have to be clear about our need for a word other than `body' to indicate the principle of the phenomena of sensation. We can understand this need by noting the different and even opposite characteristics of the two series of phenomena of which we are speaking, that is, the external phenomena of bodies, and the internal phenomena of sensation. When these differences have been established, the distinction and even opposition of their separate principles, which have rightly been called body and soul, will be apparent.
This kind of explanation brings in its wake the special advantage of providing my argument with a foundation totally independent of the way in which words are used. In showing the existence in nature of two quite distinct series of phenomena, the consequent necessity of indicating their two distinct principles will require the use of two separate names. If the words body and soul are then denied me, it will still be necessary to substitute two other words in their place, which is perfectly satisfactory provided there is agreement about the matter in itself. However, once the necessity of two names has been established, there should be no difficulty even in the choice of words, and I am sure that I will be permitted the word body to indicate the principle of purely material phenomena, and soul to indicate the principle of sensation.
57. The nub of the problem lies in observing the difference between material phenomena and the phenomena of sensation. Let us imagine, then, that we have in front of us a human being, or any animal whatsoever, affected by various sensations. And to make the matter clearer, let us imagine that these sensations are of extreme violence. We perceive this animal with our senses, each of which plays its part in receiving the sensations the animal produces in us. But amongst all the sensations of sight, touch and so on that we have received, there is no trace of the extraordinary pleasure or violent pain that we suppose to be present within the animal. Its pleasure or pain will, of course, have produced contractions and alterations in different parts of its body, and these serve as a sure sign of the pain or pleasure it experiences. In the case of a human being, change of facial colour, wide-open eyes, gritting of the teeth, uncontrolled rigidity or flexibility of the body, and other effects of intense pain, even when not accompanied by groans and screams, show us what the other is suffering. We are not asking, however, if we know another's pain through the effects the suffering produces in the state and shape of his body. We are asking whether we perceive the pain itself or simply the effects of the pain when we see and touch him. Do we see, touch, hear, smell or taste his suffering with our own senses?
We must answer `No' unhesitatingly. Our sense-organs experience bodies only in so far as bodies are coloured, hard, impenetrable, sonorous, odiferous, tasteful or possess similar feelable qualities which are very different from the other person's pain. The pain, in other words, is not a body.
If I still doubt whether the pain is a body, I can go on to ask myself what colour, shape, hardness, weight, movement, smell or taste it manifests. The question shows immediately how absurd it is to suppose that the pain is a body, or possesses the qualities proper to bodies. And yet, if the pain were perceived by us with our sense-organs, it would have to possess feelable qualities of one kind or another.
This kind of argument is easy to follow, and each one can conclude for himself: 1. that neither the pain nor the pleasure experienced by another person falls under our senses - it is impossible to imagine that another's pain is a body, that is, a being capable of stimulating our sense-organs; 2. that we knew the other was suffering not because we perceived the pain with our senses, but because we perceived the effects produced by the pain and apparent on his body (change of colour, and so on). We made a rapid calculation and reasoned from the signs to what was signified, that is, from the effects to the cause and concluded that the person was in great pain because his body showed phenomena normally associated with suffering.
58. There is no doubt that the body of the suffering person, which changes externally, and the sensation of his pain are two totally different things. The body falls under my senses, and produces sensations in me; his pain does not fall under my senses, but remains in him alone. The body that falls under my senses is the term of my senses; the pain of someone else is not and cannot be the term of my sense-activity. The pain does not pass outside the subject in which it is found. Of its nature, therefore, it is appropriately called subjective because it is simply an entirely internal modification or experience of the subject itself. Shape, on the contrary, and the other feelable qualities of the perceived body can be called extrasubjective in so far as they are adapted and offered to my sensory faculties as their term while remaining external to them and to me, the perceiving subject. Each of these things (pain and feelable quality) is inconfusible with the other: the term of my sense-organ is not the sensation itself, and the sensation is not the term and cause of the feelable quality. The term, the cause of sensations (the body) is essentially different from `myself', that is, from the subject, and even opposed to it. The body does in fact act on `myself', and hence is active with regard to `myself', while `myself' is passive relative to the feelable body. Sensation, on the contrary, appertains to `myself', exists in `myself' as perceiving, is a new state of `myself' and a mode in which `myself' (that is, the subject) is found to exist.
59. Two opposite kinds of things are felt by us, therefore, which we can call if we wish two series of totally dissimilar phenomena: the phenomena which appear in the body, the external term and cause of sensations, and those pertaining to the subject and remaining within the subject, that is, the sensations themselves. The first series makes us perceive a foreign activity upon ourselves, the second a kind of passivity in ourselves. And the two series cannot be confused with one another, just as we cannot confuse what is sensiferous with what is sensitive.
60. But if this is obvious, it is also obvious that such distinct and opposite series of phenomena must depend upon opposite principles. It is clearly necessary for us to admit the existence both of a principle that operates and of a principle that suffers; of a principle proper to that which falls under the senses and of a principle proper to that which constitutes the sensory subject under which the first principle falls; an extrasubjective agent and a feeling subject; in other words, a body and a soul, inanimate beings and animals.
Whatever name is applied to these principles, they remain the two great classes of things into which the phenomena composing the universe are divided. They can never be reduced to a single principle.