The Active Animal Faculties Or Instinct
Chapter 1
The Two Basic Forces Of Animal Activity
367. We have said that feeling could not arise unless a feeling principle contributed its own activity to feeling (cf. 358). In fact, sensations could not conceivably be aroused in a principle devoid of all activity. Such a principle would be dead and as unfeeling as a stone. Corporeal feeling, although it requires passivity in the feeling principle, does not postulate a passivity which is entirely inert and devoid of action. It depends on a spontaneous passivity, a receptivity that co-operates to allow the reception. Strictly speaking, we are dealing with co-operation, not relationship. Both the feeling and sensiferous principles co-operate to produce the felt element; and given this element, feeling is present.
Nor must we mistakenly suppose that the feeling and sensiferous principles precede the felt element in time, as they do in their concept. We have shown that we have no evidence at all for such prior existence. Unless feeling is given by nature, there can be no progress in ideas. This fact must be the object of our reflection which, by means of analysis and reasoning, discovers in feeling a double, continuous, immanent action incessantly producing feeling. Thus, by examining the product, that is, the felt element or feeling itself, we arrive at the real existence of two acting principles (feeling and sensiferous).
368. But the co-operation of the feeling principle in producing
feeling is shown not only by reflection on the constitutive elements of feeling
but also by many other easily observable facts.
For example, greater pain, by attracting the activity of the feeling principle
from lesser pain, diminishes or removes the disturbance caused by lesser pain
simply because the greater attracts the activity of the feeling principle from
the smaller. Again, when a foreign body is first in contact with a mucous
membrane, we feel pain, but as the contact is repeated or prolonged, the
painful sensation gradually diminishes until it disappears altogether. The
soul, by withdrawing itself from the very painful sensation, seems to play a
large part in producing this phenomenon. Our skin, for example, feels acutely
any sudden change from hot to cold, but becomes insensitive to a constant
temperature. Certainly, many causes are involved here, but in my opinion a
principal and probable cause is, as I have said, the soul's withdrawal from its
initial contribution with its own action to the movement of the nerve. The soul
may even positively resist and obstruct the movement of the nerve which is
necessary for feeling to take place.
Another demonstration of the feeling principle's action in producing feeling is the totally different state of an animated body from a body deprived of the soul. The difference clearly indicates that the soul or feeling principle informs the body, giving it tone and mobility. In other words the soul gives the body the qualities which the body presents to extrasubjective observation. There can be no doubt, therefore, that the first activity of the soul is its co-operation in producing feeling.
369. The soul, however, has another energy, by which it acts after feeling has been produced: it is moved to action by the very fact of feeling. For example, the only explanation for an animal's being moved to suckle immediately after birth and perform other movements and tasks is the urge to experience pleasure and avoid pain.
That which is animal, therefore, has two activities: its contribution to the production of feeling, and its behaviour as a consequence of feeling. These two basic, universal energies are the source of all particular, active, animal faculties and actions. When acting harmoniously, they explain all the facts of animal activity. Although each of them can correctly be called instinct, the first is better called life instinct, and the second sensuous instinct.