Chapter 7
Origin Of The Sensuous Instinct
385. The act by which the soul gives life to a body endowed with organs
produces the animal fundamental feeling, the term of which is an extended
element stimulated by internal movements, subjectively feelable, and
simultaneously ministering to feeling, that is, sensory. This feeling is a
continuous act, whose term is the whole living body, especially the whole body
felt with its excitatory movements. The fundamental feeling is therefore
immanent.
But the term of the fundamental feeling is modified not only by the soul but
also by material forces, which gives rise to the modifications of the
fundamental feeling, that is, to various, acquired sensations. Experience shows
that, given feeling and particular sensations, a new activity, which we have
called sensuous instinct, reveals itself in the soul.
386. This instinct teaches the baby to search for light with its eyes and, with its mouth, food from its mother's breast. It governs all the baby's movements and the few actions of its young life, charming it with pleasant sensations and withdrawing it from unpleasant sensations. There can be no doubt that feeling causes an instinct, and that many movements arise from the desire to feel intensely and pleasantly.
387. It is easy to see how this second activity of the soul, the sensuous
instinct, is in some way a continuation of the first, the life
instinct. The life instinct posits the primary, fundamental feeling, while
the sensuous instinct seeks other feelings; it is always feeling to which the
soul's activity tends. With its first activity the soul breaks into, so to
speak, the movable, feelable, extended element. This movement always tends to
new feelings, and spreads wherever it can.
Thus, the primordial power of the soul is reduced to a single power. All the
soul's acts are virtually contained in the act with which it first feels. Like
a drawn bow, the soul's power is contained in this act, ready to shoot forward
when released, and show itself in movement.
388. Hence, `animal' could appropriately be defined as `an individual being, which acts by feeling'.