THE CASE OF MENTAL versus PHYSICAL ENJOYMENTS. T HERE is a
tradition at Oxford that Cardinal Newman, in his old Oxford days, was once asked by a friend whether he did not remember some superlatively good dish of which they had partaken together some years before at a particular place, on which Dr. Newman replied,—" What a wonderful memory your stomach has I" We were reminded of this tradition on reading Mr. Briggs Carlin article in the August number of the Nine- teenth. Century, on the subject "Are Animals Happy ?" not because he proves that the stomachs of animals have a wonder- ful memory, but because he leaves the trifling question of memory entirely out of the discussion, even when he is giving evidence to prove that in man's life,—he is right, of course, in making the assumption for the life of creatures lower in the scale of organisation,—the animal pleasures preponderate greatly over -the moral and intellectual pleasures. Indeed, he goes so far as to assert that "from the satisfaction of one appetite alone" (that for food and drink), any highly cultivated man, if he be also healthy, "has derived more pleasure than from litera- ture and science, or art, or all combined." We must say that this judgment of Mr. Briggs Carlill's strikes us as betray- ing a good deal of physiological bias. For nothing is more remarkable than the short memory of most men's stomachs,— to use Dr. Newman's. graphic expression,—except the long memory of all their higher faculties. Even when a man happens to remember an incident of the kind, as in the case of the friend who drew down on himself Dr. Newman's satire, it will generally be found that be remembers it in consequence of the pleasant associations of a higher kind with which it was connected, while anything that he has profoundly enjoyed in the shape of a mental or moral experience, is entirely inde- pendent in his memory of any accompaniment of mere sensa- tion. The truth is that Mr. Briggs Carlin grossly exaggerates the proportion of what he rather pedantically calls "ganglionic pleasures" to "brain pleasures." Indeed, why he calla the latter "brain pleasures," we cannot tell, since they are all of them pleasures of consciousness, and no one has yet given the slightest reason for believing either that pleasures of consciousness are possible to a mere brain, or that they are not possible to beings without anything like the physical organisa- tion which men call the brain. However, that is only by the way. What Mr. Briggs Carlin sets himself to prove is that what he calls "local ganglionic pleasures predominate over in- tellectual pleasures." The proof he gives is uncommonly simple. He points to the important place in our life which eating and drinking assume, "including not merely the pleasures of the palate, but the far more impressive volume of sensation resulting from digestion." "The sensations arising in the alimentary canal,' he says," during the process of digestion and assimilation of food are frequently overlooked, because they are not like the move- ments of the higher organs of sense, within the direct control of the brain. But throughout the whole process a stream of im- pressions is conveyed to the brain, corresponding with the manner in which digestion is proceeding, and these impressions constitute a very large proportion of the total from which the happiness or misery of a life is derived. Those unto whom digestion
is a healthy and regularly conducted process, can with little difficulty verify this observation, if they take the next oppor- tunity of observing how very differently some slight trouble presents itself to their mind before and after a good meal. If we consider simply the element of time, the period occupied each day in the actual satisfaction of the appetite and the still longer period occupied in digestion, we must admit there is represented in these processes an amount of quiet enjoyment to which no other function or activity of humanity can show a parallel." A more curious passage was never written. It is intended to prove that "local ganglionic pleasures," or, as Mr. Carlill elsewhere calls them, "peripheral pleasures," pre- dominate over what he calls indifferently "central pleasures," "pleasures of the cerebral hemispheres," and "intellectual pleasures." Now, to which of these classes of pleasures does he ascribe the relief from anxiety which is due to the feeding of an exhausted brain ? We should have thought that whether it were mental or not, it must be at least a "central" pleasure, a pleasure of "the cerebral hemispheres." But as it pleases the physiologists to use 'cerebral' and mental' indifferently, Mr. Carlill cannot afford to admit that the stream of com- fortable sensations which results from the recovered power of the brain, is a local ganglionic pleasure, unless he is to regard all mental pleasures as local and ganglionic, so that it is absurd to contend for the predominance of "local gan- glionic " pleasures over "mental pleasures," by appealing to the recovery of mental power which follows upon the feeding of the brain. Surely there is great confusion here, jest like the confusion between "the brain" and "the mind" which is in- volved in the phrase, that "the higher organs of sense" are "within the direct control of the brain." The brain has no more real " control " of anything, in the strict sense of the word "control," than the hand. Both the one and the other are purely physical agents which respond to stimuli applied from without, but agents totally without self-originating power. If there be such a thing as " control " at all, it is the mind which exercises it, and not either the brain or the hand. But all this is merely parenthetical, and intended to point out how deep is the confusion amongst the physiologists between classes of phenomena which they appear to treat as if they were abso- lutely distinct. We submit that the foregoing argument, if it proves anything, proves that there is no real distinction at all between "local ganglionic pleasures" and "pleasures of the cerebral hemispheres." If the pleasure of eating is in part of the former kind, it is also shown to be in part of the latter kind. If it produces agreeable sensations in the stomach, it also pro- duces satisfactory sensations in the brain. If it gives a sense of well-being to the body, it also gives a new feeling of power to the mind. How, then, are we to discriminate, as Mr. Carlin asks us to do, between the one class and the other class? That which begins in the lower animal life reaches also the higher mental life. You cannot even regard the pleasure of meat and drink as purely animal, when you find that it ministers to the sense of power with which man contemplates the diffi- culties he has to surmount, and is resolved to contend with. Even food and drink are transformed by the wonderful alchemy of our nature into the nourishment of hope, of courage, of forti- tude. If the lower animals are incapable of hope, courage, and fortitude, then the enjoyments which even food gives them are, in that most essential respect, inferior to the enjoyments which it gives to man whose command over the higher acts of imagination, foresight, and faith it restores.
Again, when Mr. Carlin argues, as he does, that those pleasures which food and drink give to men and to the lower animals in common, far predominate over those pleasures which he regards as moral and intellectual, we wonder what he would say to the case of men,—of whom there are plenty in this world,—in whom food and drink are associated almost exclusively with painful sensations, with indigestion, with palpitations of the heart, with heaviness of the brain, with general oppres- sion on the nerves. Ought they not to be, on his theory, then, thoroughly unhappy men, in whom the predominant experience is one of misery ? Yet many sufferers of this type are:on the whole, fully as happy as certain others who hardly have an indigestion once in the year. No doubt their source of happi- ness is different. The mere process of eating is an anxiety to them. They would be only too thankful to compound with Nature if slie would but take away all sense of pleasure in food, and would at the same time take away all sense of pain. So far from this "impressive volume of sensation" being pleasurable to them, it is full of chronic and permanent distress. And yet, in spite of all this, a man who suffers throughout life from this cause can often call himself a happy man, simply because the life of man is so very much larger than Mr. Carlill describes it, because it depends so much on the due discharge of the duties of life, on the due exercise of the affections, because the pleasures of memory and of hope are all so much greater than Mr. Carlill's calculus admits,—in a word, because man is so much more than an animal ; because, with a mind full of vivid relations to other minds, with a mind that knows what it is to struggle and to conquer, to anticipate and to recollect, there is so vast a region of satisfaction which is shut out from the mere animal altogether. We should willingly admit that a horse or an ox which was a victim to indigestion and its horrors would be an utterly miserable creature, and if it did not commit suicide, it would be only for want of knowledge of the resource of death, for want of knowledge that there is such an escape for it from the ills of life ;—for we cannot admit with Mr. Carlill that an animal does know what death means, or realises that it has access to that door of escape from its troubles. But with the man there may easily be,—there often is,—much more than a sufficient counter- balancing weight even to the troubles which ill-digested food and drink cause him, in the treasures of his mental and moral life, in the store of memories, hopes, affections, and faiths with which his character is sustained and enabled to bear up against even the leaden weight of an inadequate digestion. Luckily for us, the stomach has a very poor memory, and the intellect, con- science, and spirit a very good one. Even with a weight at the chest and a heaviness on the brain, the mind can travel back- wards and forwards to the bright past and the brighter future, to the memories which, we have reason to fear, never cheer the languor of a horse or the decaying power of a dog, and to the faith which almost assuredly never stirs these creatures in look- ing to the future. In a word, Mr. Carlill's estimate,—thongh we hope with all our hearts it may be a true one as regards the average happiness of animals,—is so much vitiated by his singu- larly low estimate of the value of our mental constitution, which he regards as causing us almost all our worst troubles, though con- tributing very slightly, in proportion, to our happiness, that we cannot regard his estimate as formed on a rational, or even an approximately rational, basis. We quite agree with him that our conscience and our foresight and our affections cause us far more trouble than all our bodily pains ; but then, we totally disagree with him in supposing that they bring us only a small part of the enjoyment which our bodily constitution brings. Even the poor, of whose life he speaks as obviously depending for its happiness mainly on the satisfaction of the bodily cravings, derive, we should say, nine-tenths of their happiness from sources in which none of the lower animals have more than a very in- finitesimal share,—the delight of mutual help, of mutual regard, of mutual respect, and mutual fidelity,—emotions to which perhaps very few of the lower animals,—the elephant and the dog are perhaps those in which the evidence of these emotions is clearest,—are largely accessible. In short, we have hardly ever seen the fallacies engendered by that materialistic estimate of life which the study of physiology seems to stimulate, expressed with more astounding emphasis and naivetg than in Mr. Briggs Carlill's comparison between the incidents of our human lot and those of the lot of our dumb fellow-creatures.
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