§ 5. Feeling-Tone and Cognitive Tendency.—Some pleasures of sense are dependent on preexisting conations. There are sensecravings connected with the primary organic needs, such as the need for food and drink; and the gratification of these cravings is a source of sensepleasure. Similarly, the induced cravings for tobacco and alcohol, which recur of themselves at intervals, give a pleasure when they are appeased which is quite distinguishable from the pleasure immediately due to the stimulus apart from the craving for it.

Every pleasing and every painful experience at the time at which it is actually taking place has a cognitive, or at least a quasicognitive, aspect. In so far as the experience is pleasing, there is a tendency to maintain and develop it by whatever means may be found effective, until its pleasuregiving capacity is exhausted, or is overpowered by the intermixture of unpleasing elements. In so far as the experience is unpleasant, there is a tendency to discontinue it by whatever means may be found effective. Thus, on the level of mere sensation, agreeable feeling-tone corresponds to the positive phase of conation, and disagreeable with the negative. The pleasant experience is coincident with a cognitive tendency which requires for its satisfaction the continuance of the experience. The unpleasant experience is coincident with a cognitive tendency which requires for its satisfaction the discontinuance of the experience. While pleasure lasts, conation is being satisfied; it is working itself out. When satiety is reached, it has been satisfied: it has worked itself out and reached its termination. Until satiety is reached, there is always a tendency for the process to go on. If the pleasing sensory process is discontinued or obstructed before satiety is reached, the conation continues and is intensified; there is added to the tendency to continue the pleasing sensation the tendency to get rid of the unpleasing state due to its interruption. The original cognitive tendency, which was in process of being gratified, is transformed into a thwarted craving. Suddenly snatch away the bottle from the baby who is complacently sucking it, and you will have a picture of the situation referred to. The reverse of all this holds good of disagreeable experiences. To discontinue them, however abruptly, is to give satisfaction and not dissatisfaction. Their continuance always thwarts and never appeases the cognitive tendency, which is essentially connected with their existence.

It should be carefully noted that we distinguish between ultimate satisfaction and the process of becoming satisfied. Ultimate satisfaction is attained only when satiety is reached,—only when the subject has had enough of the pleasant experience, so that, if it were still maintained, it would cease to please him. Pleasure is found in the process of becoming satisfied, not in its completion. Its completion is its termination, and therefore the termination of its feeling-tone.

We said that every agreeable or disagreeable sensation has a cognitive or quasicognitive aspect. The words "or quasicognitive" were added to meet a possible difficulty. Some psychologists hold that certain pleasing sensations appear purely passive, so far as introspection can analyse them. They do not appear to involve any experience of endeavour, or striving. I do not agree with these psychologists ; but the question is a subtle one. It seems therefore best to evade the difficulty by pointing out that for our purpose it is not essential whether the tendency is experienced or not, so long as it exists. It will not be denied that there is at least an unconscious tendency to continue a pleasing experience until we have had enough of it.

Any pleasing sense-experience, when it has once taken place, will, on subsequent occasions, give rise to a conation, when its conditions are only partially repeated, as when the object with which it is connected is perceived, or the corresponding idea is reproduced. The impulses and desires thus occasioned have both agreeable and disagreeable phases. They are for the most part agreeable when gratification conies quickly, or is anticipated with confidence. They are disagreeable when gratification is long witheld, especially if it be withheld in a tantalising way, so as to produce disappointment, or a series of disappointments. The experience is also apt to be more or less disagreeable when anticipation is not confident, but doubtful and hesitating.