The Philosophy of Law: An Exposition of the Fundamental Principles of Jurisprudence as the Science of Right

The Eelation of the Faculties of the Human Mind TO the Moral Laws.

The Practical Faculty of Action. — The active Faculty OF the Human Mind, as the Faculty of Desire in its widest sense, is the Power which man has, through his mental representations, of becoming the cause of objects corresponding to these representations. The capacity of a Being to act in conformity with his own representations, is what constitutes the Life of such a Being.

The Peeling of Pleasure or Pain. — It is to be observed, first, that with Desire or Aversion there is always connected Plbasuee or Pain, the susceptibility for which is called Feeling. But the converse does not always hold. For there may be a Pleasure connected, not with the desire of an object, but with a mere mental representation, it being indifferent whether an object corresponding to the representation exist or not. And, second, the Pleasure or Pain connected with the object of desire does not always precede the activity of Desire; nor can it be regarded in every case as the cause, but it may as well be the Effect of that activity. The capacity of experiencing Pleasure or Pain on the occasion of a mental representation, is called ‘Feeling,’ because Pleasure and Pain contain only what is subjective in the relations of our mental activity. They do not, involve any relation to an object that could possibly furnish a knowledge of it as such; they cannot even give us a knowledge of our own mental state. Eor even Sensations, considered apart from the qualities which attach to them on account of the modiiications of the Subject, — as, for instance, in reference to Eed, Sweet, and such like, — are referred as constituent elements of knowledge to Objects, whereas Pleasure or Pain felt in connection with what is red or sweet, express absolutely nothing that is in the Object, but merely a relation to the Subject. And for the reason just stated, Pleasure and Pain considered in themselves cahnot be more precisely defined. All that can be further done with regard to them is merely to point out what consequences they may have in certain relations, in order to make the knowledge of them available practically.