If pure pleasure-pain is primitive consciousness (see chap. ii.), it must be most rare phenomenon in such an advanced consciousness as that of the human adult: and it is not surprising that one should search for it in vain. But in any case it could not yield to attention. Attention as cognition views its object in relation, in a _milieu_; it can reproduce only by fastening upon something to reproduce by, but pure pleasure-pain has nothing connected with it. Again, attention as volition cannot reproduce mere pleasure-pain which is not volitional in its origin and growth like sensing, perceiving, or ideating. We merely “suffer” pain. Both pleasure and pain in themselves are purely passive; willing cannot directly affect them, and they are not, like cognitions, modes of volition, or effortful activities. For man to have a primitive consciousness by exercise of will would be quite as difficult as to turn himself into a protozoön. Further, would not attention as introspective alertness to discover such a fact of consciousness as pure pleasure-pain denote that consciousness is thereby raised far above the level at which such a phenomenon can occur? In general also constant introspective attention tends to defeat itself. A continual intentness and watching for a given psychic phenomenon is a state which, the more intense and persistent it is, tends to bar out the particular state watched for, and, indeed, all other states than itself. If attention as act engrosses, it defeats itself. If, however, undifferentiated pleasure-pain should at any time occur in human consciousness, might we become immediately and spontaneously aware of it? By its very nature it may escape conscious attentive investigation, but may there not be a direct and simple awareness or apperception of it? We might suppose that one man tells another, “I was very sick, and in state of coma I had pain, merely pain, not any kind of pain or pain anywhere, but just pain, that was all the consciousness I had.” Such an expression is intelligible, and may be a fact. However, it is in the phenomena of lapse and rise of consciousness that we see evidences that undifferentiated feeling probably occurs, and that sometimes in high psychisms. In the following chapter we discuss then this point as a matter of judgment of tendencies, rather than on basis of direct evidence of introspection, though this is not barred out. CHAPTER II _ON PRIMITIVE CONSCIOUSNESS_