We shall now notice certain of Mr. James Ward’s statements on primordial mind—in the article Psychology, _Encyclopædia Britannica_—in which he controverts feeling as original and simplest unit in mentality. Mr. Ward regards “_the simplest form of psychical life_” as involving “_qualitatively distinguishable presentations which are the occasions of the feeling_.” Presentation is primitive and initial in all consciousness, and cognition—feeling—will is the order for all mind. We always act as we are pleased or pained with the “changes in our sensations, thoughts, or circumstances” of which we are aware. Some presentation form is, throughout all our experience, the precursor and cause of feeling, and feeling can never be said to exist in a pure state as bare pleasure and pain totally without cognitive value. On the contrary, I conclude from general considerations and from special indications in our own minds that pure pain is the original element, and that pure pleasure and pain are fundamental in all mind. Pure feeling arises from objects, indeed, but is still wholly unknowing of object and without qualitative aspect. Pure feeling is the constant incentive to all knowing and will activity. To say that I am pleased with a thing is to transform objective order into subjective fact. Pleasures and pains certainly come from things but this does not invariably rouse cognition of them as so coming, or of object as causative agent. The governing and essential fact of mind is always pure feeling, which, by reason of its perfect centrality, necessarily and naturally tends to elude observation. Every act of consciousness begins and ends with pure feeling, but mind, as far as it minds itself, is most apt to see only culminating phases rather than the obscure and inner forces which constituted long outgrown stages. The prominent facts of late consciousness are always very complex. Cognition as revealer unites with the known and inevitably, but strongly tends to regard itself as the determining and causative agent, whereas by its essence and function it is secondary. Cognition does not create its object, except in the view of a transcendental philosophy.