With regard to states of pleasure it is more difficult to make any distinction between primary and secondary manifestations. Every new movement is a new expression of the same feeling which—as long as fatigue does not set up its peculiar pain—is only enhanced by these repeated “somatic resonances.” If pleasure is originated by the increased function of one individual organ, then this stimulation must, owing to the solidarity of the functions, gradually extend over wider areas in the system. The more numerous the organs which take part in the activity, the more numerous also are our sensations of function, and the greater the gain of our pleasure in richness and variety. An undefined feeling of vigour, assurance, or power can only acquire distinctness and intensity by expressing itself in some mode of physical or mental activity. But while stimulation is thus directly connected with the feeling-tone of pleasurable states, it must be admitted, on the other hand, that—as has been remarked above—associative influences also contribute towards enhancing their active manifestations. By these secondary motor-impulses, however, the original feeling is only increased. It can therefore be said that pleasure feeds and nurtures itself by expression. Pain, on the contrary, increases in strength in the same degree as the inhibition extends over the organism. But it can only be weakened by active manifestations. Movements, as we have shown, deliver us from the massive, indistinct pains of restriction as well as mitigate our acute sufferings. The life-preserving tendency which, under the feeling of pleasure, leads us to movements which intensify the sensation and make it more distinct for consciousness, compels us in pain to seek for relief and deliverance in violent motor discharge. In either case the activity is called expressional, and it seems difficult to avoid this equivocal usage. But it is indispensable to make a strict distinction between the expression which operates in the direction of the initial feeling itself, and the expression by which this feeling is weakened. This distinction will appear with greater clearness in the following chapter, where we shall apply the laws of expression to the complex emotional states. Then it will also be possible for us to point out some æsthetic result of the psychological survey which perhaps may seem for the moment a departure from our proper subject. CHAPTER IV THE EMOTIONS