We now pass from darkness to light, from the vital to the psychic. But before entering into the conscious period of the life of feeling and following it in the progress of its evolution, this is perhaps the place to examine a sufficiently important question which has usually been wrongly answered in the negative: Are there _pure_ states of feeling—that is to say, states empty of any intellectual element, of every representative content, not connected either with perceptions or images or concepts, simply subjective, agreeable, disagreeable, or mixed? If we reply in the negative, it follows that without exception no kind of feeling can ever exist by itself; it always requires a support; it is never more than an accompaniment. This proposition is held by the majority; it has naturally been adopted by the intellectualists, and Lehmann has recently maintained it in its most radical form; a state of emotional consciousness is never met with; pleasure and pain are always connected with intellectual states.[3] If we reply in the affirmative, then the state of feeling is considered as having at least sometimes an independent existence of its own and not as condemned to play for ever the part of acolyte or parasite. ----- Footnote 3: “Ein rein emotionneller Bewusstseinszustand kommt nicht vor; Lust und Unlust sind stets an intellektuelle Zustände geknüpft,” _Die Hauptgesetze der menschlichen Gefühlslebens_ (1892), p. 16. ----- This is a question of fact, and observation alone can settle it. Although there are other reasons to give in favour of the autonomous and even primordial character of the life of feeling, I reserve them for the conclusion of this book, to remain at present in the region of pure and simple experience. There can be no doubt that, as a rule, emotional states accompany intellectual states, but I deny that it can never be otherwise, and that perceptions and representations are the necessary condition of existence, absolutely and without exception, of every manifestation of feeling.