That which is quite peculiar in pain is the prolonged disturbance, the quivering subsequent to a terrible shock in the ganglia of the nervous system. As a matter of fact, nobody suffers from the cause of pain (from any sort of injury, for instance), but from the protracted disturbance of his equilibrium which follows upon the shock. Pain is a disease of the cerebral centres--pleasure is no disease at all. The fact that pain may be the cause of reflex actions has appearances and even philosophical prejudice in its favour. But in very sudden accidents, if we observe closely, we find that the reflex action occurs appreciably earlier than the feeling of pain. I should be in a bad way when I stumbled if I had to wait until the fact had struck the bell of my consciousness, and until a hint of what I had to do had been telegraphed back to me. On the contrary, what I notice as clearly as possible is, that first, in order to avoid a fall, reflex action on the part of my foot takes place, and then, after a certain measurable space of time, there follows quite suddenly a kind of painful wave in my forehead. Nobody, then, reacts to pain. Pain is subsequently projected into the wounded quarter--but the essence of this local pain is nevertheless not the expression of a kind of local wound, it is merely a local sign, the strength and nature of which is in keeping with the severity of the wound, and of which the nerve centres have taken note. The fact that as the result of this shock the muscular power of the organism is materially reduced, does not prove in any way that the essence of pain is to be sought in the lowering of the feeling of power. Once more let me repeat: nobody reacts to pain: pain is no "cause" of action. Pain itself is a reaction; the reflex movement is another and earlier process--both originate at different points.... 700. The message of pain: in itself pain does not announce that which has been momentarily damaged, but the significance of this damage for the individual as a whole. Are we to suppose that there are any pains which "the species" feel, and which the individual does not? 701. "The sum of unhappiness outweighs the sum of happiness: consequently it were better that the world did not exist"--"The world is something which from a rational standpoint it were better did not exist, because it occasions more pain than pleasure to the feeling subject"--this futile gossip now calls itself pessimism! Pleasure and pain are accompanying factors, not causes; they are second-rate valuations derived from a dominating value,--they are one with the feeling "useful," "harmful," and therefore they are absolutely fugitive and relative. For in regard to all utility and harmfulness there are a hundred different ways of asking "what for?" I despise this pessimism of sensitiveness: it is in itself a sign of profoundly impoverished life. 702.