When the surroundings are less familiar
and the departmental personality cannot deal with them, the position
is reported through the nervous system to the central government
which is frequently at a loss to know what feeling to apply.
Sometimes it happens to discern the right feeling and apply it,
sometimes it hits upon an inappropriate one and is thus induced to
proceed from solecism to solecism till the consequences lead to a
crisis from which we recover and which, then becoming a leading case,
forms one of the decisions on which our future action is based.
Sometimes it applies a feeling that is too inappropriate, as when the
position is too horribly novel for us to have had any experience that
can guide the central government in knowing how to feel about it, and
this results in a cessation of the effort involved in trying to feel.
Hence we may hope that the most horrible apparent suffering is not
felt beyond a certain point, but is passed through unconsciously
under a natural, automatic anaesthetic--the unconsciousness, in
extreme cases, leading to death.
It is generally held that animals feel; it will soon be generally
held that plants feel; after that it will be held that stones also
can feel. For, as no matter is so organic that there is not some of
the inorganic in it, so, also, no matter is so inorganic that there
is not some of the organic in it.
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