will allay it. Nevertheless the sensation involving
discomfort remains the prime mover.

This brings us to the question of the nature of discomfort and pleasure.
Since Kant it has been customary to recognize three great divisions of
mental phenomena, which are typified by knowledge, desire and feeling,
where "feeling" is used to mean pleasure and discomfort. Of course,
"knowledge" is too definite a word: the states of mind concerned are
grouped together as "cognitive," and are to embrace not only beliefs,
but perceptions, doubts, and the understanding of concepts. "Desire,"
also, is narrower than what is intended: for example, WILL is to be
included in this category, and in fact every thing that involves any
kind of striving, or "conation" as it is technically called. I do not
myself believe that there is any value in this threefold division of the
contents of mind. I believe that sensations (including images) supply
all the "stuff" of the mind, and that everything else can be analysed
into groups of sensations related in various ways, or characteristics of
sensations or of groups of sensations. As regards belief, I shall give
grounds for this view in later lectures. As regards desires, I have
given some grounds in this lecture. For the present, it is pleasure and
discomfort that concern us. There are broadly three theories that might
be held in regard to them. We may regard them as separate existing
items in those who experience them, or we may regard them as intrinsic
qualities of sensations and other mental occurrences, or we may regard
them as mere names for the causal characteristics of the occurrences
which are uncomfortable or pleasant. The first of these theories,
namely, that which regards discomfort and pleasure as actual contents in
those who experience them, has, I think, nothing conclusive to be said
in its favour.* It is suggested chiefly by an ambiguity in the word
"pain," which has misled many people, including Berkeley, whom it
supplied with one of his arguments for subjective idealism. We may use
"pain" as the opposite of "pleasure," and "painful" as the opposite of
"pleasant," or we may use "pain" to mean a certain sort of sensation, on
a level with the sensations of heat and cold and touch. The latter use
of the word has prevailed in psychological literature, and it is now
no longer used as the opposite of "pleasure." Dr. H. Head, in a recent
publication, has stated this distinction as follows:**