Note 220 — RESEARCH IV.

Physical pleasure and pain generally occur connected with a compound impression, i. e. an organ and some object. When the idea left by the compound impression, is called up by being linked accidentally to some other idea or impression, no recurrence, or the slightest possible, of the pleasure or pain in any form will take place. But when the compound impression itself exists without the physical pleasure or pain, it will awaken ideal or intellectual pleasure or pain, i. e. hope or fear. So that physical pleasure and pain are to hope and fear, what impressions are to ideas. For instance, assuming no accidental association, the child does not fear the fire before he is burnt. When he puts his finger to the fire he feels the physical pain of burning, which is connected with a visible compound impression, the fire and his finger. Now when the compound idea of the fire and his finger, left by the compound impression are called up by his mother, saying, “You have burnt your finger,” nothing like fear or the pain of burning is connected with it. But when the finger is brought near the fire, i. e. when the compound impression again exists, the ideal pain of burning or the passion of fear is awakened, and it becomes connected with those very actions which removed the finger from the fire.