The Will to Power · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
699.
Pain is something different from pleasure--I mean it is not the latter's opposite. If the essence of pleasure has been aptly characterised as the feeling of increased power (that is to say, as a feeling of difference which presupposes comparison), that does not define the nature of pain. The false contrasts which the people, and consequently the language, believes in, are always dangerous fetters which impede the march of truth. There are even cases where a kind of pleasure is conditioned by a certain rhythmic sequence of small, painful stimuli: in this way a very rapid growth of the feeling of power and of the feeling of pleasure is attained. This is the case, for instance, in tickling, also in the sexual tickling which accompanies the coitus: here we see pain acting as the ingredient of happiness. It seems to be a small hindrance which is overcome, followed immediately by another small hindrance which once again is overcome--this play of resistance and resistance overcome is the greatest excitant of that complete feeling of overflowing and surplus power which constitutes the essence of happiness. The converse, which would be an increase in the feeling of pain through small intercalated pleasurable stimuli, does not exist: pleasure and pain are not opposites. Pain is undoubtedly an intellectual process in which a judgment is inherent--the judgment harmful, in which long experience is epitomised. There is no such thing as pain in itself. It is not the wound that hurts, it is the experience of the harmful results a wound may have for the whole organism, which here speaks in this deeply moving way, and is called pain. (In the case of deleterious influences which were unknown to ancient man, as, for instance, those residing in the new combination of poisonous chemicals, the hint from pain is lacking, and we are lost.)
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.... 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? "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.
Ideas discussed in this chapter
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.