There is a fact in history that here must be considered in order that we may not obtain an erroneous opinion about the argument set forth in this essay. The Roman and Hellenic peoples expanded prematurely into a degree of culture more than two thousand years ago, in classical times. The political institutions which they developed at that time, because they contained an element of hereditary rank and especially an element of slavery, did not furnish an enduring foundation to the highest culture of the age. History now proves that many of the elements of culture to which classical times had attained as a blossom of fine arts, were not sufficiently rooted in a soil of free institutions. That classical culture might firmly be founded, a greater liberty had yet to be given to men, and that there might be greater liberty there yet had to be greater scientific knowledge. So the superstitions of the dark ages constituted but a cloud under which mankind labored while it laid the foundations of representative government.
We need not review the history of poetry to show how its elements have been developed; manifestly all that is good or bad is derivative; all of the esthetic arts are found to be derivative.
Pleasures and pains arise from judgments, and do not arise from consciousness but from inference. All of the phenomena of pleasure and pain arise in the mind through the point of view; they are therefore qualities and not properties. All matter is not endowed with mind, but all matter is endowed with consciousness. The relative element is choice, which becomes inference in the formation of judgments. There can be no mind until there are organs of mind. Until this condition arises in the development of animate life there is no mind, but when it does arise this mind makes judgments. As the judgments are inferences only, until they are verified, there is no cognition until there is verification, and the cognition of pleasure or pain is reached only by inference and verification. This is what we have intended to express by saying that pleasure and pain are derivative.
