STATE OF A MUSCLE'S CONTRACTION.

99

We have thus gone over the two great classes of muscular feelings enumerated at the outset of the chapter. This

lips, or of the fingers and thumb, comes to represent a series of movements, and the corresponding estimate of space passed over by movement. With one hand resting upon the side of a box, and the other resting upon the top, we can tell the inclination of the two sides, without movement; our experience has made the feeling of certain combined dead tensions a symbol of a series of movements in different directions. Besides, if we would have an accurate appreciation of the amount of the contraction, we may still, in many cases, have to repeat the actual movements.

The importance of this mode of discrimination is perhaps best seen in the eyes. It enters into the explanation of the binocular feeling of solidity.

I have not inserted this feeling in the text among the fundamental discriminations of muscle, because it seems bound up with our sensibility to movement as there given. If, on the other hand, I were to assume the sense of the state of contraction as the primary feeling, the sense of movement would follow; since movement implies that the muscle passes through a series of states of contraction, and the conscious sequence of these states would be the mental fact of movement. It is possible that the feeling of movement may consist of the primary feeling of expended energy (given in its purity in dead resistance), modified by a muscular sensibility arising in the change from one stage of contraction to another. But, be this as it may, I think it enough to assume as distinct and fundamental the three modes of muscular discrimination discussed in the text.

* Sir William Hamilton, in his Dissertations on Reid, p. 864, has drawn a distinction between what he calls "the locomotive faculty,' and the muscular sense, maintaining that the feeling of resistance, energy, power, is due to the first and not to the second. By this locomotive faculty he means the feeling of volitional effort, or of the amount of force given forth in a voluntary action; while he reduces the application of the term 'muscular sense to the passive feeling that he supposes us to have of the state of tension of the muscle.

His words are: It is impossible that the state of muscular feeling can enable us to be immediately cognizant of the existence and degree of a resisting force. On the contrary, supposing all muscular feeling abolished, the power of moving the muscles at will remaining, I hold that the consciousness of the mental motive energy, and of the greater or less intensity of such energy requisite, in different circumstances, to accomplish our intention, would of itself enable us always to perceive the fact, and in some degree to measure the amount, of any resistance to our voluntary movement; howbeit the concomitance of certain feelings with the different states of muscular tension, renders this cognition not only easier, but, in fact, obtrudes it on our attention.'

The sense of expended energy I take to be the great characteristic of the muscular consciousness, distinguishing it from every mode of passive sensa

fundamental sensibility of our nature will come up again in a variety of connexions; and much has still to be said in order fully to explain the growth of the perceptions of Externality, Force, Space, and Time.

tion. By the discriminative feeling that we possess of the degree and continuance of this energy, we recognize the difference between a greater and a less stretch of muscular tension, and this appears to be the primary sensibility operating in the case. The other sensibilities of muscle, derived through the sensitive fibres, may aid us in the important discriminations between the different modes of increased energy above specified.

I may here express the obligations we are under to Sir William Hamilton for his historical sketch of the doctrine of the Muscular Sense, contained in the same note; which is not the least valuable and interesting of his many contributions to the history of mental science.

BY

CHAPTER II.

OF SENSATION.

Y Sensations, in the strict meaning, we understand the mental impressions, feelings, or states of consciousness, resulting from the action of external things on some part of the body, called on that account sensitive. Such are the feelings caused by tastes, smells, sounds, or sights. These are the influences said to be external to the mental organization; they are distinguished from influences originating within, as, for example, spontaneous activity (the case we have already considered), the remembrance of the past, or the anticipation of the future.

The Sensations are classified according to the bodily organs concerned in their production; hence the division into five senses. But along with distinctness of organ, we have distinctness in the outward objects, and also in the inward consciousness. Thus, objects of sight are different from objects of smell; or rather we should say, that the properties and the agency causing vision are different from the properties causing smell, taste, or hearing.

The difference of the mental feeling or consciousness in the various senses is strongly marked, being a more characteristic and generic difference than obtains among the sensations of any one sense. We never confound a feeling of sight with a feeling of sound, a touch with a smell. These effects have the highest degree of distinctness that human feelings can possess. The discrimination of them is sure and perfect, although we sometimes try to assimilate them.

We are commonly said to have five Senses: Sight by the eye, Hearing by the ear, Touch by the skin, Smell by the nose, Taste by the mouth. In addition to these, physiologists

distinguish a sixth sense, of a more vague description, by the title of common or general sensibility, as will be seen in the following extract from Messrs. Todd and Bowman. Under the name of common or general sensibility may be included a variety of internal sensations, ministering for the most part to the organic functions and to the conservation of the body. Most parts of the frame have their several feelings of comfort and pleasure, of discomfort and pain. In many of the more deeply seated organs, no strong sensation is ever excited, except in the form of pain, as a warning of an unnatural condition. The internal sensations of warmth and chillness, of hunger, thirst, and their opposites, of nausea, of repletion of the alimentary and genito-urinary organs, and of the relief succeeding their evacuation, of the privation of air, &c., with the bodily feelings attending strongly excited passions and emotions, may be mentioned among the principal yarieties of common sensations.'

In this enumeration we can see several distinct groups of feelings, and can refer them to distinct bodily organs. Hunger, thirst, their opposites, nausea, repletion, and evacuation of the alimentary tube, are all associated with the digestive system. They might therefore be termed the digestive sensations. The privation of air causes a feeling whose seat is the lungs, and is one kind of sensibility associated with respiration. The sensations of warmth and chillness connect themselves with the skin, with the lungs, and with the organic processes in general. The genito-urinary organs have a class of feelings so special and peculiar, that they had better not be included under common sensibility

Looking at the important classes of feelings here indicated, important at least as regards human happiness and misery, considering also that they are but a few examples chosen from a very wide field, I consider it expedient to describe them in systematic detail. It is the business of a work like the present to review the entire range of human sensibility, in so far as this can be reduced to general or comprehensive heads; and the question is, where ought these organic feelings to be

brought in? I know of no better arrangement than to include them among the Sensations. The only objection is the want of outward objects corresponding to them in all cases. The feelings of comfort or discomfort arising from the circulation, healthy or otherwise, are not sensations in the full meaning of the term; they have no distinct external causes like the pleasures of sound, or the revulsion of a bitter taste. But the reply to this objection is, first, that in most cases, if not in all, an external object can be assigned as the stimulus of the feeling; for example, in the digestive feelings, the contact of the food with the surface of the alimentary canal, is the true cause or object of the feeling; so the respiratory feelings may be viewed as sensations having the air for their outward object or antecedent. And with reference to the cases where feeling cannot be associated with an external contact, as in the acute pains of diseased parts, we may plead the strong analogy in other respects between such feelings and proper sensations. In all else, except the existence of an outward stimulus, the identity is complete. The seat of the feeling is a sensitive mass, which can be affected by irritants external to it, and which yields nearly the same effects in the case of a purely internal stimulus. So much is this the fact, that we are constantly comparing our inward feelings to proper sensations; we talk of being oppressed, as with a heavy burden, of being cut, or torn, or crushed, or burned, under acute internal sensibility. Moved by such considerations, I class these feelings with sensations, and place them first in the order of the Senses, under the title of Organic feelings, or Sensations of Organic Life.

In the Senses as thus made up, it is useful to remark a division into two groups, according to their importance in the operations of the Intellect. If we examine the Sensations of Organic Life, Taste, and Smell, we shall find that as regards pleasure and pain, or in the point of view of Feeling, they are of great consequence, but that they contribute little of the permanent forms and imagery employed in our Intellectual processes. This last function is mainly served by Touch,