9. There are three classes of Feelings connected with the moving organs :

(1.) Feelings dependent on the organic condition of the muscles; as those arising from hurts, wounds, diseases, fatigue, rest, nutriment. Most of these affections the muscles have in common with the other tissues of the body; and they will be considered under a subsequent head. Our plan requires that we should here exhibit the marked antithesis, or contrast, existing between Muscular Feeling proper (the Consciousnesss of movement, howsoever caused) and Sensation proper. The one is associated with energy passing outwards, the other with stimulation passing inwards; the two facts mingle together in the stream of mental life, but are yet of a widely different nature.

remarks as to the scope of it. The reader is sufficiently acquainted with the threefold partition of mind into Feeling, Volition, and Intellect. If this partition be complete and exhaustive, every mental fact and phenomenon whatsoever falls under one or other of these heads; nothing mental can be stated but what is either a feeling, a volition, or a thought. It must, nevertheless, be observed, that mental states need not belong to one of these classes exclusively. A feeling may have a certain volitional aspect, together with its own proper characters: thus the mental state caused by intense cold is of the nature of a feeling in the proper acceptation of the term; we recognize it as a mode of consciousness of the painful kind, but inasmuch as it stimulates us to performing actions for abating, or freeing ourselves from, the pain, there attaches to it a volitional character also. In like manner, every state that can be reproduced afterwards as a recollection, or retained as an idea, has by that circumstance a certain intellectual character.

Now, in describing states that come properly under the general head of feeling, we are called upon to bring forward, in the first instance, the peculiarities, or descriptive marks, that characterize them as feelings. This done, we may carry on the delineation by adverting to their influence on activity, or volition; and, lastly, we may specify anything that is distinctive in the hold that they take of the intellect. It is clear that if a Natural History of the human feelings is at all possible, we must endeavour to attain an orderly style of procedure, such as naturalists in other departments have had recourse to. If the fundamental divisions of mind have any validity in them, they ought to serve as the basis of a proper descriptive method; in fact, the description should accord with them.

The plan, in its completeness, may be represented thus:—
PHYSICAL SIDE.

Bodily Origin. (For Sensations chiefly.)
Bodily Diffusion, expression, or embodiment.

CLASSIFICATION OF THE MUSCULAR FEELINGS.

75

(2.) Feelings connected with muscular action, including all the pleasures and pains of exercise. These are the states just alluded to as peculiar to the muscular system.

(3.) The Feelings that indicate the various modes of tension of the moving organs. According as a muscle is tense or relaxed, according as much or little energy is thrown into it, and according to the quickness or slowness of the contraction, we are differently affected, and this difference of sensibility enables us to judge of the positions of our active members, and of many important relations of external things. These are the feelings. of muscle that enter most directly into our intelligence; having little of the character of mere Feeling, and a very large reference to Thought, they deserve a separate treatment.

MENTAL SIDE.

Characters as Feeling.

Quality, i.e., Pleasure, Pain, Indifference.
Degree.

As regards Intensity or acuteness.

As regards Quantity, mass, or volume.

Special characteristics.

Volitional characters.

Mode of influencing the Will, or Motives to Action.

Intellectual characters.

Susceptibility to Discrimination and to Agreement.

Degree of Retainability, that is, Ideal Persistence and
Recoverability.

It is to be remarked that, as a general rule, pleasures agree in their physical expression, or embodiment, and also in their mode of operating on the will, namely, for their continuance, increase, or renewal. In like manner, pains have a common expression, and a common influence in promoting action for their removal, abatement, or avoidance. Hence the fact that a state is pleasurable or painful carries with it these two other facts as a matter of course.

Again, as regards the Intellect; Discrimination, Agreement, and Retainability are to a certain extent proportional to the degree of the feeling, or the strength of the impression. This being the case, the statement of the degree involves the probable nature of the properties connected with the Intellect. Hence it is unnecessary in most cases to carry the delineation through all the particulars of the table. It is only when a feeling possesses any peculiarities rendering it an exception to the general laws of coincidence now mentioned, that the full description is called for. Two or three examples of the complete detail will be given.

All through the present chapter, and through the following chapter on sensations, we shall require to keep in view this distinction between feelings that yield a large measure of the distinctive character of feeling, and others whose emotional character is feeble, and whose function it is to supply the materials of the intelligence. In the eye, for example, the effect of a blaze of sunshine is very different from the sight of a watch. The one serves for the purpose of immediate enjoyment, the other is nothing in itself, and derives its value from being remotely instrumental to our happiness. Among effects on the ear, the contrast between music and speech expresses the same distinction.

I. Feelings of Muscular Exercise.

These are feelings proper to the muscles. The mode of consciousness arising under muscular exertion cannot be produced in connexion with any other part of the system.

10. Feeling of Muscular Exercise generally. According to the manner of the exertion, the feelings differ considerably; a dead strain is different from movement; and distinct modes of consciousness attend quick and slow movements respectively. The most general and characteristic form of muscular exercise is exemplified in a dead strain, or else in great exertion with a moderate pace of movement.

11. To begin with the PHYSICAL side.

The physical state of a muscle under contraction may be inferred from the details already given. The particles making up the muscular threads are approximated by an energetic attraction developed in the muscle, under the stimulus supplied by the nerves. An intense physical force is produced by a peculiar expenditure of the substance of the muscular mass; and in the production of this force the tissue is affected, as it were, with a strong internal agitation. As the nerves supplied to the muscles are principally motor nerves, by which the muscular movements are stimulated from the brain and nerve centres, our safest assumption is, that the

PHYSICAL SIDE OF MUSCULAR FEELING.

77

sensibility accompanying muscular movement coincides with the outgoing stream of nervous energy, and does not, as in the case of pure sensation, result from any influence passing inwards, by incarrying or sensitive nerves. It is known that sensitive filaments are distributed to the muscular tissue, along with the motor filaments; and it is reasonable to suppose that by means of them the organic states of the muscle affect the mind. It does not follow that the characteristic feeling of exerted force should arise by an inward transmission through the sensitive filaments; on the contrary, we are bound to presume that this is the concomitant of the outgoing current by which the muscles are stimulated to act. No other hypothesis so well represents the total opposition of nature between states of energy exerted, and states of passive stimulation.*

I shall here present the views of some of the most distinguished physiologists upon this interesting question. I must premise, however, that none of them advert to the presumption arising from the great antithesis of movement and sensation, throughout the whole mental system. To them it would be a small matter, that the feelings of movement were ranked as merely another class of sensations, or as impressions passing to the brain by sensitive nerves. In my view, on the contrary, the most vital distinction within the sphere of mind, is bereft of all physiological support by such an hypothesis. I quote first from Dr. Brown-Séquard: 'J. W. Arnold has tried to show that the anterior roots of nerves contain the nerve fibres which convey to the sensorium the impressions that give the knowledge of the state of muscles,' as to degree of contraction or amount of movement. The chief fact on which he grounds his opinion is, that after section of the posterior roots of the posterior extremities of a frog, it can make use of its hind legs almost as well as if nothing had been done to the posterior roots.' It would appear, then, that not only the power of movement, but also the sense that guides the movements, is unconnected with the sensory nerves. 'This experiment is certainly of some value, and we must acknowledge that it is difficult to explain it otherwise than Arnold has done. Moreover, we have found that, after the section of all the posterior roots of the spinal nerves in frogs, the voluntary movements seem to be very nearly as perfect as if no operation had been performed, and that if the skin of the head is pinched on one side, the posterior limb on the same side tries to repel the cause of the pain, as well as if no injury had been made. I have also ascertained that in frogs rendered blind these experiments give the same result.'

But Arnold's hypothesis is not the only alternative. The supposition that the mind discriminates the degree of energy of the motor current, or the force

But the physical accompaniments of muscular exertion pass beyond the muscles themselves. We know that active exercise indirectly affects all the organs of the body. The circulation of the blood is quickened generally, and is made to flow by preference to the muscular tissue, the brain being

poured out from the brain in voluntary movement, is at least an equally admissible view. It would seem an unnecessary complication to have sensory nerves mixed up with the pure motor fibres; it would be to deny that the anterior roots are pure motor nerves. Dr. Brown-Séquard proceeds to remark:-' But although I agree so far with Arnold, I do not admit with him that it is only through the anterior roots that impressions are conveyed by the muscles to the brain. When a galvanic current is applied to the muscles of the limb of a frog, on which the posterior roots of the nerves of this limb have been divided, no trace of pain is produced, and all the other causes of pain are also unable to cause it when applied either to the skin or the muscles.' -(Lectures, p. 9.) This is in perfect accordance with the view that would assign the feelings of resistance and movements to the outgoing current by the motor nerves, and the sensibility to cramp and other pains, to the ingoing current by the sensory nerves.

E. H. Weber remarks:- The discriminative sensibility of muscle seems, in many cases, owing to the presence, in muscle, of branches of the nerves of sensation going to the extremities, as we see in the distribution of twigs of the trigeminal nerves to the various muscles of the eye. This supply of sensitive nerves to the eye may be contrasted with the case of the diaphragm, a muscle under the influence of the will, yet less discriminative than the muscles of the eye, and scantily supplied with nerves of sensation. It would seem, nevertheless, that all does not depend on that; for, in many cases of complete and genuine anæsthesia (that is, loss of sensibility to pain), the power of voluntary motion in the senseless parts is still preserved.' This is a still more decided fact, inasmuch as the existence of insensibility to pain shows, that all the sensitive fibres are paralyzed, and yet the power of muscular guidance remains. This is consistent only with the supposition that the mind appreciates the motor influence as it proceeds from the brain to the muscles, without depending on a returning sensibility through the proper sensory fibres.

I quote next from Ludwig. Whether the nerves that subserve the muscular sense, and those that induce the muscular motion, are the same, is at present difficult to decide. It is conceivable, and not unlikely, that all knowledge and discrimination arrived at through the exertion of the voluntary muscles, are attained directly through the act of voluntary excitation; so that the effort of the will is at once proceeded on as a means of judgment. This opinion is supported by the fact, that the movements that give us mental judgments, in by far the greater number of cases, do not appear as muscular sensations; in other words, they are not, like the organic sensations of muscle, localized by us in the muscle and looked upon as possessing the