330 ZOOLOGICAL PHILOSOPHY 



impressions which it would experience, that the whole effect would be 

 limited to an inner feehng of its existence, and it would believe that 

 all things which affect it are part of itself. How can this being think 

 or form judgments, if it possesses no understanding ? For to beheve 

 anything is to form a judgment. 



As long as we fail to distinguish the facts connected with feeling 

 from those connected with intelligence, we shall often make mistakes 

 of this character. It is an established fact that there are no innate 

 ideas, but that every simple idea arises exclusively from a sensation. 

 But I hope to show that not every sensation produces an idea ; 

 indeed that it need cause no more than a perception, and that for the 

 production and impression of a permanent idea a special organ is 

 needed, as well as compliance with a certain condition not involved 

 in the organ of sensations. 



It is a long way from a simple perception to an impressed and per- 

 manent idea. Indeed no sensation, which causes only a simple percep- 

 tion, makes any impression on the organ ; it does not need the essential 

 condition of attention, and can do no more than excite the inner feehng 

 of the individual and give it momentary perceptions of objects, without 

 the production of any thought. Moreover memory, whose seat can 

 only be in the organ where ideas are traced, can never bring back a 

 perception which did not penetrate to this organ, and therefore left 

 no impression on it. 



I regard perceptions as imperfect ideas, always simple, not graven 

 on the organ and needing no condition for their occurrence ; and this 

 is a very different state of affairs from what prevails in the case of true 

 and lasting ideas. Now these perceptions, by means of habitual 

 repetitions which cut out certain channels for the nervous fluid, may 

 give rise to actions which resemble those of memory. Examples are 

 furnished us by the manners and habits of insects. 



I shall hereafter revert to this subject ; all that I had here to 

 remark was the necessity of distinguishing perception, which results 

 from every unnoticed sensation, from an idea, which, as I hope to 

 show, requires a special organ for its formation. 



From the foregoing principles I think we may conclude : 



1. That the phenomenon of feehng is not more miraculous than any 

 other phenomenon in nature, that is, any phenomenon produced by 

 physical causes ; 



2. That it is not true that any part of a living body, or any substance 

 composing it, has in itself the faculty of feehng ; 



3. That feeling is the result of an action and reaction, which become 

 general throughout the nervous system, and are performed with 

 rapidity by a very simple mechanism ; 



