18 WILLIAM JAMES ON 



Could representations of the movement's different sensory effects in the two cases be so 

 delicately foreshadowed in the mind ? or being there, is it credible that they should, all 

 unaided, so delicately graduate the stimulation of the unconscious motor centres to their 

 work ?" Even so ! I reply to both queries. We have a most extremely delicate foreshad- 

 owing of the sensory effects. Why else the start of surprise that runs through us, if 

 some one has filled the light seeming box with sand before we try to lift it, or has sub- 

 stituted for the cannon ball which we know, a painted wooden imitation ? Surprise can 

 only come from getting a sensation Avhich differs from the one we expect. But the truth 

 is that when we know the objects well, the very slightest difference from the expected 

 weight will surprise us, or at least attract our notice. With unknown objects we begin by 

 expecting the weight made probable by their appearance. The expectation of this sensa- 

 tion innervates our lift, and we " set " it rather small at first. An instant verifies whether 

 it is too small. Our expectation rises, ^'. e., we think in a twinkling of a setting of 

 the chest and teeth, a bracing of the back, and a more violent feeling in the arms. 

 Quicker than thought we have them, and with them the burden ascends into the air. 

 Bernhardt ^ has shown in a rough experimental way that our estimation of the amount of 

 a resistance is as delicately graduated when our wills are passive, and our limbs made to 

 contract by direct local faradization, as when we ourselves innervate them. Ferrier ^ has 

 repeated and verified the observations. They admit of no great precision, and too much 

 stress should not be laid upon them either way, l:)ut at the very least, they tend to show 

 that no added delicacy would accrue to our perception from the consciousness of the effer- 

 ent process, even if it existed. 



III. The Inscrutable Psycho-physic Nexus is identical in all Innervation 



AND lies outside THE SpHEEE OF THE WiLL. 



On the ordinary theory, the movements which accompany emotion, and those which we 

 call voluntary, are of a fundamentally different character. The emotional movements are 

 admitted to be discharged without intermediary by the more presence of the exciting 

 idea. The volmitary motions are said to follow the idea only after an intermediate con- 

 scious process of " innervation " has been aroused. On the present theory the only dif- 

 ference lies in the fact that the emotions show a peculiar congenital connection of certain 

 forms of idea with certain very specially combined movements, largely of the " involun- 

 tary " muscles, but also of the others — as in fear, anger, etc. — such connection being non- 

 congenital in voluntary action; and in the further fact that the discharge of idea into 

 movement is much more readily inhibited by other casually present ideas in the case 

 of volimtary action, and less so in the case of emotions ; though here too inhibition 

 takes place on a large scale .^ 



' Arcliiv fiir Psyohiatrie, iir, 618-635. Bernhardt strangely tainty yielded by other evidence that passive muscular feel- 



enoun-h seems to tliink that what his experiments disprove is ings exist. This other evidence is compendiously summed 



the existence of afferent muscular feelings, not those of efFer- up by Sachs in Keichert und Dii Bois' Archiv, 1874, pp. 



ent innervation — apparently because he deems that the 174-188. 



peculiar thrill of the electricity ought to overpower all other ^ Functions of the Brain, p. 228. 



afferent feelings from the part. But it is far more natural to ' Witness the evaporation of manifestations of disgust in the 



interpret his results the other way, even aside from the cer- presence of fear, of lust in the presence of respect, etc., etc. 



