260 Heredity. 



we have said, continuous, uniform, and ever the same, and hence 

 it is that the ego does not perceive it as a distinct, special, local 

 sensation. To be distinctly perceived, it must acquire a certain 

 intensity, and then it is expressed by a vague impression of general 

 well-being, or general discomfort, the former indicating simple 

 exaltation of physiological vital action, the latter its pathological 

 perversion ; but in this case it soon is localized in the form of par- 

 ticular sensations pertaining to such or such a region of the body. 

 At times it is revealed in a more indirect, though far more evident 

 way, when it has just failed at a given point of the organism, for 

 instance, in a limb struck with paralysis. The member in question 

 still belongs materially to the living aggregate, but it is no longer 

 included in the sphere of the organic ego, if the expression is per- 

 missible. It ceases to be felt by this ego, as its own, and the 

 fact of this separation, though negative, is interpreted by a very 

 special positive sensation known to all who have ever suffered a 

 total numbness of any part of the body, produced whether by cold 

 or by compression of the nerves. This sensation is nothing else 

 save the expression of that sort of void or loss which occurs in this 

 universal feeling of the bodily life ; it proves that the vital state of 

 that member was really, though obscurely, felt, and that it con- 

 stituted one of the partial elements of the general feeling of life in 

 the organic whole. Thus it is that a continual and monotonous 

 noise, like that of a carriage in which we are shut, is soon unno- 

 ticed though it is still heard, for if it stop suddenly the cessation is 

 at once perceived. This analogy may help us to understand the 

 nature and working of the fundamental sentiment of organic life, 

 which, on this hypothesis, would be but the resultant in confuso of 

 the impressions made at all points of the living body by the inward 

 movement of functions carried to the brain, whether directly by 

 the cerebro-spinal nerves, or indirectly by the nerves of the gang- 

 lion ic system. 



Therefore it is not proved that, in the strict sense, the organic 

 functions are performed absolutely without our knowledge, as 

 Cabanis asserts. 



This GemeingefiiM, of which the mass of men take no note, and 

 which too many psychologists have neglected, is nevertheless the 

 groundwork of our mental life. If in psychological analysis we 



