CHAPTER IV. 

 FEELING AND TOUCH. 



SEC. 1. GENERAL SENSIBILITY AND TACTILE 

 PERCEPTIONS. 



WE have taken the foregoing senses first in the order of discussion 

 on account of their being eminently specific. The eye gives us 

 only visual sensations, the ear only auditory sensations. The sen- 

 sations are produced in each case by specific stimuli: the eye 

 is only affected by light and the ear only by sound. Moreover, the 

 information they afford us is confined to the external world ; they 

 tell us nothing about ourselves. The various visual sensations 

 which arise in our retina are referred by us not to the retina itself, 

 but to some real or imaginary object in the world without (in- 

 cluding as part of the external world such portions of our own 

 bodies as are visible to ourselves). Such also with diminishing 

 precision is the information gained by hearing, taste and smell. 



All the other afferent nerves of the body, centripetal impulses 

 along which are able to affect our consciousness, are the means of 

 conveying to us information concerning ourselves. The sensations, 

 arising in them from the action of various stimuli, are referred by 

 us to appropriate parts of our own body. When any body comes 

 in contact with our finger, we know that it is our finger which has 

 been touched ; from the resultant sensation we not only learn the 

 existence of certain qualities in the object touched, but we also are 

 led to connect the cognizance of these qualities with a particular 

 part of our own body. 



Like the more specific senses previously studied, the sensations 

 of which we are now speaking, and which may be referred to under 

 the name of touch, using that word for the present in a wide 



