218 ANIMAL FORCES. [ii. 



are born destitute alike of head and brain, but are moved, 

 nevertheless, by external impressions, have feeling ^ &c. 



403. The external feeling of the nerves, or what is identical 

 therewith, the external impression, is that animal force of the 

 nerves, the properties of which have been already stated (32, 

 34, and 364, iii). According to the laws and principles pre- 

 viously established, it is in no degree mental, although it excites 

 external sensations, being neither conception nor sensation 

 [Empfindung], but seated externally to the mind in the nerves 

 (98, i, &c.) Neither is it a sentient action, but a property 

 independent of the conceptive force, peculiar to and innate in 

 the nerves, of being excited to this wonderful movement by an 

 irritation of their medulla, which is the case with no other 

 bodies, nor with any purely mechanical machines, and is 

 wholly independent of the physical and mechanical laws of 

 motion ; — a movement which penetrates the brain, and awakes 

 the soul to sensations, and at the same moment puts the ma- 

 chines of the body into motion, in a way that no other force 

 in nature can attain to. 



Note. — So important an animal force merits well to be 

 specially distinguished as well from sensation, which is a pro- 

 perty of mind, as from the physical and mechanical forces of 

 inorganic machines. I have termed it for the reasons previously 

 stated (402), the feeling of the nerves, but the expression is so 

 new, that although quite correct, it may lead the reader to mis- 

 apprehend its meaning and application. I have, therefore, in 

 this work used the term external senselike (sinnlich) impression 

 in its stead.^ 



404. If this difference between external feeling (the external 

 impression) and external sensation had been better observed, 

 that erroneous proposition of the ancients (renewed by Whytt) 

 would have been long ago forgotten, which propounded that 

 the soul was diffused throughout the entire organism, because 

 in sensation the mind determined and fixed the point where 

 the nerves received an external impression, or in other words, 

 where it felt. Even a materialist cannot defend so fundamental 

 an error. If the mind be that which has self-consciousness, 

 or which forms ideas, the nerves can constitute no part of it ; 



' The reader is particularly referred to the note to § 31 for an explanation of this 

 term. — Ed. 



