CH. IV.] SUBSTITUTION OF NERVE^ACTIONS. 277 



ceptions would have impressed, and in the same way ; and 

 provided also, that they be transmitted thence as non-concep- 

 tional internal impressions to the same mechanical machines, 

 as the spontaneous conceptions would have set in motion (436). 

 It has already been demonstrated, that the bodies of animals 

 may be so constituted, that external impressions, while being 

 transmitted to the brain, are reflected here and there upon 

 other fibrils of the same nerve, or upon other and different 

 nerves, and thereby cause an indirect nerve-action; that a 

 part [Merkmal] of this reflexion may be present in the 

 external sensation caused by the external impression, and 

 induce the conceptive force acting with the sensation to form 

 a certain spontaneous conception, foreseeing, imagination, &c., 

 of which the indirect nerve-action, excited as aforesaid, is the 

 ordinary sentient action; and that thus the same animal 

 movement may be at the same time both an indirect nerve- 

 action of an external impression, and the sentient action of a 

 volitional or incidental spontaneous conception, connected by 

 the mind with the sensation of the external impression (438,439). 

 There are phenomena which accord with the view of the 

 constitution of animal bodies, and render it probable ; but this 

 probability is rendered much greater, when it is recollected 

 that in each kind of spontaneous sensational conceptions, (all 

 which are proximately induced by external sensations) (66), 

 phenomena are actually observed, that indicate that their sen- 

 tient actions are not solely developed by primary non-concep- 

 tional internal impressions, but that also in virtue of their con- 

 nection with the impression from whence the sensations which 

 excite them originate, they are excited as indirect nerve-actions 

 of those external impressions. This will be subsequently shown 

 more distinctly. 



545. The material ideas of the sensational conceptions 

 arising out of external sensations, namely, imaginations, fore- 

 seeings, imperfect external sensations, &c. (67, 73, 148), are 

 simply imperfect material external sensations, which the cere- 

 bral force produces of itself, without the assistance of external 

 impressions derived from external stimuli (228, 239). Their 

 sentient actions are those of the external sensations to which 

 they refer, only they are less complete (229, 240, ii, iii). 

 Now, since unfelt external impressions and non-conceptional 



