APPENDIX. 



VIEWS CONCERNING THE EXISTENCE AND NATURE 

 OF A MUSCULAR SENSE* 



ACCORDING to Sir William Hamilton, the recognition of the Mus- 

 cular Sense, as a medium of apprehension, was originally made, 

 some three centuries ago, by two Italian physicians. It was recog- 

 nized by Julius Ca3sar Scaliger in 1557, and afterwards indepen- 

 dently by CaBsalpinus of Arezzo in 1569, that the exercise of our 

 power of movement is the means whereby we are enabled to esti- 

 mate degrees of ' resistance/ and that by a faculty of " active 

 apprehension " which was by them contrasted with torceh as " a 

 capacity of sensation or mere consciousness of passion." 



After a very long interval, Be Tracy (one of the most distinguished 

 followers of Condillac) about the beginning of this century, more 

 explicitly developed this conception and " established the distinc- 

 tion between active and passive touch." German physiologists 

 and psychologists towards the close of the last and the beginning 

 of this century had, however, made the same analysis, and "the 

 active touch there first obtained the distinctive appellation of the 

 Muscular Sense (Muskelsinn)." These views were soon after in- 

 troduced into Scotland by Dr. Thomas Brown. 



Subsequent variations of opinion in regard to the Muscular Sense 

 are, to some extent, represented by the following quotations. J. 

 Miiller (" Physiologic/' 1835) says r " We have a very exact notion 

 of the quantity of nerve force starting from the brain, which is neces- 

 sary to produce a certain movement . . . It would be very possible 

 that the appreciation of the weight and pressure, in cases where 

 we raise or resist, should be, in part at least, not a sensation in the 

 muscle, but a notion of the quantity of nerve force which the brain 

 is excited to call into action." Soon after this date, we find Sir 

 William Hamilton (1846), in his ' Notes and Dissertations ' on Reid, 



* See p. 541. 



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