Relations between the Physical and the Moral. 259 



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At the lowest grade of psychological life, we meet with that 

 infinite number of faint perceptions, scarcely conscious, of which 

 the aggregate constitutes for every one that general feeling of 

 existence, that Gemeingefilhl, which is the ground on which our 

 clear perceptions and our ideas are incessantly projected. This 

 confused feeling, which is the resultant of a crowd of infinitesimal 

 sensations, as the roar of the sea is the resultant of the noise of 

 each wave, is so well described by L. Peisse, in his Notes on Caba- 

 nis, that we cannot do better than transcribe the passage. 



' Is it quite certain that we have absolutely no consciousness of 

 the exercise of the organic functions ? If we mean a clear, dis- 

 tinct, and locally determinable consciousness, like that of external 

 impressions, it is plain that we do not possess it'; but we may have 

 an obscure, dim, and, so to speak, latent consciousness of them, 

 analogous to our consciousness of the sensations which call forth 

 and accompany the respiratory movements, sensations which, 

 although incessantly repeated, pass as though they were not per- 

 ceived. May we not, indeed, regard as a distant, feeble, and con- 

 fused echo of the universal vital labour that remarkable feeling 

 which, without cessation or remission, certifies us of the actual 

 existence and presence of our own bodies ? This feeling is nearly 

 always, though improperly, confounded with those accidental and 

 local impressions which, while we are awake, stimulate and keep 

 up the play of sensibility. These sensations, though they are 

 incessant, make but fugitive and transient appearances on the stage 

 of consciousness, while the feeling of which we speak endures and 

 persists beneath those shifting scenes. Condillac well named it 

 the fundamental sentiment of existence, and Maine de Birau the 

 feeling of sensitive existence. In virtue of it, the body is ever 

 present to the ego as its own, and the mental subject feels and 

 perceives that it exists in some sort locally within the limited 

 extent of the organism. It is a perpetual and unfailing monitor, 

 making the state of the body ever present to the consciousness, 

 and it manifests in an unmistakable way the indissoluble con- 

 nection of psychical with physiological life. In the ordinary state 

 of equilibrium which constitutes perfect health, this feeling is, as 



