SENSATION 



ferent stimuli — light, heat, electricity, and chemical 

 action — to the various sensitive or irritable organs un- 

 der definitely controlled conditions, scientists succeeded 

 in subjecting with exactness a great part of the phe- 

 nomena of stimulation to mathematical measurements 

 and formulae. The science of the stimuli and their 

 effects acquired a strictly physical character. 



On the other hand, in most striking contradiction to 

 the immense advance of experimental physiology, we 

 see that the general conception of the various vital proc- 

 esses, and especially of the inner nerve-action that con- 

 verts the functions of the senses into mental life, is most 

 curiously neglected. Even the fundamental idea of 

 sensation, which plays the chief part in it, is disregarded 

 more and more. In many of the most valuable modern 

 manuals of physiology, containing long chapters on 

 stimuli and stimulation, there is little or no mention of 

 sensation as such. This is chiefly due to the mischiev- 

 ous and unjustifiable gulf that has once more been arti- 

 ficially created between physiology and psychology. As 

 the "exact" physiologists found the study of the inner 

 psychic processes which take p ace in sense-action and 

 sensation inconvenient and unprofitable, they gladly 

 handed over this difficult and obscure field to the "psy- 

 chologists proper" — in other words, to the metaphysi- 

 cians, who had for the starting - point of their airy 

 speculations the belief in an immortal soul and divine 

 consciousness. The psychologists readily abandoned the 

 inconvenient V)urden of experience and a posteriori 

 knowledge, to which the modern anatomic physiology 

 of the brain laid special claim. 



The greatest and most fatal error committed by 

 modern physiology in this was the admission of the 

 baseless dogma that all sensation must be accompanied 

 by consciousness. As most physiologists share the view 

 of Dubois-Reymond, that consciousness is not a natural 

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