958 CUTANEOUS SENSATIONS. 



objects that furnish the stimuli. Thus it is, probably, that Funke l comes to 

 place thermal sensations among those that do not belong to the passive 

 experience of the organism, but to the active and the most precise. He was 

 thinking of those thermal preceptions in which the quality of the sensation 

 appears to consciousness incorrigibly and forthwith as a property of the 

 object. 



But another, and perhaps purer, group of thermal sensations emphasises 

 the attributes that Volkmar, 2 unlike Funke, ascribes to thermal sense, namely, 

 its origin in passive experience, and its lack of projection into the environment. 

 This group takes origin in reactions to thermal stimuli supplied for the most 

 part through the air. Most such intangible thermal stimuli experienced are 

 applied to large surfaces, and are diffuse in the sense of not sharply limited in 

 area. On a cold morning we complain " we feel cold," in a hot theatre that 

 " we are too warm " ; we refer the excessive cold or warmth to ourselves, and not 

 to the surrounding air. It is in relation to this group of thermal sensations that 

 projection is obscure. Inasmuch as a man's body is in part objective to his 

 own "self," a noumenon, and sensible, coming partly into the range of his various 

 specific sensual fields, thermal sensations can be referred by the " I " to the 

 material " me." Most of the intangible thermal stimuli evoke sensation thus 

 referred. Such sensations are strikingly prone to be "pleasurable" or the 

 reverse. And even here the admixture of tactile quality with thermal stimulus 

 has the effect of imbuing the resultant sensations with a projected quality. 

 The "double touch" which contributes largely to spatial perception of the 

 material "me," is still more potent when thermal sensations are compounded 

 with it. The ear feels cool to the hand, the hand at the same time feels warm 

 to the ear. In this case the sensations, although perceived to be due to the 

 temperatures of the body itself, acquire a peculiar quality of the character of a 

 projection. 



It is in the forming of judgments upon this group of unprojected, or only 

 slightly projected, "cold" and "warmth" sensations that "adaptation" often 

 becomes especially deceiving. The oscillations of the physiological zero of 

 temperature rob us of all steady criterion for judgments. Hence, in common 

 parlance, we refer to the environment conditions which are internal, as well as 

 fail to refer to it conditions which belong to it. A person coming in from a 

 windy walk often feels a room uncomfortably warm which is not so to 

 others ; exercise has increased the circulation in his skin and tended to warm 

 it, but the moving outeV air has rapidly conducted off the extra heat ; on 

 entering the house, the stationary air there does this less quickly, and his 

 feeling of warmth is referred to "the oppressive heat of the room." 

 Hence opening windows and sitting in a draught with its accompanying 

 risks; though keeping quiet for five minutes, until the circulation has 

 returned to normal, would attain the same end without danger. 3 In the cold 

 stage of the ague-fit, although the blood itself is warmer than usual, the 

 skin, precluded from it by vaso-spasm, and for that reason pallid, shrunken, 

 and cool, develops an intense feeling of chill. The teeth chatter and 

 knees shake. The cold sensation there is not due to unusual coldness of the 

 environment, but to a starving of the skin from its heat by cutting off the 

 internal supply. The patient, however, in spite of himself, refers the 

 causation to the environment; but not the "cold"; he complains "how cold 

 I am." A room often feels at the same time cold to one person, warm 

 to another ; just as the same water feels cold to the finger of one hand, warm 

 to a finger of the other hand, the previous thermal conditions of the two 

 hands having been dissimilar. Though neither ear nor hand may at a given 



1 Hermann's "Handbuch," Bd. iii. Abth. 2, S. 249, etc. 



2 "Lehrbuch. d. Psychol.," 1886, Bd. i. S. 303. 



3 This nature of the perception is shown perhaps better in other languages than ours, 

 " avoir chaud," "avere freddo," etc. 



