TOUCH. 527 



endless feelings of which we are susceptible, but some feelings, 

 apparently referred with justice to this sense, are considered by 

 many writers as referrible to other modes of sensation. Dr. 

 Spurzheim^ says, " It may still be asked whether feeling produces 

 ideas of consistency, of hardness, of softness, of solidity and 

 fluidity, of weight and resistance ? I think it does not. For the 

 mind to examine these qualities employs the muscular system- 

 rather than the sense of feeling properly so called." This opi, 

 nion accords with that of Dr. Brown r , who states, " The feeling 

 of resistance" (of which he considers the qualities enumerated 

 above as modifications) " is, I conceive, to be ascribed, not to 

 our organ of touch, but to our muscular frame, to which I have 

 already directed your attention, as forming a distinct organ of 

 sense ; the affections of which, particularly as existing in com- 

 bination with other feelings, and modifying our judgments con- 

 cerning these (as in the case of distant vision, for example), are 

 not less important than those of our other sensitive organs. The 

 sensations of this class are, indeed, in common circumstances, so 

 obscure as to be scarcely heeded or remembered by us; but there 

 is probably no contraction, even of a single muscle, which is not 

 attended with some faint degree of sensation that distinguishes it 

 from the contractions of other muscles, or from other degrees of 

 contraction of the same muscle." 



This opinion was originally advanced by the profoundest phy- 

 sician among my predecessors at St. Thomas's Hospital, Dr. 

 Wells 8 , in the following words : " What is there within us to 

 indicate these positions of the body ? To me it appears evident, 

 that, since they are occasioned and preserved by combinations of 

 the actions of various voluntary muscles, some feeling must attend 

 every such combination, which suggests, from experience, per- 

 haps, the particular position produced by it. But in almost all 

 the positions of the body, the chief part of our muscular efforts 

 is directed toward sustaining it against the influence of its own 

 gravity. Each position, therefore, in which this takes place, 

 must be attended with a feeling which serves to indicate its re- 

 lation to the horizontal plane of the earth." 



Sir C. Bell has repeated these opinions, but without any refer- 



q Phrenology. 



T Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind. 2d edit. 1824. p. 480. 



5 Essays, 1818. p. 7O. 



K N 



