404 MENTAL FUNCTION 



The feelings proper are more complex experiences, some of whose 

 characteristics we shall shortly describe; it is necessary first to learn 

 about feeling in general. 



Feeling may be considered the primary or primal aspect of mind. By 

 primal here is meant the most basal, possibly the simplest and the most 

 closely related to the matter of the body. Perhaps besides it was the first 

 aspect of consciousness to develop on the evolution of dead matter into 

 protoplasm. In the new-born infant feeling certainly is a very con- 

 spicuous part of the consciousness, far more so than are its knowing 

 functions. In the human fetus (as possibly in the simplest animals) 

 feeling more largely still predominates over knowing and willing. In the 

 human adult it touches the personality more closely than do these other 

 aspects of the mental process. 



SENSATION. We can describe feeling in general best by taking up 

 its elements and observing what mental events compose them. At the 

 basis of feeling, indeed of consciousness itself, undoubtedly are sensations. 

 A sensation may be defined as an abstracted aspect of analyzed conscious- 

 ness representing the activity of a sense-organ. As to how it represents 

 it we know absolutely nothing. Of all the relations and problems in 

 physiology the precise relation between the material, protoplasmic sense- 

 organ and its centers, and the accompanying consciousness seems the 

 most insoluble. The description of the sense-organs and their actions 

 in a previous chapter have shown how various are these end-organs of 

 the afferent nerves and how numerous are the modes of their activity. 

 Attempts to estimate the number of elementary sensations at the basis 

 of consciousness have been various; as accurate as any other doubtless 

 is that of Titchener : 



Eye 30,850 Tendon I 



(Brightness, 700; colors, 150.) Joint 1 



Ear 11,550 Alimentary canal . . . . (?) 3 



(Tones, 11,000; noises, 550.) Blood-vessels ? 



Nose (?) 10,000 Lungs (?) 1 



Tongue .... (only?) 4 Sexual organs 1 



Skin 3 Ear (static sense) I 



Muscle 1 All organs (pain) 1 



These fifty thousand are the different qualities of sensation, but they do 

 not for the most part represent the various intensities of the sensations 

 (the quantity, so to say, of each) and of course not the number or the 

 local signs of the sense-organs which produce them. From one point of 

 view a strong sensation (one of great intensity) is a very different sensa- 

 tion and experience from a weak sensation arising in the same end- 

 organ. For example, while the skin may have only four sorts of sensa- 

 tion (touch-pressure, heat, cold, and pain), it has of course many thou- 

 sands of end-organs serving these four senses, and the experience coming 

 from each end-organ (as we have seen) may be different from that of every 

 other, especially by that space- or locality-element known as its local sign. 



