J. B. S. HALDANE 
prefer to say that our language mechanisms are not closely 
geared to those concerned with muscular guidance and pro- 
prioception. Nevertheless there are great individual differences. 
Some people say they have no kinaesthetic memory. I have. 
I can remember, that is to say imagine, what it feels like to ride 
a bicycle, to swim in various styles, to carry out several kinds of 
chemical analysis, and so on, and this although I am a clumsy 
person with little muscular skill. We have no evidence as 
to whether this depends on an inborn difference between 
myself and those who say they have no such memory or imagin- 
ation. 
The afferent nerve supply from organs other than skin, special 
sense organs, muscles, and joints, is not very rich, but it exists. 
So far from attending to its data, we seem to spend our infancy 
in learning not to do so unless they rise to a threshold described 
as painful. This may be the only way to avoid frequent defaeca- 
tion, unacceptable sexual activity, and so on. Physiologists, by 
attention during experiments on themselves, can bring some 
of this information to consciousness. So do some neurotics and 
psychotics. I claim that I used to be able to detect the opening 
of my pylorus, and the passage of waste materials along my 
sigmoid flexure; between them localization was poor, but there 
was a good deal of sensation. A biologically uneducated person 
suddenly feeling what I felt might have reported that his or her 
belly was full of snakes, or contained a radio set controlled by 
communists or jesuits. For me at least sexual pleasure is much 
more like these visceral sensations than it is like the special 
senses or those of the skin or muscles. 
Where do we go from here? I want to suggest three possibi- 
lities. The most obvious is the verbalization of kinaesthesia. 
For a million years or so our ancestors had manual skill; but 
there is no evidence that they used symbols. Sculpture and 
painting appeared suddenly in the upper palaeolithic, perhaps 
under 40,000 years ago, and Pumphrey and I have suggested 
that descriptive language started at about the same time. 
Writing began less than 6,000 years ago, and algebra less than 
2,000. 
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