On the Relation of Muscle Sense to Pressure Sense 21 



weight. Whatever stimulations may have been felt in former 

 liftings of the weight are now present in the mental state excit- 

 ing the adjustments. Should these be felt or made to tally with 

 the representations that have brought out the adjustment, the 

 present weight is adjudged to be the same. Should the felt series 

 not correspond with the represented series, that is, should some 

 of the represented series fail to appear, the weight is adjudged 

 to be lighter, but should others than those represented appear, 

 requiring further movements of adjustment, the weight is judged 

 to be heavier. The main difference between what has been called 

 muscle sense and pressure sense is the prominence of this repre- 

 sentation of the movement which is about to take place. In pres- 

 sure the representation of the liand undergoing certain stimula- 

 tions is there and a considerable part of those representations is 

 of muscle strains and tensions. They are weak and pale by com- 

 parison, for they are confused and almost blotted out by the stim- 

 ulations to which the hand is subjected by the apparatus used to 

 exclude more obvious movements. If we attempt to exclude 

 movement by imposing a voluntary rigidity, the feelings of this 

 adjustment are equally confusing and distracting. The various 

 strains, stresses, tensions, etc., which come out with any kind of 

 movements, whether of rate or against resistance, present them- 

 selves in some simple form of imagery such as we have men- 

 tioned above. In ordinary daily life light weights appear to us 

 generally to move up rapidly and heavy ones more slowly. The 

 discrimination of rate is no more easy or fundamental than the 

 discrimination of resistance. Judgments of same and heavier are 

 inferences from certain facts and these facts are the excitations 

 of areas in the one case that remain unaffected in another. It 

 might be added also that the basis of the judgment that one thing 

 is more than another mav not be a more intense stimulation or a 

 more intense sensation. Perceptions of greater do not necessarily 

 rest upon greater perceptions, and a sensation of intensity is not 

 an intense sensation. 



195 



