THE MIND-STUFF THEORY. 15b 



through the body causes a feeling akiu to that which a sudden loud re- 

 port causes. A strong unexpected impression made through the eyes, 

 as by a flash of lightning, similarly gives rise to a start or shock ; and 

 though the feeling so named seems, like the electric shock, to have the 

 body at large for its seat, and may therefore be regarded as the correla- 

 tive rather of the efferent than of the afferent disturbance, yet on re- 

 membering the mental change that results from the instantaneous 

 transit of an object across the field of vision, I think it may be perceived 

 that the feeling accompanying the efferent disturbance is itself reduced 

 very nearly to the same form. The state of consciousness so generated 

 is, in fact, comparable in quality to the initial state of consciousness 

 caused by a blow (distinguishing it from the pain or other feeling that 

 commences the instant after); which state of consciousness caused by a 

 blow may be taken as the primitive and typical form of the nervous 

 shock. The fact that sudden brief disturbances thus set up by differ- 

 ent stimuli through different sets of nerves cause feelings scarcely 

 distinguishable in quality will not appear strange when we recollect that 

 distinguishableness of feeling implies appreciable duration; and that 

 when the duration is greatly abridged, nothing more is known than that 

 some mental change has occurred and ceased. To have a sensation of 

 redness, to know a tone as acute or grave, to be conscious of a taste as 

 sweet, implies in each case a considerable continuity of state. If the 

 state does not last long enough to admit of its being contemplated, it 

 cannot be classed as of this or that kind; and becomes a momentary 

 modification very similar to momentary modifications otherwise caused, 

 "It is possible, then — may we not even say probable ?— that some- 

 thing of the same order as that which we call a nervous shock is the 

 ultimate unit of consciousness ; and that all the unlikenes^;es among 

 our feelings result from unlike modes of integration of this ultimate 

 unit. I say of the same order, because there are discernible differences 

 among nervous shocks that are differently caused ; and the primitive 

 nervous shock probaVjly differs somewhat from each of them. And I 

 say of the same order, for the further reason that while we may 

 ascribe to them a general likeness in nature, we must suppose a great 

 unlikeness in degree. The nervous shocks recognized as such are vio- 

 lent — must be violent before they can be perceived amid the proces- 

 sion of multitudinous vivid feelings suddenly interrupted by them. 

 But the rapidly-recurring nervous shocks of which the different forms 

 of feeling consist, we must assume to be of comparatively moderate, or 

 even of very slight intensity. Were our various sensations and emotions 

 composed of rapidly-recurring shocks as strong as those ordinarily 

 called shocks, they would be unbearable ; indeed life would cease at 

 once. "We must think of them rather as successive faint pulses of sub- 

 jective change, each having the same quality as the strong pulse of 

 subjective change distinguished as a nervous shock." * 



* Principles of Psychology, § 60. 



