38 FSTCE0L0G7. 



geon's of the end of his knife, the duellist's of the tip of his 

 rapier as it plunges through his enemy's skin. When on 

 the middle of a vibrating ladder, we feel not only our feet 

 on the round, but the ladder's feet against the ground far 

 beloWo If we shake a locked iron gate we feel the middle, 

 on which our hands rest, move, but we equally feel the sta- 

 bility of the ends where the hinges and the lock are, and 

 we seem to feel all three at once.* And yet the place 

 where the contact is received is in all these cases the skin, 

 whose sensations accordingly are sometimes interpreted as 

 objects on the surface, and at other times as objects a long 

 distance off. 



We shall learn in the chapter on Space that our feelings 

 of our own movement are princij^ally due to the sensibility 

 of our rotating joints. Sometimes by fixing the attention, 

 say on our elbow-joint, we can feel the movement in the 

 joint itself ; but we always are simultaneously conscious 

 of the path which during the movement our finger-tips 

 describe through the air, and yet these same finger-tips 

 themselves are in no way physically modified by the motion. 

 A blow on our ulnar nerve behind the elbow is felt both 

 there and in the fingers. Kefrigeration of the elbow pro- 

 duces pain in the fingers. Electric currents passed through 

 nerve-trunks, whether of cutaneous or of more special sen- 

 sibility (such as the optic nerve), give rise to sensations 

 which are vaguely localized beyond the nerve-tracts 

 traversed. Persons whose legs or arms have been ampu- 

 tated are, as is well known, apt to preserve an illusory 

 feeling of the lost hand or foot being there. Even when 

 they do not have this feeling constantly, it may be occa- 

 sionally brought back. This sometimes is the result of 

 exciting electrically the nerve- trunks buried in the stump 



'' I recenth' faradized," says Dr. Mitchell, "a case of disarticulated 

 shoulder without warning my patient of the possible result, .^'or two 

 years he had altogether ceased to feel the limb. As the current affected 

 the brachial plexus of nerves he suddenly cried aloud, ' Oh the hand, — 

 the hand ! ' and attempted to seize the missing member. The phantom 



* Lotze: Med. Psych., 428-433; Lipps: Grundtatsachen des Seelenle- 

 bens, 582. 



