IMAGINATION. 69 



hypothesis that would have occurred to them. For where should a 

 past feeling be embodied, if not in the same organs as the feeling when 

 present ? It is only in this way that its identity can be preserved ; a 

 feeling differently embodied would be a different feeling." * 



It is not plain from Professor Bain's text whether by 

 the ' same parts ' he means only the same parts inside the 

 brain, or the same peripheral parts also, as those occupied by 

 the original feeling. The examples which he himself pro- 

 ceeds to give are almost all cases of imagination of move- 

 ment, in which the peripheral organs are indeed affected, 

 for actual movements of a weak sort are found to accom- 

 pany the idea. This is what we should expect. All cur- 

 rents tend to run forward in the brain and discharge into 

 the muscular system ; and the idea of a movement tends to 

 do this with peculiar facility. But the question remains : 

 Do currents run hackioard, so that if the optical centres 

 (for example) are excited by ' association ' and a visual ob- 

 ject is imagined, a current runs doivn to the retina also, 

 and excites that sympathetically with the higher tracts ? 

 In other words, can peripheral sense-organs he excited from 

 above, or only from without ? Are they excited in imagi- 

 nation? Professor Bain's instances are almost silent as to 

 this point. All he says is this : 



" We might think of a blow on the hand until the skin were actually 

 irritated and inflamed. The attention very much directed to any part 

 of the body, as the great toe, for instance, is iipt to produce a distinct 

 feeling in the part, which we account for only by supposing a revived 

 nerve-current to flow there, making a sort of false sensation, an influ- 

 ence from within mimicking the influences from without in sensation 

 proper. — (See the writings of Mr. Braid, of Manchester, on Hypnotism, 

 etc.)" 



If I may judge from my own experience, all feelings of 

 this sort are consecutive upon motor currents invading the 

 skin and producing contraction of the muscles there, the 

 muscles whose contraction gives * goose-flesh ' when it takes 

 place on an extensive scale. I never get a feeling in the 

 skin, however strongly I imagine it, until some actual 

 change in the condition of the skin itself has occurred. 

 The truth seems to be that the cases where peripheral 



* Senses and Intellect, p. 338. 



