198 PSYCHOLOGY. 



most delicate manner of exciting the surfaces in question 

 One is tempted to doubt whether the muscular sensibilit;y 

 as such plays even a subordinate part as sign of these 

 more immediately geometrical perceptions which are so 

 uniformly associated with it as effects of the contraction 

 objectively viewed. 



For this opinion man}^ reasons can be assigned. First, 

 it seems a priori improbable that such organs as muscles 

 should give us feelings whose variations bear any exact 

 proportion to the spaces traversed when they contract. 

 As G. E. Miiller says,* their sensory nerves must be excited 

 either chemically or by mechanical compression whilst the 

 contractions last, and in neither case can the excitement be 

 proportionate to the 23osition into which the limb is thrown. 

 The chemical state of the muscle depends on the po^eviotis 

 work more than on the actually present contraction ; and 

 the internal pressure of it depends on the resistance offered 

 more than on the shortening attained. TJie intrinsic mus- 

 cular sensations are likely therefore to he merely those of massive 

 strain or fatigue, and to carry no accurate discrimination ivith 

 them of lengths of path moved through. 



Empirically we find this probability confirmed by many 

 facts. The judicious A. W. Volkman observes t that : 



" Muscular feeling gives tolerably fine evidence as to the existence 

 of movement, but haixliy any direct information about its extent or 

 direction. We are not aware that the contractions of a supinator 

 longus have a wider range than those of a supinator brevis; and that 

 the fibres of a bipenniform muscle contract in opposite directions is a fact 

 of which the muscular feeling itself gives not the slightest intimation. 

 Muscle-feehng belongs to that class of general sensations which tell us 

 of our inner states, but not of outer relations ; it does not belong among 

 the space-perceiving senses." 



E. H. Weber in his article Tastsinn called attention 

 to the fact that muscular movements as large and strong 

 as those of the diaphragm go on continually without our 

 perceiving them as motion. ' 



G. H. Lewes makes the same remark. "When we think 

 of our muscular sensations as movements in space, it is 



* Pfliiger's Archiv, xlv. 65. 



f Untersuchungen im Gebiete der Optik, Leipzig (1863), p. 188 



