236 PSYCHOLOGY. 



has led Wundt to affirm that the eyeball-feeling proper, the 

 incoming sensation of effected rotation, tells us only of the 

 direction of our eye-movements, but not of their Avhole ex- 

 tent.* For this reason, and because not only Wundt, but 

 many other authors, think the phenomena in these partial 

 paralyses demonstrate the existence of a feeling of innerva- 

 tion, a feeling of the outgoing nervous current, opposed to 

 every afferent sensation whatever, it seems proper to note 

 the facts with a certain degree of detail. 



Suppose a man wakes up some morning with the exter- 

 nal rectus muscle of his right eye half paralyzed, what will 

 be the result ? He will be enabled only with great effort 

 to rotate the eye so as to look at objects lying far off to the 

 right. Something in the effort he makes will make him feel 

 as if the object lay much farther to the right than it really 

 is. If the left and sound eye be closed, and he be asked 

 to touch rapidly with his finger an object situated towards 

 his right, he will point the finger to the right of it. The 

 current explanation of the ' something ' in the effort which 

 causes this deception is that it is the sensation of the out- 

 going discharge from the nervous centres, the * feeling of 

 innervation,' to use Wundt's expression, requisite for bring- 

 ing the open eye with its weakened muscle to bear upon 

 the object to be touched. If that object be situated 20 

 degrees to the right, the patient has now to innervate as 

 powerfully to turn the eye those 20 degrees as formerly 

 he did to turn the eye 30 degrees. He consequently 

 believes as before that he has turned it 30 degrees ; until, 

 by a newly-acquired custom, he learns the altered spatial 

 import of all the discharges his brain makes into his right 

 abducens nerve. The ' feeling of innervation,' maintained 

 to exist by this and other observations, plays an immense 

 part in the sj)ace-theories of certain philosophers, especial- 

 ly "Wundt. I shall elsewhere try to show that the observa- 

 tions by no means warrant the conclusions drawn from 

 them, and that the feeling in question is j^robably a wholly 

 fictitious entity. t Meanwhile it suffices to point out that 

 even those who set most store by it are comj^elled, by the 



* Revue Philosophique, iii. 9, p. 220. 

 f See Chapter XXIV. 



