500 PSYCHOLOGY. 



tlietical feelings in his psychologic construction of space, ia 

 himself led to admit that they have no ditterences of quality, 

 but fee] alike in all muscles, and vary only in their degrees 

 of intensity. They are used by the mind as guides, not 

 of loMch movement, but of hoiv strong a movement, it is 

 making, or shall make. But does not this virtually sur- 

 render their existence altogether ? * 



For if anything be obvious to introspection it is that 

 the degree of strength of our muscular contractions is com- 

 pletely revealed to us by afferent feelings coming from the 

 muscles themselves and their insertions, from the vicinity 

 of the joints, and from the general fixation of the larynx, 

 chest, face, and body, in the phenomenon of effort, objec- 

 tively considered. When a certain degree of energy of con- 

 traction rather than another is thought of by us, this com- 

 plex aggregate of afferent feelings, forming the material of 

 our thought, renders absolutely precise and distinctive our 

 mental image of the exact strength of movement to be 

 made, and the exact amount of resistance to be overcome. 



Let the reader try to direct his will towards a particu- 

 lar movement, and then notice what constituted the direc- 

 tion of the will. Was it anjthing over and above the no- 

 tion of the different feelings to which the movement when 

 effected would give rise ? If we abstract from these feel- 

 ings, will any sign, principle, or means of orientation be 

 left by which the will may innervate the right muscles 

 with the right intensity, and not go astray into the wrong 

 ones? Strip off these images of result, and so far from 

 leaving us with a complete assortment of directions into 

 which our will may launch itself, you leave our conscious- 

 ness in an absolute and total vacuum. If I will to write 

 "Peter" rather than "Paul," it is the thought of certain 

 digital sensations, of certain alphabetic sounds, of certain 

 appearances on the paper, and of no others, which im- 

 mediately precedes the motion of my pen. 



* Professor Fouillee, who defends them in the Revue Philosophique, 

 xxviii, 561 ff.. also admits fp. 574) that they are the same whatever be the 

 movement, and that all our discrimination oiwldch movement we are inner- 

 vating is afferent, consisting of sensations after, and of sensory images 

 before, the act. 



