WILL. 503 



selves innervate them. Ferrier * has repeated and verified 

 the observations. They admit of no great precision, and 

 too much stress should not be laid ujDon them either way ; 

 but at the very least they tend to show that no added deli- 

 cacy would accrue to our perception from the consciousness 

 of the efferent process, even if it existed. 



Since there is no direct introspective evidence for the 

 feelings of innervation, is there any indirect or circumstan- 

 tial evidence ? Much is ofi'ered ; but on critical examina- 

 tion it breaks down. Let us see what it is. Wundt says 

 that were our motor feelings of an afferent nature, 



"it ought to be expected that they would increase and diminish with 

 the amount of outer or inner work actually effected in contraction. 

 This, however, is not the case, but the strength of the motor sensation 

 is purely proportional to the strength of the impulse to movement, 

 which starts from the central organ innervating the motor nerves. 

 This may be proved by observations made by physicians in cases of 

 morbid alteration in the muscular effect. A patient whose arm or leg 

 is half paralyzed, so that he can only move the limb with great effort, 

 has a distinct feeling of this effort : the limb seems to him heavier than 

 before, appearing as if weighted with lead ; he has, therefore, a sense 

 of more work effected than formerly, and yet the effected work is either 

 the same or even less. Only he must, to get even this effect, exert a 

 stronger innervation, a stronger motor impulse, than formerly." f 



In complete paralysis, also, patients will be conscious 

 of putting forth the greatest exertion to move a limb which 

 remains absolutely still upon the bed, and from which of 

 course no afferent muscular or other feelings can come.:}: 



But Dr. Terrier in his Functions of the Brain (Am. Ed. 



* Fuuetions of the Brain, p. 328. 



X Vorlesungen ilber Menscheu uud Thlerseele, i. 222. 



X In some iustauces we get an opposite result. Dr. H. Charlton Bastian 

 (British Medical Journal (1869), p. 461, note), says: 



" Ask a man whose lower extremities are completely paralyzed, whether, 

 when he ineffectually wills to move either of these lirabs, he is conscious 

 of an expenditure of energy in any degree proportionate to that which he 

 would have experienced if his muscles had naturally responded to his voli- 

 tion. He will tell us rather that he has a sense only of his utter power- 

 lessness, and that his volition is a mere mental act, carrying with it no feel- 

 ings of expended energy such as he is accustomed to experience when his 

 muscles are in powerful action, and from which action and its consequences 

 alone, as I think, he can derive any adequate notion of resistance." 



