WILL. 505 



or by other muscular conti'actions called unconsciously into play in the 

 attempt. 



" I am unable to find a single case of consciousness of effort which 

 is not explicable in one or other of the ways specified. In all instances 

 the consciousness of effort is conditioned by the actual fact of muscular 

 contraction. That it is dependent on centripetal impressions generated 

 by the act of contraction, I have already endeavored to show. When 

 the paths of the centripetal impressions or the cerebral centres of the 

 same are destroyed, there is no vestige of a muscular sense. That the 

 central organs for the apprehension of the impressions originating from 

 muscular contraction are different from those which send out the motor 

 impulse, has already been established. But when Wundt argues that 

 this cannot be so, because then the sensation would always keep pace 

 with the energy of muscular contraction, he overlooks the important 

 factor of the fixation of the respiratory muscles, which is the basis of 

 the general sense of effort in all its varying degrees." 



To these remarks of Ferrier's I have nothing to add.* 

 Any one may verify them, and they prove conclusively that 

 the consciousness of muscular exertion, being impossible 

 without movement effected somewhere, must be an afferent 

 and not an efferent sensation ; a consequence, and not an 

 antecedent, of the movement itself. An idea of the amount 

 of muscular exertion requisite to perform a certain move- 

 ment can consequently be nothing other than an anticipa- 

 tory image of the movement's sensible effects. 



* IMunstei oerg's words nuij^ be added : " lu lifting au object in the 

 hand I can discover no sensation of volitional energy 1 perceive in the 

 first place a slight tension about the head, but tliat this results from a con- 

 iraction in the head muscles, and not from a feeling of the brain-discharge, 

 is shown by the simple fact that I get the tension on the right side of the 

 Uead when I move the right arm, whereas the motor discharge takes place 

 in the opposite side of the brain. ... In maximal contractions ofbody- 

 dnd limb-muscles there occur, as if it were to reinforce them, those special 

 contractions of the muscles of the face [especially frowning and clinching 

 teeth] and those tensions of the skin of the head. These symimthetic 

 movements, felt particularly on the side which makes the effort, are perhaps 

 the immediate ground why we ascribe our awareness of maximal contrac- 

 tion to the region of the head, and call it a consciousness of force, instead 

 of a peripheral sensation." (Die Willenshandlung (1888), pp.73, 82.) Herr 

 Milnsterberg's work is a little masterpiece, which appeared after my text 

 was written, I shall have repeatedly to refer to it again, and cordially 

 recommend to the reader its most thorough refutation of the Innervations- 

 gefiihl-theory. 



