98 



HABIT AND INTELLIGENCE. 



[chap. 



Muscular 

 sense. 



"What resistance : all the properties of things that we cognise by 

 l°^l^X.. ;. means of touch, such as the differences of hard and soft, 

 resistance, and of rough and smooth, are due to various modes and 

 degrees of resistance to the touch. I regard the "mus- 

 cular sense " as a part of the sense of touch, for all that it 

 cognises is also resolvable into pressure and resistance ; it 

 appears uncertain whether there woidd be any sense of 

 muscular motion whatever — that is to say, it is uncertain 

 whether muscular action would give rise to sensation — if it 

 were absolutely unresisted.^ Our first cognitions of space, 

 and of things existing in space, are due to the sense of 

 touch, which so far is an intellectual sense ; though in a 

 developed state of the intellect we obtain information 

 concerning external things chiefly through sight; but in 

 blind persons the sense of touch, in virtue of its giving a 

 cognition of space and of the form and position of things 

 in space, is capable, in a great degree, of supplying the 

 place of the sense of sight, in a way that no other sense 

 could conceivably do. Sensations of touch do not admit of 

 being reproduced in memory with any vivicbiess. 



2. The nerves of taste are also nerves of touch and of heat, 

 and when these sensations are experienced together, they 

 are cognised as distinct. But when two tastes are mixed 

 together, a single taste is cognised intermediate in character 

 between its constituents. The sense of taste is not an 

 intellectual one ; it gives no cognition of space ; and its 

 impressions are scarcely at all capable of being reproduced 

 in memory. Sensations of taste are due to the substances 



1 " Of the voluntary motion of our limbs we know originally nothing. 

 "We do not perceive the motion of our muscles by their own sensations, 

 but attain a kuowledge of them only when perceived by another sense. 

 The muscles most under our control are those of the eye and the voice, 

 which perform motions microscopically small : yet we have no conscious- 

 ness of the motion. We move the diajihragm against the heavy pressure 

 of the liver, &c., yet with as little consciousness of the motion. It 

 follows that the motions of our limbs must be observed by sight or touch 

 in order to learn that they move, and in what direction." (Weber, quoted 

 in M'Cosh's Examination of Mill's Philosophy, p. 128.) Dr. M'Cosh 

 quotes this in opposition to the theory of Mill and Bain, to be referred to 

 iu the next two chapters, that we acquire the cognition of space through 

 the muscular sense alone. 



Taste. 



