4 WILLIAM JAMES ON 



But the authors who have most emphatically insisted on it, and raised it to the position 

 of a fundamental doctrine, are Bain, Hughlings Jackson and Wundt. 



Bain says : " The sensibility accompanying muscular movement coincides with the out- 

 going stream of nervous energy, and does not, as in the case of pure sensation, result 

 from any influence passing inwards, by incarrying or sensitive nerves."-^ 



Jackson writes : " Sensations, in the sense of mental states, arise, I submit, during 

 energizing of motor as well as of sensory nerve processes — with the outgoing, as well as 

 with the ingoing current."^ 



Wundt separates the feeling of force exerted, from the feeling of effected movement.^ 

 And in later writings he adopts the term Innervationsgefuhl to designate the former in 

 relation to its supposed cause, the efferent discharge. Feelings of innervation have since 

 then become household words in psychological literature. Two English writers only, so 

 far as I know. Dr. Charlton Bastion, and Dr. Ferrier, have expressed skepticism as to the 

 existence of any feelings connected with the efferent nervous discharge. But their argu- 

 ments being imperfect, and in the case of Bastian rather confusedly expressed, have 

 passed unnoticed. Lotze in Germany has also raised a skeptical voice, but has not backed 

 his doubts by many arguments.* The notorious existence of the feeling of effort in mus- 

 cular exertion ; the fact that the efferent discharge there plays the principal rdle, and the 

 plausibility of the postulate so often insisted on by Lewes that identity of structure 

 involves identity of function, have all conspired to make us almost believe, as a matter of 

 course, that motor cells when they discharge into motor fibres, should have their own 

 "specific energy "of feeling, and that this should be no other than the sense of energy 

 put forth. 



In opposition to this popular view, I maintain that the feeling of muscular energy put 

 forth is a complex afferent sensation coming from the tense muscles, the strained liga- 

 ments, squeezed joints, fixed chest, closed glottis, contracted brow, clenched jaws, etc., 

 etc. That there is over and above this another feeling of effort involved, I do not deny ; 

 but this latter is purely moral and has nothing to do with the motor discharge. We 

 shall study it at the end of this essay, and shall find it to be essentially identical with the 

 effort to remember, with the effort to make a decision, or to attend to a disagreeable task. 



First then, let us disprove the notion that there is any feeling connected with the motor 

 or efferent nervous discharge. We may begin by asking : Why should there be ? Even 

 accepting Lewes's postulate in the abstract, what degree of " identity " should be de- 

 manded between the afferent and efferent nerve apparatus, to insure their being both 

 alike, " sentient ?" Even to our coarse optical examination, the sensory and the motor 

 cells are widely different. But apart from a priori postulates, and however strange to 

 logic it may appear, it is a fact that the motor apparatus is absolutely insentient in an 

 afferent direction, although we know that the fibres of the anterior root will propagate 

 a disturbance in that direction as well as in the other. Why may not this result from 



1 The Senses and the Intellect. 3d edition, p. 77. a Beitriige zur Theorie der Sinneswahrnehmung, p. 420. 



2 Clinical and Physiological Researches on the Nervous Physiologische Psychologic, p. 316. 



Systen.. (Reprmted from the Lancet 1873). London, . gee his Metaphysik, 1869, p. 589. See also Revuo 



J. & A. Churchill, p. xxxiv. See also this author's very Philosophique, t. iv, p. 369. 

 original though somewhat obscure paper on Aphasia in 

 Brain for October, 1879, p. 351. 



